Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly column on the Texas Longhorns.
Get. That. Backometer™. Calibrated.
Now, to be clear, calibrating a Backometer™ is not the same as calibrating, say, a compass. We’re not looking for accuracy here. We’re looking for emotion. Turn on Longhorn Network, set the Backometer™ on the TV stand, run away for a few minutes, turn off all the power to your house, and come back wearing the thickest pair of rubber gloves you can find.
There are three ways tomorrow can go. Let’s go through each:
Texas Wins
If Texas wins, the Longhorns are Back. Those are the rules. They’d become Big 12 favorites (narrative-wise), they’d be undefeated with Casey Thompson under center, they’d have a clear path right towards the tunnel Baylor and Iowa State just painted on the wall of that mountain over there. If Texas wins, we’ll likely get three whole weeks of a pulsating Backometer™, with the thing turning, somehow, a neon burnt orange should the Horns take down the Pokes next weekend.
Texas Loses Close
Still Back.
Sorry, I don’t make the rules.
If Texas so much as hangs with Oklahoma, the Horns will have arrived. Not nationally, of course, but in the famously clear and righteous Eyes of Texas? Back. Never mind that Texas would be unlikely to make the Big 12 championship. In the Eyes of Texas, the boys would have just established themselves as the team to beat that isn’t the team to beat in the league. Can’t beat that.
Texas Gets Blown Out
Hudson Card’s back on the table. Steve Sarkisian might not be the answer.
This might change quickly—everything could be better in the SEC, after all, where things are famously better for middling former powers—but if the Sooners pummel the Horns, expect some brief soul-searching before moving on to the next step in the dramatic cycle.
***
“New sheriff in town.” So tweeted Longhorns sports columnist Kirk Bohls last week, establishing for the masses that holding off TCU in Fort Worth demonstrates that this football program has turned a corner under Sark.
Look, yes, maybe they’re turning that corner. But TCU? That’s the measuring stick now? This is like the Yankees coming out of that Wild Card loss Tuesday night saying, “We hung with them. We were within four. This showed that we belong.”
I like Steve Sarkisian. I wish him the best. But this dude started 4-1 at Washington a couple times, too, and he never got past eight wins in those seasons. Maybe he’s learned how to keep the foot on the gas (he certainly says so, quite literally), but maybe Texas has just played Louisiana-Lafayette, Rice, Texas Tech, and TCU so far. And gotten wrecked by an Arkansas team that might finish fourth in the SEC West.
Anyway, fun game tomorrow, lot riding on it. This is kind of like the river in Texas Hold ‘Em. If the cards come up Texas’s way, expect a lot of chips to head on into the pot. But the turn’s still coming. And then you’ve got the flop. And you might not love the dealer.
