This post is sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

Thanks to everyone for sharing in a great week of chatter about what it means to be a fan of Texas Longhorns football. And thanks to EA Sports for sponsoring the discussion. We wrap up the campaign with a word from our sponsor:

When you go to a particular school or grow up around college football, you are more than just a fan. It's who you are. We thought we could leverage this pride in your roots and show that "where you come from" is more than just a statement about geography. By positioning NCAA Football 11 as a game that understands this pride and is authentic to these traditions, the takeaway should be that anything that is in college football is in NCAA Football 11.

And this doesn't just include game play (though that's a huge part of it). It's rivals and mascots; it's legends and stories. It's those things that are at the very fabric of the game itself. Of course the game is great this year as well. With authentic entrances, mascots and specific offenses for each team, the term "where I come from" takes on a much larger meaning. While playing NCAA Football 11 is ultimately a great sports sim, it should also give you a sense of the pride and emotion one has for being a fan of a team they will never not be a part of.

EA Sports NCAA Football 2011 is available for purchase in retail stores across the country and online. For those interested in playing an online dynasty, we've got a league forming over here.

This is the final post in a week-long series sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

We spent last week sharing what it means to be a fan of Texas football. Today, we wrap the series with a discussion about expectations for the season ahead.

Overview

Since 2004, Texas has gone 69-9, with 6 of the 9 losses accumulated during back-to-back 10-3 seasons in 2006-07. Across the other four seasons they went 49-3, including 30-2 in Big 12 play -- twice winning the conference and playing for the national title, winning one. Especially delightful, four out of the last five Red River Shootouts have been won by the Longhorns.

As difficult as it is to overstate just how remarkable is that six-year stretch, most Longhorns fans won't hesitate to suggest that the team could have done better -- a fact which explains why one would ask whether a three-loss season ending in a Cotton Bowl berth might represent "a disastrous season for Texas" in 2011. These days, even in a transition year the bar is set exceptionally high.

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This is the fifth post in a week-long series sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

Before pivoting on Monday to the upcoming 2010 season, we wrap up what's been a fun week talking about what it means to be a fan of UT football with a thread dedicated to our favorite moments and plays over the years. There are no rules or parameters here: whatever stands out to you as personally special. I suppose, if you're so inclined, you can include heartbreaking moments, but I'm focused on the good stuff, of which there is plenty. The offseason is long and hard enough without reliving the first half of the 2001 Big XII Championship Game...

Though you could easily fill an entire book with unforgettable moments in UT football history, I'll limit my contribution to ten personal favorites and open the floor to you. (This isn't a Top 10 list; just a grab bag of ten from a long, difficult-to-rank list.)

1. Stafford to Jones  (1987: Texas 16 Arkansas 14)

2. Stoney Clark's "Stone Cold Stuff"  (1994: Texas 17 OU 10)

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This is the fourth post in a week-long series sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

We continue exploring the contours of our Longhorns fandom with a discussion of all-time favorite Longhorns. Along with the obvious guys who inspired us all and can be identified by their first name alone -- Vince, Earl, Ricky, and the like -- we've all got our favorites who especially stand out in our minds years later.

Casey Hampton & Lamarr Houston -- I'm grouping these two together because I love them both equally, and for similar reasons. Big Snack was arguably the finest defensive tackle ever to play at Texas, and he's been just as good in the pros with Pittsburgh, where he's been a five-time Pro Bowler and won two Super Bowls. Houston, of course, was a late convert to DT who built on a solid junior campaign to anchor the nation's stingiest rush defense as a senior. For reasons I can't fully explain, I love nothing more than watching a great defensive tackle do his thing -- even when his job is just to eat blockers. There's something aesthetically awesome about a 300 pound man successfully bypassing another 300 pound man with a swim move -- makes me grin ear-to-ear, every time. Of course, so does discarding a 300 pound man with your left arm alone.

James Brown -- We mostly talk about the failures of the Mackovic era, but it wasn't all bad, and James Brown represents the best of it. One of the unlikeliest heroes in program history, everything about the position Brown was thrust into was difficult, and though he was far from the most talented QB to grace the 40 Acres, he generally made the most of it. In fact, you might say that he was Major Applewhite before it became cool. Just the second African American to start a game at quarterback for Texas, Brown was a fearless gamer who took an unexpected starting role and found ways to make plays. It wasn't always pretty, but especially before he got worn down by injuries, he found ways to get it done.

Tony Brackens and Bryant Westbrook -- While the next generation of Longhorns bloggers will one day write about growing up losing their minds over defensive wunderkinds like Brian Orakpo and Michael Huff, for those who were kids with me, it was Tony Brackens and Bryant Westbrook. And no single play better encapsulates why then this one:

Kasey Studdard -- I'm not sure I would have realized just how much I loved a guy like Kasey Studdard if our offensive line play hadn't fallen off a cliff in recent years, but here we are, and... well, yeah. I appreciate him. A lot. Studdard would rather bite off whole the ankle of a rusher than let him have a hit on his quarterback, and though he wasn't even one of the top 50 most talented linemen to don the burnt orange, few gave as much, as hard, for as long as Studdard. Football at the college and professional levels is so extraordinarily physical a game as to generally limit who can play and contribute, but it also takes something more to be special. A lot of hyper-talented guys don't have it, and a few barely talented enough guys are so saturated with it that they excel nonetheless. Studdard represents the latter breed as much as anyone. I miss that kind of ferocity, fearlessness, and pride.

Vince and Ricky -- I don't need to say anything about these two. But neither can I faithfully publish this post without a tip of the cap to my two favorite Longhorns of all time. The absolute best of the best.

And now it's your turn. Who are your favorite Longhorns of all-time?

This is the third post in a week-long series sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

Our foray through Longhorn fandom continues today with a topic near and dear to every fan of college football: tailgating. Going to college football games is about more than just walking through the gates, finding your seat, and watching the game. It's an event. A big, day-long social event. With beverages. And food. Lots and lots of good, tasty food.

In honor of that tradition, I thought it would be fun to share some of our favorite tailgating traditions with one another. To that end, after the jump you'll find one of my personal favorites -- brisket. Specifically, the other Andrew's brisket. Even if we didn't like Andrew, we'd still tailgate with him. HIs brisket's that good. Take a look for yourself, and by all means, share us some of your own favorite traditions in the comments below. Bonus points for anyone who shares a recipe with the group.

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This is the second post in a week-long series sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

Where choosing an all-time favorite Texas team is concerned, for the overwhelming majority of UT fans there is nothing to discuss. Some of our more senior brethren might prefer one of Royal's top squads, but at a minimum, for every fan under 40 the team is the 2005 national title winners.

Even among those for whom every urge is to choose a different squad--if only to buck the trend or liven the discussion--my guess is that actually doing so will prove inordinately difficult. There are all the obvious reasons, but also that the 2005 squad was so exciting, so exceptional, and so manifestly special that in this instance, making the easy, popular choice feels anything but uninspired. It feels great to love the 2005 Longhorns, and it's immensely gratifying to revel in the afterglow with others who were touched by the same magic. It is the source of a cherished, lasting bond among those who of the 2005 season can say, "We were there." Already, there are students on campus who in 2005 were too young and too unattached to Texas football to have experienced the magic of that season.

And, two decades from now when the college kids are mouthing off to us old timers about how the 2035 title-winning Longhorns could take down the '05 squad, we'll chuckle politely and tell them to sit tight for a second, we've got a DVD we want to show them. And we'll watch the Rose Bowl all over again, start to finish, watching the game out of one eye and our first-time viewers out of the other--the thrill of sharing the greatness with newcomers every bit as gratifying as watching 41-38 itself. If there are two of us in the room, we'll share a knowing, pleased-with-ourselves smile: "We were there."

Odds are, when it's over we'll make them watch Limas Sweed haul in the win at the Horseshoe, as well. By the time we're done, our young friends will concede the argument and yammer excitedly about their new discovery, or maybe not -- they're 19 year-olds, after all. It doesn't really matter. We'll continue on in any case, this time for ourselves. "Now wait 'til you watch this," we'll insist, but we're commanding ourselves.

We won't ever allow ourselves to let go of this team and that season. God willing, Texas will win another title or two every decade or so, but the odds of any future title-winning team and season matching 2005 in excitement, drama, and personal fulfillment are slim to none.

The truth is, that was probably it for us: our pinnacle as sports fans. After the final seconds fell off the clock and the game finally ended, 41-38, I danced and hugged and jumped and high-fived like everyone else, until, suddenly, I just... stopped. Everything around me washed away, leaving me almost alone with the stadium, as though time itself had paused. I'll never forget standing there for thirty seconds that felt to me like thirty minutes, alone in the stadium, with myself and my thoughts, as though suspended in an abyss of water and its deep, solitary quiet. I was frozen in a moment of profound realization, so powerful as to overwhelm all my other senses.

I'm not sure where it came from or why it affected me as it did, but in those moments I reflected upon the experience of the 2005 season -- the regular season journey, the quarterback, the epic Rose Bowl -- from a meta-level perspective... the kind usually reserved for long afterward, like when the music of life slowly begins its final fade. For thirty seconds, 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 know, that's some really heavy stuff. And understand if your first reaction is: too heavy. It is. And it was... and it's not something I can say I've experienced at a football game before, or expect to ever again.

And yet, there's something affirming about it, too. We yell and curse, jump for joy and pour our hearts and souls into these games, these sports. For the most part, the details are mundane -- a satisfactory enough mixture of good and bad, uplifting and depressing. Looking at our fandom one snapshot at a time, sports do little more than keep us occupied and engaged. Step back a bit, though, and there's more to the whole than the sum of its parts.

On the tangible side, sports bind us as communities and bring us together as friends, at their best bestowing useful benefits upon society, in ways that enrich the places we live. But sports are not unique or essential in that regard, of course, nor in such a capacity is there anything which would justify the fervent zeal of passionate fandom. Indeed, in this capacity sporting teams and leagues are functional equivalents of an art gallery, the amount of utility and value provided predominantly a matter of the extent to which they succeed or fail in bestowing those tangible benefits on the community. No more than the functional purpose of art galleries provides a reason to stomp or cheer or heckle, if our outpouring of emotion into sports is justifiable at all, it must be owed to something else.

It would be depressing and disconcerting if the passionate investment we make in our sports fandom were, as some argue, a futile, wasteful expenditure of time, energy, emotion, and resources. But they're wrong, in precisely the same way as would be a sports fan who dismissed the passionate enjoyment of fine art as similarly worthless. The rabid consumption of sporting competitions involving a favorite team is identical to a collector's enjoyment of a cherished painting. The principle is a limited one (I'm as unlikely to derive anything of value from mindlessly watching a game between Toledo and San Jose State as from a stroll through a gallery of paintings mass-produced for hotel chains), but I'm taking the time to write all of this because watching Vince Young during his 22-game winning streak was as spectacular, inspiring, and spiritually fulfilling to you and me as is a flawless rendition of "Rigoletto" to a lover of the opera.

Before I opened the floor to discussion of other Texas teams who qualify as all-time favorites, I wanted in this post to explain why for most of us the 2005 team not only is our favorite all-time Texas squad, but why it is -- to me, at least -- much more than an easy, thoughtless choice. I exaggerate not at all in positing that the 2005 team and season represent one of the purest examples imaginable of what makes sports meaningful and valuable to us -- not just as a community, but also as individuals:

To watch Vince Young at his best was to reconsider the meaning of impossible.

To know -- not just hope, but know -- that somehow USC would not pick up 2 yards on 4th down was to validate the power of believing, and to affirm our willingness to be believers ourselves.

And to hold our breaths for one last play with just 19 seconds left was to experience an impossible range of emotions -- at once hopeful and terrified and angry and assured and eager and cautious and empowered and helpless and everything else that you could imagine, plus some you couldn't. It was everything that it means to be human -- in all the ways joyful, exciting, and comforting, and all the ways leaving us to feel sad, defeated, and vulnerable.

For this Texas fan, at least, the 2005 season is worthy of honoring as my all-time favorite Texas team both for what they accomplished for themselves, as well as for that which their transcendent journey provided us both as Texas fans and as sports fans.

If we never experience anything quite like it again, it'll be alright.  "We were there."

The floor is open in the comments below. I'd love to hear your own thoughts and memories related to the 2005 title-winners or, if my tribute makes redundant your idea to compare 2005 Texas to a Verdi opera, feel free instead to discuss some of your other all-time favorite UT teams, and why they meant something to you as a fan. And finally, a fun match up to ponder: the 1983 UT defense versus Vince Young's 2005 offense.

This is the first of a week-long series of posts sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011.

Three summers ago, during an interview on a Houston radio station, the host asked me to identify the key to starting and building a successful sports blog.

"Oh it's easy," I explained. "Just figure out when a transcendent player has lost for the final time before embarking on an epic winning streak and becomes the greatest player in the history of his sport. Then go ahead and launch your blog."

He got the joke and laughed, but that is, in fact, what happened with me and the launch of this sports blog nearly five and a half years ago. Following my 2003 graduation from Texas, I took a job in Washington D.C. and had been living there a little over a year when the Longhorns lost 12-0 in the Red River Shootout, Mack Brown's fifth consecutive loss to the hated Sooners. Had I been in Austin, I likely would have gotten my ranting done out on the golf course with Wiggo; in Washington, however, I found myself isolated from one of the greatest constants of my entire life: UT sports.

I was born in Austin and lived here for 22 of my first 23 years on this planet. Both my parents were professors at UT, which is also where they'd met when a colleague on faculty set them up on a blind date. Except for the brutally hot early-season games, we'd gone to most home football games, and since I was a toddler I accompanied my father to every single men's basketball game at the Erwin Center.

My father also served a four-year term on the Athletics Council, during which time he lobbied for Texas to move to the Pac 10, before the university eventually decided to help launch the new Big 12. And still to this day, when conversations turn to Texas football he's quick to tell everyone who'll listen that he pleaded with John Mackovic to recruit Drew Brees. (Although he eventually learned not to do it when I'm in the group, because I'm just as quick to remind everyone that he wanted to replace Mackovic with Gary Barnett, not Mack Brown. Whoops!)

Outside my immediate family, I've known and loved UT sports longer than anything or anyone else in my life. Austin is my home, and the University of Texas is my first and only true sports love. Always has been, always will be.

So it's no real surprise that I would eventually find myself in front of a computer, publishing thoughts on Texas sports as fast as I could type them. I just got lucky with the timing: my very first post hit the Interwebs after the Vince Young-led Longhorns' shutout defeat to OU, in which I argued that "Fire Mack Brown" talk was unfair, while joining the chorus of critics who couldn't stomach the thought of Greg Davis for even a second longer.

Three months later, Dusty Mangum's kick fluttered through the uprights to win Texas' first-ever appearance in the Rose Bowl and cap an 11-1 season. And twelve months after that, I stood alongside 50,000 other Longhorns fans in Pasadena to sing the 'Eyes of Texas' following UT's second Rose Bowl win, securing a 13-0, national title-winning season in which Vince Young's offense scored a mind boggling 652 points, the most in the history of the sport.

Fifteen months of sports blogging; twenty consecutive wins for the Longhorns. And the program's first national title in thirty-five years. Like my father with Drew Brees, I'm quick to share that fact with anyone who will listen, but they always want to talk about that Vince Young guy. I suppose he had a little something to do with the winning streak, too.

Okay, he had a lot to do with it. Everything to do with it, and like every Texas fan on the planet, I haven't even the slightest doubt that he was the greatest college football player of all-time and, if no one ever matches or supersedes the level of dominance he displayed during his undefeated run, I won't be surprised.

So maybe that's not the best advice for someone looking to launch a sports blog. The better advice is to write about something for which your passion runs deep. That's why I am here, as are each of you. The site has rapidly grown over the last five years, through many great times as well as some not-so-fun struggles. We are a community of fans, and this is our online water cooler. We gather here because we love the University of Texas and because we care more deeply about its sports teams than almost anything else in our lives.

The University of Texas is where we come from. And whether we remain in Austin or move half-way around the world, we'll never leave.

Feel free to share your own story of how you came to bleed burnt orange in the comment section below.