Texas has the motivation to win a championship, as well as a quarterback -- Colt McCoy -- with the talent and experience to lead them to the BCS title game at the Rose Bowl.
photo by Harry Cabluck
Reporting from Austin, Texas - A tree stump could pick Florida No. 1 -- we get it.
Everybody loves Raymond and the Gators. So why Texas?
Think of it as déjà Bevo.
The clincher is a story told by a nice young man wearing Harry Potter glasses while standing in the hallway outside Texas' weight room/military industrial complex.
Hard to believe it was Colt McCoy, the team's superstar fifth-year senior quarterback, but he had a student ID card to prove it.
McCoy was a redshirt freshman standing next to quarterback Vince Young on the Rose Bowl sidelines in January 2006 when, in the climactic plot twist to one of college football's all-time page-turners, Texas stopped USC on fourth and two with two minutes left in the Bowl Championship Series title game.
The Longhorns trailed, 38-33.
"I was in the huddle and the coaches were telling him the play before he runs out," McCoy recalled. "I'm there with the clipboard, writing down the plays. Vince said, 'Hey, here we go; it's time to roll.' "
McCoy said Young then looked him square in the eye and said: "You'll be in this position some day. Do what I do."
Young drove the Longhorns 56 yards in 10 plays, scoring the game-winning touchdown on a fourth-down run with seconds remaining.
Texas won, 41-38.
Four years later, the BCS title game returns to the Rose Bowl.
Four years later, Texas enters the season No. 2 in the Associated Press and USA Today coaches' rankings behind a prohibitive favorite to repeat as BCS champion. Florida received 58 first-place votes in the AP poll. Texas got two.
In 2005, USC was an overwhelming preseason No. 1 after winning the national title in 2004. That year, USC had 60 first-place votes in the AP. Texas had four.
Four years later, a Texas quarterback coming off a spectacular bowl performance enters the season with something to prove.
After 2004, it was Young who shook off criticisms about his passing with an indelible Rose Bowl performance against Michigan.
Four years later, McCoy returns after leading a last-minute drive to beat Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl -- and after losing the Heisman Trophy to the quarterback from archrival Oklahoma, a team the Longhorns beat.
Texas Coach Mack Brown sat in his office chair and all but owned up to this alignment of stars.
"We tried to tell our team that," Brown said. "The stage is set for us going back to the Rose Bowl. Everything is in place like it was in '04 going into '05. You just got to be good enough.
"There are a lot of seniors on this team. And expectations are high. The standard is set very high here. This team should not be compared to that team yet because they haven't earned the right, but I think the circumstances are scarily similar."
