Though the announcement will surely be lost in the shuffle of speculation about the future of Greg Davis at Texas and the fact that most fans are ready to put the disastrous 5-7 2010 football season behind them, the paucity of Longhorns on the media's All-Big 12 teams shows just how far the Longhorns fell.
While it's certainly true that the media can be pretty lazy about voting for these teams, the fact is that the best players on the best teams will always end up with most of the awards and that's pretty hard to argue with, considering that they were the best teams for a reason.
Senior defensive end Sam Acho was the only really deserving candidate for the first team and was rewarded with a spot. Junior linebacker Keenan Robinson and junior cornerback Aaron Williams were the only two other selections, as both made the second team.
As a sign of how far Texas fell this season, no Longhorns made the list on the offensive side of the ball and frankly none of them deserved it particularly, though a case might be made for junior center David Snow, who put together a solid season, but the offensive linemen are always going to be the ones who get left out in seasons like 2010.
Defensively, Sam Acho had extremely similar stats to the player of the year, Jeremy Beal. Here's Acho's line: 58 tackles, 15.5 for a loss, 12 QB hurries, five forced fumbles. And Beal's line: 59 tackles, 18.0 for loss, 8.5 sacks, three forced fumbles. In the end, the difference was mostly that Beal played for a successful team that went to the Big 12 Championship game and Acho played for a defense that was notably gashed against some poor opponents. In the end there isn't that much to complain about.
Junior Kheeston Randall is a similar story. A case could be made for Randall against Baylor's Phil Taylor, who had more tackles, but fewer tackles for loss, but what really hurt Randall was his fade down the stretch when teams started running at will on Texas and Randall didn't have the same impact he did early in the season, though he did help out on special teams with two blocks late. So not exactly a travesty there either.
Unfortunately for junior kicker Justin Tucker, the format of the awards hurt his candidacy -- Tucker was probably the best all-around kicker in the league, downing punts inside the 20 repeatedly, handling kickoffs, and emerging as a rock-solid placekicker. Nebraska's Alex Henery was first team and while that is hard to argue with, Tucker surely received strong consideration for the second team slot occupied by Oklahoma State's Dan Bailey -- while Bailey with 24/28, Tucker hit 23/27. Tucker was automatic out to 40 yards, but Bailey missed two from 30-39, as well as an extra point, an area in which the Texas kicker was perfect. Bailey was slightly better from 50+, hitting two of three, where Tucker only hit one of two. Overall, pretty much a draw as placekickers, where once again the player from the better team got the nod.