Football is an incredible game. Sometimes it's so incredible, it's unbelievable. - Tom Landry

Yes, Mike, you will have to play Alabama every year.

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Remember where we were one year ago today?

June 14, 2010 was the infamous day that Texas remained in the Big 12.

June the 14th has a sports history. On this date, the University of Texas decided to remain in the Big 12, and Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State followed suit (2010) - AAS

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Just as Jewish doctors work Christmas to give their colleagues a break, we're taking time out of our day of eating Chinese food and watching movies to wish all of our fellow BONers a very, very Merry Christmas.

In case you care and you don't have Christmas shopping to do.

(Writers note: The following was inspired by an article from the front page of SB Nation that PB rec’d about two weeks ago. Check out that front page often, you will learn more about sports in ten minutes of doing that then an hour of Pardon the Interruption. The article imagines what the US of A’s soccer team would look like if soccer was as popular in the States as it is overseas. I am going to attempt to do the same for Longhorn athletes. Since this is an outlandish-hypothetical-thought-experiment, there are a number of obvious assumptions in play. You can read all of them in the aforementioned article. To clarify, I am not suggesting these athletes could trade their prolate-spheriods for spheres with equal success tomorrow. It’s just a fun way to connect our favorite Longhorn athletes with the incomparable, unequivocal awesomeness that is the World Cup.)

New Tournament, New Questions

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Seeing how this is the most wonderful time of the year (to drink beer), I want to wish you and yours all the very best this Christmas and a safe and happy holiday. And since it's been quite the fall season for Burnt Orange Nation, this seems a most opportune time to take a few minutes to reflect on why we wake up every day thanking God we're alive and we're Texas Longhorns...

• First off, thank you Internet for allowing like-minded Orange Bloods to meet here, mingle smartly, and collaborate on all things Longhorn-sports related...and thank you ESPN for doing a crappy job delving into the blogosphere and giving us Tim Griffin, whose staff photo is apparently the mug shot from the time he got pinched for mopery. That was a tough night, wasn't it, Timmy? Forntunately for you, it's tough to get convicted for exposing yourself to a blind person when there's no "eye witness" to corroborate the story.
• Thank you PB for Web mastering BON.com, often overcoming your demanding schedule as the Notre Dame Law-Prechaun (Slainte, Peter O'Bean) to provide us with an endless array of thought provoking posts like the ones dissecting Alabama's SEC Title including what flavor of Gatorade the Crimson Tide waterboy prefers and what he was thinking when Tim Tebow sprung a leak...please let me know when you'll be rolling out Osterman All Day day.

No, seriously, keep reading, it gets worse... 

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Aggie game review. So I've finally had a chance to re-watch the Thanksgiving Day shootout with A&M and the big takeaway is... complicated. Which shouldn't surprise anyone, given just how far out of line the defense's performance was with everything it had done prior to allowing 39 points and 500 yards of offense to the Aggies. Reviewing the game itself took a long time to complete; writing about it is taking even longer, but given the implications of the performance, I want the evaluation to be thorough.

One thing to chew on while you wait: I think part of what we're seeing is just how much college defenses struggle to defend a spread offense with A-grade quarterback play. Relevant observations/questions/implications:

1. Before even getting to the defense, this applies to the Texas offense, as well. With Colt McCoy making plays with his feet and passing to multiple receivers at multiple levels, our offense is difficult to defend again.
2. We struggled mightily with A&M in large part because Jerrod Johnson was as elusive with his feet as he was accurate with his arm.
3. We have to ask, first, whether this was the best offensive attack we've faced this year (while not consistent, at its best the A&M offense is arguably the strongest), and second, whether we should be concerned that the result was similar to the last time we faced outstanding offensive attacks -- last year, when the Big 12 was loaded with strong (and healthy) QB play. Consider this year's QB line up: four weak non-con opponents, first-year (and early-in-the-year) Taylor Potts, Cody Hawkins, Landry Jones, gimpy (first-year starting) Blaine Gabbert, Zac Robinson, Nick Florence, Todd Reesing, and Jerrod Johnson. Among the three strongest tests, the defense was stout against Robinson, so-so against Reesing, and scorched by Johnson.

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