Welcome back to our (potentially) weekly column on our beloved neighbors, the Texas Longhorns.
Do you have your burnt orange glasses ready? No? Well, go and find them, because the take you are about to see could blind a steer.
Evidently somebody called Oddguwop on Texas’s Rivals message board has “sauces:” (sic to all of this)
Subject: Anybody else hearing Sark WANTED to lose Arky game??
Ok bro a few sauces are hearing whispers from inside the building that Sark was really pissed about the half ass practices and arrogance of team after ULaLa and before Arky.
Sark and the other coaches knew that our only real chance to lose before Ou was to Arkansas. From SEC experience, Sark (and Flood et all) and the staff were 100 % certain (a) that we could beat Arky with right plans and play calls, butt (b) Arky wood give us a serious ass whoopin if unprepared.
So after that last practice, Sark just told the staff: “I’m done—these boys need a good old fashioned country ass beating to learn…”
It goes on, of course. Of course it goes on. But let’s not think past the sale here. Oddguwop: You think Texas can’t lose to TCU? You think the Texas Longhorns, winners of one game against TCU in the last seven years, can’t lose to the Horned Frogs?? Oddguwop, get real for a second. Texas is at risk this weekend.
Now, our Backometer™ forecast does indicate the Longhorns will beat TCU, who’s in the middle of some drama with SMU we can’t be bothered to figure out right now (hope Jerry Kill’s ok, though—that guy rocks). But still. Oddguwop. Don’t get it twisted.
Moving on to Oddguwop’s theory: He’s right. It makes perfect sense. If tasked with finding anyone on earth to give us a “serious ass whoopin,” we would, as Steve Sarkisian did, choose Sam Pittman. The facts line up: Sark lost the Arkansas game on purpose, ipso facto Texas is better than Arkansas, ipso facto Texas is back.
Of course, this hinges in large part on Arkansas, which brings us to this week’s main point: When it comes to Texas’s success, Arkansas is more important than the Longhorns right now. The Big 12’s a mess. Oklahoma is a child playing with matches. There’s a football league that makes sense a few hours to the east, and we’re going to measure Texas on that yardstick, but to do it, we need to use Arkansas, because they’re the only direct data point connecting the two. Success in college football is all about subjective perception, and Texas’s is now entirely dependent on the Arkansas Razorbacks. Which in turn means this weekend’s contest in Fort Worth is the undercard to what’s really happening, which is that Texas is playing Georgia by proxy in Athens, and if they cover the 18½-point spread (by proxy), they will be officially Back heading up to Dallas in ten days’ time.
Hook ‘em, baby.
butt