Any physical stats for football players are suspect to some degree.
I've even known coaches to fudge downwards, but for the same reasons as some enhance their players sizes and times. One of the more amusing aspects of the NFL combine is to knock the bottom out of the exaggerations. However, we know from high school through recruiting and then college, speed and size are the currencies of the inexact art of player assessment.
This emerges re: PB's inclusion of my statement regarding the relative speeds of Vondrell McGee, Jordon Shipley and Quan Cosby and the contrary comments about the accuracy about those very speeds by several BONers.
Do I have to believe those speeds are accurate? No, I don't have to. They were merely landmarks for what Mack was doing: he was creating myth.
In the modern historical context, the term myth is often used as a pejorative, that there are no accurate facts to support a particular statement, at least not any that could be objectively ascertainable immediately. However, the nature of mythos is about sacred story telling, and in our case, the sacred stories are about the continuation of the past history of the Texas Longhorns and this new season. Each year the myth is renewed and enriched. (I use the terms interchangeably here.)
Mack is not alone in this construction.
BON does this, as well as everyone here and at other sites, in Texas and across the world of Texas fans. Every word spoken and every interaction out there in Longhornland creates the concept and expectation and eventually the history of these Horns. Most of this flows right over us and is not captured and confined; merely felt and understood.
Why do you think you come here everyday?
Most everyone here has long ago bought into the mythic story of the Longhorns. Even beergut. We enact rituals, we celebrate our past victories, we share new information, we claim heroic stories, we share our excitement and anxieties, and we revel, absolutely revel, in this long-standing connection with our youth and our personal history.
Mythos is inclusive and a powerful part of our everyday life. Football fans all across the country are doing this at this very moment. This is our tribal sundance, our unity in the face of an otherwise chaotic and dangerous world. No matter what our lives are about, this piece of splendid interaction draws us toward football Saturdays across this land. And, quite frankly, few things unite us as much as this mythic interaction, whether we win or lose. Being Texas, we know winning is better.
Mack's direct conclusion was that the Horns had exceptional speed, exceptional in terms of his prior teams.
I took that as a serious clue, a particular message for us. This has been a pre-season of minimized expectations and much lower proselytizing than the past two summers. The actual times of McGee, Shipley and Cosby are relative to this general conclusion. The only question for us is what they do with it and how what will occur as we create our myths for this season.
The thing I love most about football is that it exists on so many levels all the time. Yet, no matter how wide this flow of information and emotion, how great the myth may be, it comes down to 60 minutes on the field where the tale is told, regardless of the history to that point. Legends are made and the myth is renewed.
So, how did you buy into this Longhorn mythos, how did you come to love football, the Horns and this interactive buzz of BON? And what was your 40 time?