Where I Come From: All-Time Favorite Texas Teams

Springfield Isotops for sure. They had it all.

Is if the 1983 squad had fumbled away the Cotton Bowl to Georgia and had won the national title. Playing hypothetical death match between the ’05 offense and ’83 defense is all sorts of fun.

1969 was probably my favorite. Of course, watching Earl was pretty special, too. I had the pleasure of watching the best player in the first 100 years of Texas football, and then the best player in the second 100 years. I know it’s a little early to make that claim, but I doubt I’ll get much argument here.
As for the 1969 team, they were also a joy to watch. Nobody had yet figured out how to stop the Wishbone, at least with the athletes we had. While nobody would pick Street over VY as the top QB, there were similarities. They both inspired absolute confidence in the huddle that they were going to win, no matter what. 30 straight is quite an accomplishment, and should not be forgotten.

Peter, You are an incredible writer. A most sensational post my friend.

Can’t wait till opening kick off 2010!

I’m thinking about all the changes in my life since then. That game is still clear in my mind.

I live in Minneapolis now, and most of my friends have a hard time believing or understanding me when I tell them that watching Vince break for the corner is one of the best moments of my life. None of them have seen the Gophers do anything like it. The basketball team’s Final Four banner relegated to some dusty basement. They’ve watched the Vikings and their Most Prolific Offense ever lose in the playoffs. They’ve watched the Timberwolves get close for many years, only to see their favorite basketball player win it all in Boston as soon as he left. (They cheered wildly when he did, by the way.)

They do have the Twins, and 1987 and 1991. They have Kirby Puckett, who prior to his post-career indiscretions inspired an entire generation of pet’s names. A good friend tells me that every boy (and just about every girl) he knew would name Kirby Puckett his hero without hesitation. I think for them, that 1991 World Series was their closest experience to Pasadena. So now, when the subject of the National Championship comes up and someone looks at me incredulously for declaring it one of my best moments, I say one thing: “And we’ll see you tomorrow night.” And they usually understand.

Putting aside the MNC of 2005, I was torn between the great Wishbone team of 1969, the Final Four team of 2003, and this one: the BMW Scoring Machine of 1989.

To quote texassports.com

“March 22, 1990: Texas rallies from a 16-point deficit with 18:55 left (57-41) to top No. 25 Xavier 102-89 in a NCAA Regional semifinal at Reunion Arena in Dallas. Lance Blanks scores 26 of his 28 points in the second half to lead the comeback. Travis Mays posts a game-high 32 points, while Joey Wright adds 26 in the winning effort. The victory advanced the Horns to the “Elite Eight” for the first time since the tournament expanded to 64 teams."

These were the heroes:

Lance Blanks
Locksley Collie
Hank Dudek
Andrew Fowler
Mark Hall
Gerrald Houston
Courtney Jeans
Travis Mays
George Muller
Guillermo Myers
Winn Shepard
Tony Watson
Benford Williams
Joey Wright

As you can see, there were more memorable players than Blanks, Mays, and Wright. You have the Bahaman connection (Locksley Collie), the Panama Express (Guillermo Myers), SuperProject (George Muller), and even Hank Dudek, who you may know from Barking Carnival.

This team had an infectious exuberance that took them and all of us to a new level. The 1989-90 season was a sustained adrenalin rush that culminated in a stunning win. The Running Horns.

How would you compare 2005’s defense with 2009’s?

2009 – #3 Total Defense
2005 – #10 Total Defense

There are some writers on this board. Great stuff PB, Twstr, et al…

reminds me of watching recruiting highlights – you know, the “man among boys” highlights that you get from watching the best RB in the state outclass everyone else on the field. Hard to believe you can get the same feeling watching someone at the college level, where everyone was the best player on their HS team.

PB,

I, too, was at that game surrounded by many USC fans. The beautiful thing that gets to be more and more beautiful over the years is the fact that everyone knew that VY was going to score every time he touched the ball and there was nothing USC was going to do about it.

For a shining moment, UT was at the center of the college football universe and VY was, in fact, Superman.

I will take it to my grave. As much as I loved Earl Campbell and Colt McCoy (amongst others) this was a signature performance by the most dominating collegiate football player of his era. This guy outshined Reggie Bush in the same game. The last guy I remember being that dominant was Marshall Faulk.

I shake my head in awe. I’ve stopped wondering if VY will ever be a great pro. I don’t care anymore. I just love what he was for us and no one can ever take that away from him or us.

I stood alone, consumed by a feeling of incredible, exultant peace coextensive with one of quieting, humbling sadness. I at once understood the magnitude of the triumph and the likelihood that I would never again in my life experience anything quite like it.

I’ve long indulged in the conflict one endures when pitted against certain categorical principles of nostalgia, and the difficult spirits of past life-experience. Anyone familiar with the writings of Marcel Proust will have a decent grasp of what is being discussed here, as the bittersweet sting of emotional memory often proves to be intellectually crippling, simply because, no matter how cherished a given moment, one is always forced to acknowledge that the memory of a moment is a poor substitute for the moment itself, as visceral reality has unceremoniously been replaced with a mere haunting echo, and a dark form of longing inevitably develops in the space vacated by actual experience. Typically, the more significant the moment, the darker and more painful the longing will be.

Here is what I wrote shortly after the 2006 Rose Bowl:

“…the anticipation of nostalgia, the projection of a future longing for an embraced past, a past that has yet to distinguish itself from the present, is possibly among the cruelest, and most corrosive, of all ordeals one can self-impose. Somehow, while corrupting the present moment, it simultaneously prescribes the very gravity and emotional profundity that is necessary for enacting that memory’s role in our understanding of ourselves.
And thus an imprint is formed, and it is in the details of that imprint that the wholeness of existence is maintained, as our imprints, and the nuances of our personalities that form from them, soon become more dear to us than anything we imagine we might encounter down the road.”

Such is the burden of consciousness.

I’ll have that the rest of my life.

And many of the responses, I couldn’t help but start crying. The 2006 championship win was the happiest and most beautiful moment of my life, and even if I never quite get back there I’ll always have those feelings and memories frozen like a video in my mind.

I still have a hard time listening to Craig Way’s call at the end of the game without shedding a tear. It was just so…perfect.

And I have to put in a few more words about the 1969 championship team. I was an 11-year-old kid in the Panhandle. Back then, there was no cable tv in our town. If Texas wasn’t on ABC that week, all you had was the radio. Most Saturdays, I grabbed the bulky white transistor and started scanning the dial, whizzing past the stronger signals coming in from Lubbock, Canyon (West Texas State, back in the day) and Fort Worth. Eventually, I’d hone in on a signal from Austin. I followed just about every game that way.

’68 had been a great year — a tie vs. Houston and a road loss to Tech in the first two games were the only flaws in a season that ended with a convincing Cotton Bowl win over Tennessee. Everybody knew that ’68 was the prologue of something great. By December of ’69, the ’Horns were 9-0 and had barely been tested when they rolled into Fayetteville for the Game of the Century. Pious altar boy that I was, I prayed my heart out right up until kickoff. (That game, of course, was on ABC.)

Y’all know the rest. The come-from-behind victory over the Razorbacks. The come-from-behind national championship over Notre Dame. This was the team of James Street, Jim Bertelsen, Freddie Steinmark and Steve Worster. Even though all I had to help me follow the team was the sports page of the Amarillo Globe News, I knew all their names, their faces and their numbers. (You can’t imagine what a gift BON is to 11-year-old Horns’ fans everywhere.)

Now, I was also at the 2006 Rose Bowl, and remember saying that that night was one of the highlights of my life. I love the 2005 team as much as anyone. But the kid in me will always be loyal to the team from ’69.

Yes, I was there for Skip Hicks’ Rout 66 (stayed ’til the bitter end) and weeped after the loss to Baylor and suffered with the rest of the campus as the Horns made their way to a pathetic 4-7 record, with Ricky pounding the rock no less, HOWEVAH…

Without Mackovic’s hot mess, we would have never been roused from our stupor with the unforgettable call-to-arms, “Come Early, Be Loud, Stay Late” and reveled in everything that has followed.