Games That Just Pissed Me Off
by whills on Jul 5, 2010 4:50 PM CDT
in Texas Longhorns Football
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We’ll journey back to another period of doldrums, roughly that cloudy mass of uncertainty and general gloom which reigned supreme from the mid-1980s to 1998. As the Fred Akers Era ground to an end after 1983's high point and moved on to David McWilliams, the hope was that someone would be able to sustain DKR’s mantle. McWilliams is a great guy, a wonderful Horn, someone who emceed an event I ran up here in the late 90s, but his time as
The hardest part of the cycle is the going down the shoulder of the curve. At the bottom it is bleak, almost hopeless. Going up the curve is a tough fight, but things seem to be getting better all the time. Going down, though, is a pitiful exercise in futility, of hope against hope and loses that really hurt your psyche as well as breaking your heart. Those times are the true test to the real fan. For you younger fans 30 and under, this is really a golden age. You can count the loses on your fingers and toes; you’re so lucky.
Feel free to add any of your own memories and details and your worst piss-you-off games.
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’84 Cotton Bowl
Everything wrong about the Fred Akers era came alive in that game.
That game along with the 1978 Cotton Bowl made me wonder was Texas’ motto: should’ve, could’ve, would’ve. In six years, we should have won two MNC.
If Texas had won the game, then Miami probably never ascends to football supremacy. And, Texas likely never achieves the mediocrity of the mid to late 80s.
You're right about that.
It was Fred’s decision to not send in the regular punt returner and left Curry back there. The one turnover, totally unnecessary when you had the best defense in football. A crying shame.
Turnovers (six, I think, three fumbles that gave them the big, early lead, and three MacEachern INTs) were the killer in ’78, as well, against ND.
There was also a back story that Parseghian had discovered from a coach outside the ND program how to defense the wishbone, so the Irish controlled the line of scrimmage. But that didn’t account for the Texas D being dominated.
Campbell, Lam Jones, Erxleben – all at the top of the college game but not that day. Fred just didn’t plan contingencies well.
I still hate that '78 game...
but are you conflating two painful ND memories? Parseghian wasn’t the coach by then, I think it was Dan Devine. And Texas wasn’t running the wishbone anymore.
I hate it still because it was a rout. We went into the game missing Lance Taylor, who had led the SWC in tackles that year, and it definitely hurt our defense. But in the end, it just came down to giving them very short fields over and over and over… In my heart, I still believe that if we got to play them 10 times we’d win 8 or 9 of the games, but it’s hard to convince anybody with Domer leanings of that when they see the score.
I hate it because the voters overreacted to the game by jumping ND all the way to another undeserved MNC, and dropped UT way down even below Arkansas, who we’d beat at their place earlier in the year. Anybody who thinks there’s any legitimacy to the crap system CFB uses to determine a “champion” should have to defend that year’s vote.
But I hate it mainly because I just loved that team so much, and that could have been such a storybook year. Still my very favorite OU game, losing both the first AND second string QBs in the first quarter, and pulling it out anyway. And then every week a party on the Drag. McEachern played so well that year, right up until the bowl game, where he finally looked like a third-stringer. In some ways, that’s still my favorite team/year ever…
Right about the conflation.
The back story went with the second ND game, not this one.
That OU game is one of my favorites as well…and one I remember each time we enter big games or a season without much QB backup. We were lucky to have a McEachern to pick up the slack.
You're right about that
Sorry but Akers never ran the wishbone. Earl was in the I for that game.
Parseghian had retired by 84 and Devine was the coach.
Thanks, 3 yards.
Of course Earl was in the I. Brainfarts all around.
You love memory for the feelings it can retain but the sediment of time can play hell with details.
I would just like to pretend that the mid to late 80s never happened.
Some of us renamed the 1984 Cotton Bowl the three field goals and a botched punt disaster.
I'll add some lime juice the paper cut you so eloquently opened...
A&M 12, Texas 7 (2006) – Yes, Colt probably wasn’t 100% and maybe Mack should have played Snead, but how does the nations’ best defense against the run give up 244 yards on the ground to the Agros? Ridiculous. Chizik had one foot out the door to ISU, we handed OU a first class ticket to another Big XII C despite whipping their ass earlier that year, and worst of all, we lost to damn Aggies at home on Senior Day. People always point to the 2001 Big XII C as Mack’s worst game at Texas and probably deservedly so, but this one was the most indefensible in my book.
Ark 27, TX 7 (Cotton Bowl, 2000) – Just a cluster f*** of a game all around…Cavil and Humphrey kicked off the team the day before the game, Major twists a knee in the 3rd opening the door for Simms to take all the snaps that Spring and take over, our defense somehow let the Hog-Nutts convert a 3rd and 30 or something like that from the ARK 1 yard line, and to top it all off, the game was at 10am the morning after we switched Milleniums and good Lord was I hungover.
God Squad 27, TX 24 (1996) – All I have to say is, “they are who we thought they were and we let’em off the hook.”
Be nobody but yourself in a world that desperately wants you to be like everybody else.
Well, it's bubblin' like sulfuric with that. Ouch.
The 2006 game was the last home game I’ve seen. My oldest daughter was a senior, so it was her last home game, and we brought the younger daughter along as well. It was a first class screw up and I had to be in the north EZ where the ags scored both their TDs. There was a helpless feeling all day long. This and the one the next year would get Mack’s tail feathers scorched and set up 08 and 09, probably the only damn good thing to come out of it.
The Arkansas Cottom Bowl I lump sort of with the Virginia Tech Sugar Bowl. Strange screw ups. Losing your best receiver and the head of your defense was a disaster. Of all people to lose to.
God Squad lesson: don’t pass in the flats from your own damn end zone. I think we had intercepted them doing the same damn thing earlier. Mackovic would outsmart himself ever so often. Sometimes you just have to kick the damn ball and play D. Where’s Darrell’s quick kick when you need it?
We even had Willie and et the bastards off the hook.
Some of the losses you mention didn't bother me that much.
They should have, I suppose . . . but didn’t. Among them:
1. Georgia Cotton Bowl, fumbled punt — I’ve never felt Texas had the best team that year, that Nebraska was better and probably Miami. And I think if we don’t drop the punt, or if we do and win anyway, that Nebraska pulls out an Orange Bowl win and we’re still No. 2 in the final polls.
2. Alabama six months ago — I thought we COULD win, and wish we could “have played out our hand.” But I harbor no ill will toward Alabama (except for that run-it-up last TD). My feeling four years earlier was that we WOULD beat USC. It came closer and later than I anticipated, but I was confident going in and confident throughout. Thanks, PC, for that great call on fourth-and 2. And thanks, again, VY.
3. Five in a row to OU early in this decade — I think OU had the better team every year. Not by the margins they won by, but a loss is a loss.
4. Notre Dame in two Cotton Bowls — Following 1970 (the end of the 30-game win streak) and following 1977 (Akers’ first year). We beat ourselves with turnovers in the first of those, and Notre Dame was probably due to win after the 21-17 win we pulled out the year before. In the latter, the Irish RAN for something like 300 yards. ’Nuff said.
The loss that killed me then and still does goes into ancient history — 1965, Arkansas, up there. Our four previous seasons ended 10-1, 9-1-1, 11-0 and 10-1 . . . a stumble to TCU costing us No. 1 in 1961 and a one-point loss to Arkansas in 1964 preventing a repeat of the MNC in ’63 . . . . We were 4-0 and No. 1 in 1965, were on the streak detailed above . . . managed to turn the ball over about four times in the first half, trailed 20-3 (in an era when a 17-point deficit was like 30 today) . . . and had those suckers down 24-20 when they drove the length of the field in the final five minutes. Starting with that loss, Texas went 6-4, 7-4, 6-4 the next three years, and started ’68 0-1-1 before embarking on a 30-game win streak and two MNCs.
Me, too, on the 24-20 loss.
We were just unlucky and the Hogs were very good. At least we fought back, but that made the end even worse. That’s on my list.
Actually, it was 27-24 Hogs in 1965. I failed to include that
Freakin’ Brittenum and Crockett!!!!!
That's correct, 27-24.
The Hogs wrote songs about the members of that team; they were legendary.
Agree on the 'Bama game
and also the Georgia game. I’d liken Colt’s decision to run into the center of the line to Curry’s muffed punt. Ah well, can’t win ’em all.
That 1961 TCU game really pissed off DKR. I think that’s where he coined his infamous “TCU is like cockroaches…” deadpan. It’s notable that Texas scored 81 on TCU in 1974.
"You've got to think lucky. If you fall into a mudhole, check your back pocket - you might have caught a fish" -- Darrell Royal
by SpiritOfTheFedora on Jul 5, 2010 10:04 PM CDT up reply actions
The week before the '61 loss, the Horns were ranked #1
for the first time in DKR’s career. No wonder he was pissed.
In ’74 the week before the TCU game, Texas had lost to Baylor 34-24, the first time DKR had ever lost to them (they had tied in ’57). So, he was pissed. And they took it out on TCU.
The game that annoyed me the most is the Texas-Miami Cotton Bowl from the early 90s. The creators of MSNBC’s Lock Up must have been there. That Miami team had to be the inspiration for the show.
We were completely abused and disrespected that day.
Five turnovers didn’t help any either.
For me this was worse than being pissed off…it made me wonder if the Horns would ever be great again.
Very true --
Dime and WHills . . . but the ol’ coach told me if you don’t want to return so many kickoffs, don’t give up so many touchdowns.
Virginia 1996
In the pouring rain, shivering to my bones because my supposedly waterproof jacket was merely water resistant (and no even that), surrounded by a bunch of dweebs who wear ties and khakis to a damned football game, and having to watch a pre-philandering Tiki Barber outscore Texas 21-0 in the first quarter alone.
This game, more so than Rout 66, personified the Mackovic Era to me.
That was the game after the ND game 54b mentions.
They just didn’t show up.
UT should have fired him that year. I didn’t get pissed after that game, thinking he was a goner. But geez they kept him and he didn’t have sense to go somewhere before real disaster hit, which it did with the next year and Rout 66.
I do think the administration hung on way too long to McWilliams and Mackovic. This is where I wish I had access to real newspaper archives and the time to research it, but, then, it is really a negative story. The truth is, Mack saved a lot of bacon but even he had early season problems for several years.
Trust me, I know...
…I flew home for the ND game as well.
by Hopkins Horn on Jul 5, 2010 10:48 PM CDT up reply actions
Then you might have to write about your love for Mackovic
to exorcise your own demons.
What are these demons of which you speak?
Let me ask you this, since I’ll trust your Texas football-related judgment:
I have a theory that, though he was a crappy coach, Texas needed Mackovic, at least for a few years. It’s been my impression that years of in-fighting followed DKR’s departure, and that in-fighting was one of the causes of UT’s drop into mediocrity. Hiring a complete outsider like Mackovic helped wipe the slate clean in certain respects, making it easier for whoever followed to raise Texas back up to its proper heights.
Is there any legitimacy to that, or am I just imagining things?
by Hopkins Horn on Jul 5, 2010 10:58 PM CDT up reply actions
No, I think that is valid to some degree.
DKR wanted Mike Campbell to succeed him. But the Athletic Council, et. al., went with Fred Akers, who had been a younger member of the staff and had gone on to coach at Wyoming with some success. {And probably the source of our Wyoming tie as well.} So there was some distance which developed…nothing visible per se…but well known, nonetheless. Fred had two great shots and didn’t complete either of them (77 and 83) and his offense deteriorated over his last few years…some would say just stagnated. And I suspect that was a reflection of some of the background.
David McWilliams was an insider, had done well in his short stint at Tech. Many thought the moment he went there it was a set up for a later return and that proved true. Really pissed Tech off, as well, to poach their coach. McWilliams finally hit a little paydirt in ‘90, but the Cotton Bowl loss to Miami sent shock waves through the whole system. I felt at the time that there was some institutional chaos. So, you are probably accurate that it did wipe the slate clean…and it brought in a missing component many thought necessary, a high tech (for that time) passing oriented offense to allow Texas to compete in the changing era. The wishbone and even the ever-present I formation were getting stale…not only did everyone know how to defense them, teams like Miami which geared their defenses to big time pro speed at all position and big play offenses were the cutting edge. Texas wasn’t. And within this was this implied presumption that Texas would always have great defense. They would have gret defensive players, but getting back to Fred Akers level, much less DKR’s, was not in the cards.
Let’s put it like this: if there had been no Miami, there would be no Will Muschamp today.
Mackovic also found an invisible Chinese wall between black and white players, something he pointed out in their very first team meeting, when he noticed the groups sat apart. I was sort of shocked by that, that residual elements still existed. I suspect Miami had an impact on that as well, although there is no way I can provide any evidence to support that other than to note it in passing from our historical perspective. The game was changing.
So Mackovic could have "wiped the slate clean" in several respects. However, Mackovic was never able to ingratiate himself at all levels of Texas football. Or to put it another way, Major Applewhite did more in one night at all levels than Mackovic did his whole stint. Mackovic got a reprieve with Roll Left, but should have been gone sooner. I would have fired him after his very first game; losing to Mississippi State and Jackie Sherrill in Memorial stadium was just outrageous.
We’re both benefiting from our history so we see a little more from this point.
Your demons merely means those embittered emotions over the loses we noted. I’m not saying they’re powerful, nor are we possessed but they are there, just like the good things PB talks about in 2005, our human experience. My point was merely about the feellngs and emotions that football engenders. As opposed to the rationalistic debates we recently had (not saying they weren’t emotional as well) or the incredible hype we will hear once the season is imminent (the start of practice in August). There are longer term things to be gained by the experience.
You know, I turn philosophical after midnight. After one I become Tolstoy.
I was there for Mackovic
I remembered he was hired for his offensive mind. He was a mediocre coach, but he did bring the UT offensive into the modern era. I guess that will be his legacy since he coaching record was bad.
It's fun to do bad things. -Latarian Milton
by TexasGarcia37 on Jul 6, 2010 12:09 PM CDT up reply actions
For me - '84 Cotton Bowl - Hands Down
I was at the Cotton Bowl in ’84 and in the Longhorn Band. What a great defense we had that year.
The game before the Cotton Bowl against the Aggies was a little scarry. We went down 13-0 with Rob Morshell (sp) at QB, but put in Rick McIver for the come back. Half-time 14-13 Horns. We (the band) spelled out COTTON during our halftime show (Texas had clinched the confernce title) and to add insult to injury, each of us had a little piece of cotton stashed in our uniforms. Just before we exited, everyone dropped their piece leaving COTTON spelled out on Kyle Field. You should have seen the kiddie corps scramble to clean it up! We won in the end 45-13.
Now to the bowl game. I saw that Akers had left the DBs in for the punt and hoped that he had told them not to field it. I was wrong! All responsibilty lies with Fred on that one.
Texas and Nebraska let college football down by giving Miami the national championship that year. Also suffering in the final poll was Auburn who won their bowl game and were #3 behind TX and Neb and ahead of #4 Miami before the bowls. Does Auburn ever catch a break?
I lived with the hurt of that game for years. Being at The Rose Bowl and watching Vince win it all made me whole again!
I now have something to say back to the Geogia fans who are fond of asking me what time it is. “No, it’s not 10 to 9! It’s time for y’all to win a National Championship!”
2007 Kansas State...
…certainly qualifies as an ambush. Hopes were not exactly soaring considering a 4-0 start, but to allow 2 kicks and an INT returned for touchdowns, at home, in what was supposed to be a payback game. Flabbergasted.
by Magnificent Bastard on Jul 6, 2010 8:12 AM CDT reply actions
With our history vs. KSU in the Big XII
I wasn’t so shocked as disgusted. Yes, it was an ambush, but I put that one more on coaching than anything else.
No doubt for me!
I was at the “Chrissy Simms meltdown” at the 2001 Big 12 championship against CU at Texas Stadium. That game was a terrible culmination of a very bad coaching decision to start the golden boy over Major – a winner with attributes Chris never had.
A Mack legacy bonehead coaching decision
And just 3 days later, he named Major the starter for the Holiday bowl and what does Major do – 473 yards (still Texas best) in a legacy building 47-43 game.
I watched that game at a bar full of Aggies; even they felt sorry for the Texas fans at how badly Applewhite was screwed over.
The loss did set up one of my most memorable college experiences, however: that spring, watching a group of asian girls mocking Chris Simms outside of Jester as he hurried off to his SUV. While obnoxious and rude, seeing the look on his face was at least cathartic.
It must of been getting towed.
Students would celebrate when they’d see the Escalade with New Jersey plates getting towed.
Sports is man's joke on God, You see, God says to man, 'I've created a universe where it seems like everything matters, where you'll have to grapple with life and death and in the end you'll die anyway, and it won't really matter.' So man says to God, 'Oh, yeah? Within your universe we're going to create a sub-universe called sports, one that absolutely doesn't matter, and we'll follow everything that happens in it as if it were life and death.'" - Sam Kellerman
We forget quickly...
…that WSU had a pretty good run for a few years: Rose Bowls in 1997 and 2002, the year before we lost in San Diego. And if they were good enough to earn a trip to the Holiday Bowl, they weren’t a bad team by any stretch.
Saying that we lost to WSU in terms of what we know in 2010 seems awful, but there was far more wrong with that game than with who we specifically lost to.
Subcategory - The Single Play Which Most Pissed Me Off
I’m not talking about plays that broke your heart (Colt’s injury, Crabtree) or even plays that went wrong, terribly wrong (any of Simms miscues against CU), but a play that pissed you off.
It’s easy for me: the last play of the first half of the 2002 RRS.
Recall the sequence at the end of the half. OU, on fourth down, successfully pulled off the “bark your signals loud enough and pray for an offsides” play for the only time I can remember in my lifetime and wound up scoring a touchdown to pull closer (we were still leading, right?) with just a couple of seconds left. Time to run out the clock.
But the combination of a celebration penalty against the Sooners and a kickoff out of the bounds left Texas unexpectedly with the ball at midfield and time on the clock. Time, at the very least, for a what-the-hell Hail Mary into the endzone.
Instead, we took a knee and hightailed it to the locker room.
Would we have scored on a Hail Mary? Almost certainly not. But the fact that we didn’t even try, with almost no risk for doing so, symbolized what was wrong with the pre-VY Mack and Greg team. Because you know sure as hell what Stoops would have done in the same situation.
Now that you mention it, I do remember that explicitly.
I was watching with a group of people and we all shook our heads with the same though as you…take the shot. You can’t catch fish if you don’t put a hook in the water…
There was a period when Mack/GD just seem scared to do anything against OU. I think the 12-0 game was the epitome of that…you kill team aggression by going conservative and the many good “football” things they can occur when you are aggressive…and they did it in one of the most aggressive games on the planet. I had serious doubts about Mack and GD at that time…They just wouldn’t take their shots when they really had nothing to lose.
Mississippi St. in the CB vs. Ricky, UTEP there and UCF, I think, and many other lesser teams we play display outstanding aggressiveness against us…and it is the hallmark of KSU in our series. At times we have seemed so….no words…like Victorian and reserved. Not to dig up old bones, but that is definitely one, HH.
Not to nitpick...
….but if it was truly Victorian-style football, wouldn’t there be one or two dead bodies at the end of most games? :)
that is so true...
At that point in time, would it have even been conceivable to believe that our 2005 team would happen? Or that we’d basically be one Jamaal Charles fumble from 5 straight against OU? It’s funny, that reminds me of something I read somewhere about our ’05 game against OU, where the writer talked about the change in our mindset – from playing scared, to purposely kicking off to Adrian Peterson just so we could get more hits on him…
Of course, it also points out the way results color our perceptions. That era’s Mack and GD would never have called a shovel pass against Bama…
UCLA 1997
This was a 66-3 home loss, notable for 8 Texas turnovers that led to 6 UCLA touchdowns. And, oh yes, UCLA was unranked. It doesn’t get any worse than this.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. If they get mad, you're a mile away AND you have their shoes.
No, it doesn't. We remember, we just don't talk about it.
Here’s PB’s post in 2007: Rout 66.
Still has to be 2001 Big 12 title game for me
I’m a relative youngster compared to some, so my WTF games also consist of 2006 and 2007 losses to KSU and A&M (I was about to karate kick the television during the 2007 A&M game, I was so angry). That ‘07 team wasn’t very good, but letting Stephen McGee throw for almost 400 passing yards is inexcusable.
However, those games seemed to have a positive grow out of them. The embarrassments of those games caused an attitude change in Mack and led him to bring in one Will Muschamp, and we saw the fruits of that in our remarkable ‘08 and ’09 seasons. But that 2001 Big 12 title game? I have no idea what positive came out of that, other than perhaps watching Major play his last game in the following bowl and avoiding an incredible QB controversy going into the national championship game (against a team that we probably wouldn’t have beaten, to be honest). We lost to a team that we spanked earlier in the season because our QB had a meltdown and a roughing the punter penalty that still makes me angry when I think about it.
by TheElusiveShadow on Jul 8, 2010 2:30 PM CDT reply actions
What's worse
The person who came up with this post or me for reading all the entries? I am so pissed off I need another drink. Thanks, fellas.
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