Has Enough Time Passed? The 2001 Big XII Championship

I went with Tech too. Cost us a MNC matchup and also colt a Heisman. Plus it was the last seconds that killed us.

Concerning that CU game… I’m still livid about the roughing the kicker call. It may have been the letter of the law correct call, but certainly not the spirit of the law correct call. Geiggar was a less than a tenth of a second late. He had no mal-intent of hurting the kicker. That should’ve been a 5 yard running into the kicker and we win the game.

To me, the refs shouldn’t make those kinds of calls. Its akin to an NBA final game where TECHNICALLY it might be a foul but its not blatant so the last second shot foul is not called.

Let the players decide the games, not the refs. Still irks me to this day.

I’d put the 99 A&M game in my top 5 most disappointing losses. If not for Major being sick and Ramada-gate, we win that game going away. We were #7 at the time. We never recovered from that loss… we lost the next 2 games and were lousy from then on.

We win that game and its like a top 5 matchup against Nebraska in the CCG and who knows if we win their maybe an MNC shot.

Bama. Colt looked more like a kid than the other QBs I’ve watched come into the program. Over the years it was like watching him grow up. To see his career end the way it did was horrible.

why Mack didn’t pull Simms after his 3rd turnover…I will never understand…I always understood the reason to play SImms over Major but he should have pulled the cord after the fumble….and we likely win that game

I voted for Tech mainly because I was there for the game and aftermath that soon followed basically had to be escorted out of the stadium just because i was wearing burnt orange. Ever since I lost respect for tech fans. I made sure to not miss the Tech game this last year and loved every minute of walking out of DKR and watching Texas fans be classy.

We beat that same team 41-7 earlier in the season. Just like 2005, where we pounded CU earlier by almost the same score – 42-17. I was at both the 2001 and 2005 regular season games in Austin and will tell you the CU played us harder in the 2005 game.

I am still shocked that we lost that 2001 Big 12 championship game and the only good that came out of it was Mack preparing the 2005 team for CU and boy were they prepared.

Not only am I not over this ones, I’ve invented some new cuss words for Simms. I used all I had that day for a long, long time. We had beat those SOBs 41-7 during the regular season…there was just no rhyme or reason to this loss…except for Simms’ meltdown.

Phillip Giegger and Blake Gideon will always haunt my dreams

I was but a mere sophomore at UT watching the game in my room in Moore Hall when Chris Simms turned in the worst big game performance of any UT QB in my lifetime and Major Applewhite turned in a Hollywood worthy comeback performance that fell just short. Those of you not on campus at the time, the heat between Simms backers and Applewhite backers was huge, at least in the groups and classes I was in at the time.

My cousin, a senior at UT, was a Simms backer and said that Simms would lead us to the promised land while Applewhite could ride the pine with his blown knees. I said that Major with no knees and one arm was a better QB than Simms because we could pick which WRs Simms was going to throw to from the stands and if we could do that, the defense sure could too. The 2001 Big XII Title Game proved which one of us was right and even to this day he still regrets backing Simms over Major.

To those saying Miami would have rolled us because of what they did to Nebraska: we had Major, a better balance on offense than Nebraska, and a better defensive matchup with the Canes. Everyone knew Nebraska was over matched. I am not saying we win, but it is not a blowout by any means, and we could have been celebrating a fifth title in 2005, not a fourth.

The ’08 Tech loss was terrible as many commentators have noted. Both the players and coaches made a lot mistakes throughout the game. If you are bothered by this loss, then you have to be bothered by the ’02 loss too.

The ’01 Big 12 title game remains all on the coaches. Chris Simms was not a big game quarterback. He never should have started the game. His start is similar to Rick McIvor starting the ’84 Cotton Bowl.

The ‘06 K-State game was horrible on the defensive side of the ball. OTOH, K-State seems to have Mack’s number.

The ‘06 K-State game leads to a different thought. Contrast Jevan Snead’s performance in that game to Garrett Gilbert’s performance in the ’Bama game. Had Snead gotten more reps in practice? Were the offensive coaches more confident in Snead? Was the offense more effective in 2006 than in 2009?

Other bad, frustrating losses from the Mack Brown era:
’99: NCSU, A&M and Arkansas (what the hell happen to Kwame Cavil)
’00: Stanford, Oregon
’01: OU (could have won that game), CU
’03: Arkansas
’04: OU (did Texas play to win that game, or play not to get beat too badly)
’06: A&M (Snead should have started)

In looking at theses losses, I am back to my question from Thursday. Can Texas play with a target on its back? If not, then the games at Tech, at Nebraska, and at K-State are going to be ugly.
It is 6:15 a.m. here. Is that too early to start drinking?

But he also fumbled on a third down to lose 9 yards. That pushed us back and Mangum missed the ensuing field goal try. That’s the one thing about that game that I always remember.

The crowd in Texas Stadium was a sea of Burnt Orange. We were going to the Rose Bowl to face Miami. Colorado was clearly a lesser team, our 41-7 mudhole stomp earlier in the year had established that. But on that night, we were King Midas in reverse. Everything we touched turned to dust.

I took the LSAT in the morning and drove up to Dallas for the game. I thought if I blew the test and Texas won it would be a worthy trade off. I was near the top of the stadium and saw Florida go down by watching the tv’s in the luxury boxes. Everyone quickly realized a win would allow us the chance to play UM. It was amazing how the Stadium turned from jubilation to anger. When Major threw the TD pass I remember the whole section (we were right above where BJ made the catch) jumping up and hugging complete strangers. While the loss was hard, losing the UA game was twice as rough becuase of how Colt went down. The silver linning in the CU loss was Major starting the Holiday bowl, and having a great game.

Even though I went into a major depression after the Tech 2008 loss (I couldn’t bring myself to look at a computer for four days that’s how bad it got), the 2001 Big 12 Championship Game will never be surpassed in my memory as worst loss in Mack Brown Era.

I was 12, sitting 13 rows up from the 20 yard line and I can’t explain the elation that raced through the crowd after the announcement that if we won, we’d be going to the MNC. Everything was going right. Then, like so many time before in Dallas, Chris Simms became a quivering mass of indecision with hands dipped in vaseline. It’s always been Major for me, even when Simms did well. It just didn’t seem fair to me that Major got the job taken away without a fight.

You can say that Simms had a dislocated finger all you want… but five minutes before he trotted off the field the chant started in my section, “MA-JOR, MA-JOR” and when he threw that bomb to BJ I really thought we were going to come back. Giegger hitting the kicker just devastated me. I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch it again.

The hammering OU delivered in 2000 was simply revolting. I was embarrassed, humiliated, nauseous, rendered impotent, etc. Even the 2003 nightmare offered at least a glimpse of VY’s future brilliance.

All the games mentioned hold a special place in the ninth level of Hell for Horns fans, but the 2000 RRS left me more disgusted and depressed than any of them. There isn’t any one player or incident you could pin in it on. It was a complete failure on the part of every individual associated with the program. I am ashamed to admit it, but on that day I thought we had hired the wrong guy.

Sickening.

At DKR – Senior Day – still had a shot to pull out a great season. Losing to a completely inferior team with lesser talent, lesser offense, lesser defense, and a running QB, was so very brutal. 2 things grind at me from that game:

1 – There were SO MANY blatantly bad calls (atleast 5 specifically) that, after the game, I wrote ‘em all down just so I could feed my bitterness more accurately. Never done that before or since. It didn’t even include the 2 flagged Colt hits. I can’t remember the list well anymore but I do remember 2: A block-in-the-back called on Robison during a kick return when the replay showed a perfectly legal block. It cost the Horns a runback TD that would have probably won it. Also, the 1st-half Limas TD catch that was called back for offensive interference. Ridiculous. Everybody in the stands, everyone watching TV, and even every announcer condemned it as a terrible call.

2 – aggy drove the length of the field, when it mattered, almost entirely based on a slow QB running the option & not pitching, 4 yards at a time, killing 9 minutes of clock, against UT’s #1 nationally-ranked rushing defense – it was just painful to watch. Gutcheck time for the D, who had allowed only 6 pts. up to then, but they just couldn’t stop ’em.