Thursday, October 9, 2008

Inside the Longhorn Nation

After Bubba’s great post on the Red River Shootout, I asked my good friend Tony from Austin to provide us with some insight to this game. Tony is a Texas alum and a resident of Austin, so he should have some great thoughts on this. Plus, he shares a love for the great words of Will Muschamp, just like the rest of us (be warned: foul language will ensue at the end of the post).


The Red River Shootout/Rivalry/Walkabout (whatever) is the greatest sporting event since Maximus took on 3 gladiators, 4 tigers, and Johnny Cash. The atmosphere for the game is tremendous. Where else can you have the best rivalry in college football and the country’s largest state fair in the background? As for the food, while the fried bacon and fried coke are great, it begins and ends with the Fletcher’s Corny Dog. It’s the only thing Okies and Longhorns can agree on all weekend. One of the great traditions friends and I have is to be the first ones out of the game at halftime. We down two large beers, two Fletcher’s Corny Dogs, smoke two cigarettes and get back to our seats before the second half begins.

Before any OU fans try and tell you that the game is in Texas and they’re the “visitors,” remind them the Cotton Bowl is 3 miles CLOSER to Norman than to Austin. Longhorns and those inbred, toothless bastards to the north seemingly get along while walking around the fair before the game.

One of the funniest things about the demographics about TX/OU weekend is the women. If you see a pretty girl anywhere on the fairgrounds she will, without a doubt, be wearing burnt orange. I don’t know what they put in the water at our little neighbor to the north, but I have never seen a more abundance of ugly women in equally ugly colors.

However, as soon as you walk through the antique (apparently now face-lifted Cotton Bowl) you don’t care about the girls, the corn dogs or the beer (ok, maybe the beer a little bit). The intensity is unreal. It’s so thick and so full of hate for the opposition; this is why we have to play the game at 11 am (neither school would allow for a night game because of fear of packing the Dallas Co. jail). Our band starts playing, theirs plays louder. They start the ghey “OU” chant; we have to say “Texas Fight” louder. They take a piss in the urinal; we take a piss on their shoes…and on and on.

Texas is well known, at least in conference, to have a very apathetic fan base. If you get to the Cotton Bowl an hour before the game, 90% of the OU section is filled compared with maybe 1/3 of the UT section. We are the LA Lakers of college football. However, for this game and only this game, when we eventually get there we are loud and involved. For only this game, girls don’t care about their purse matching their boots and guys don’t care about their white little polo horsies on their burnt orange shirt…they only care about the game. Then again, it is Dallas, so the girls do check their makeup between quarters.

Slowly but surely, those Longhorns are making it in.

The last 8 years of this rivalry have not been kind to the Longhorns. OU has won 6 of the last 8 including a 5 run stretch. However, one of the things nobody realized at the time was how overrated UT was in every one of those games, except the National Championship year. This year is different than the overrated years. We are for real. We will not only win the game, but we will win the game going away. Mack will be a winner of 3 of the last 4. It starts with Colt McCoy and ends with Will Muschamp.

On offense, Colt “I’ve never had a coke in my life” McCoy is completing nearly 80% of his passes and rushing for 370 yards (Who’s this Tebow guy)? We have scored no less than 38 points in each gam, called off the dogs in the fourth quarter of every game and put in our turnover prone backup. Our RB is still by committee, but Chris Obgann, Ogbanni, er #3, will start. Bruiser Cody Johnson, Vondrell Magee, and maybe (please Lord, please), Fozzie Whittaker will be taking some snaps. We will be fine offensively. The only worry is Greg Davis’ conservative play-calling. However, Mack admitted our play-calling was conservative under his direction and he’s turned Davis loose this year.

On defense, two words: Boom Motherfucker!!! We lead the nation in sacks, negative yards, one of the top 5 rushing defenses, but to quote Muschamp: “stats are for losers, I want to win games.” I don’t want him to think I’m a loser, so I will not mention any of that. Sorry coach, please don’t hurt me…

Good guys – 48, Land Thieves – 24 (after the game, Muschamp will yell about giving up 14 points in trash time while holding a bloody visor with hair that he ripped off Stoops head).

- Tony from Austin

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