I don't usually read the Washington Post sports coverage because the Redskins WFT suck (yet beat Brady and the Buccaneers on Sunday) and they generally ignore the Big 12, except for the kind of obligatory Texas or OU mention now and then. So I'm procrastinating on some writing I should be doing, and found this write up of the Texas game on Saturday. I wouldn't want to read this style of writing every week, maybe, but thought he did a great job on capturing something of what the mood must have been like.
AUSTIN — The radio kept telling of something too outlandish to resist, and it kept telling it to a bent mind barreling out of Waco from Baylor vs. Oklahoma and dodging through the loathed 101 miles down Interstate 35 toward Austin in 6 p.m. darkness.
It told how perpetually sad Kansas (1-8) had taken the opening kickoff, hogged the ball for a whopping 7:02, led 7-0 and soon led 14-0. Then it said eternally entitled Texas (4-5) had tied the game at 14, so okay, but then it said perpetually sad Kansas (22-116 since 2010), which had scored 66 points across nine previous first halves in 2021, had gotten a touchdown drive, a sack fumble, another touchdown, a pick-six and a 35-14 halftime lead.
This could be a case of a peasant walloping a kingdom. This could be a case of a nadir of Texas nadirs across the past 12 seasons sailing sideways with the four head coaches and the 65 losses howling at the 82 wins and the lavish resources. This could be a case of a 31-point underdog standing 0-56 in its past 56 Big 12 road games, celebrating on a storied field. Clearly there seemed no choice in life but to aim for Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium and park for free in a garage that had stopped bothering to charge and had tucked away its $25 sign. Clearly it became mandatory to walk the great Austin streets toward the lights as if in some trance.
Along Colorado Street, people here and there filed toward home. On a TV pinned to the trunk of a healthy tree, the latest Texas coach overmatched in a capital of underachievement, Steve Sarkisian, did a sideline interview in which he apparently noted “one of the worst sequences I’ve ever seen a team play that I’ve been a part of.” Along E. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, people filed out in mild droves. At some junctures, it grew tricky to dodge them. Some ushered home children, who might get reasonable sleep anyway.
Near the stadium, people in burnt-orange filed away. It seemed impossible to buy a ticket at that stage, even for the last kook who craved one. People filed away. Texas scored to make it 35-21, and the speakers played “Stayin’ Alive.” People filed away. You could sit outside and wait. People filed away, most jovially, maybe because they live in Austin and Austin makes people jovial. You could spot the Bevo van backing up inside the fence and wonder whether Bevo, too, might depart soon.
He would not.
Don't impugn Bevo like that.
Soon, you could enter the stadium with a nod, maybe even a nod of pity.
The Saturday already had brimmed as November Saturdays do. Kingdoms real or alleged or both had found peril, their coaches twirling on imaginary spits. Florida had trailed Samford 42-35 at halftime yet had decided to play the duration and won, 70-52, amid mass lampooning. No. 8 Oklahoma had run into a fence of a defense at No. 13 Baylor, prompting a double field-storming — one at 0:03, then a field-clearing, then another at 0:00, of which outstanding Baylor linebacker Terrel Bernard said, “We didn’t know, really, what was going on.” And then old No. 6 Michigan had gotten the big play it seemed to hunt across seven seasons under Jim Harbaugh, and it came from tight end Erick All, who caught a fine dink over the middle 47 yards from a Penn State end zone with 3:37 left, then romped to the right sideline and then up it for a 21-17 win.
Thus did Michiganders toast an Ohioan.
But here, here in the great Austin, this was batty stuff. The stadium had emptied slightly less than imagined. People reveled one after another in one of the pinnacles of American life: appearing suddenly on the big screen. They sang “Livin’ on a Prayer,” revealing again how those unborn during Bon Jovi 1986 know all the lyrics. Five shirtless guys in the cold spelled T-E-X-A-S on the big screen, and the “E” seemed to have done the best gym work. People stood on giant verandas near the bar, gulping from beer cans.
That damned cannon kept going off after scores.
Scores kept happening.
Where it might have seemed impossible to care about some dreary Kansas-Texas game, it had become possible to care about nothing else.
Kansas hero Jalon Daniels, the quarterback from Lawndale, Calif. — ! — steered the Jayhawks 73 yards in nine plays for a 49-35 lead. Clumps of people filed out. Some 8:47 remained. More clumps of people filed out, including that one guy in the stylish shoes who sort of stomped and harrumphed out. Bevo remained.
Texas got it to 49-42, of course, and it grew sad to think of Kansas losing yet again after all this. Kansas played to win and missed a gutsy fourth and one from its 34-yard line. Texas got an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty for a celebration comprehensively absurd. Texas threw an interception invitation toward the goal line, and Kansas got O.J. Burroughs’s interception with 70 seconds left, and a tiny clot of college-aged Kansas fans down near the end zone went berserk, bouncing merrily off a nearby stadium wall in one case.
They chanted the common taunt toward grifters Texas and Oklahoma: “SEC! SEC!”
Some guy walked over and taunted them for having reached 2-8.
They were about to win, except they weren’t.
Texas called its three timeouts, got the ball again and scored with 22 seconds left on Cade Brewer’s fine reach-up grab of Casey Thompson’s 25-yard pass up the right sideline. Overtime beckoned. The stadium, maybe half-full, maybe not quite, sort of rocked. People held up their phones to make lights in the tens of thousands. It did get noisy. The Texas cheerleaders swayed in both unison and a frenzy.
And holy Bevo mercy, if suddenly you looked back over the overhang behind the bar and out toward the street, you might see smatterings of people hurrying back in!
They were about to win, except they weren’t.
The Longhorns they might even still love grabbed a 56-49 lead in overtime and incurred another unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty, preposterous in every single way possible, for celebration against Kansas. Kansas faced a third and seven on its possession, and Daniels ran a beauty of a quarterback draw to gain seven. Devin Neal plunged in from the 2. Coach Lance Leipold, guts established, went for two.
The wee group of Kansas sorts waited with looks that seemed knowing. Standing behind them felt strange, like maybe an intrusion upon someone’s eternal pity party. Daniels took the snap and hurried right to escape surging edge rusher Ovie Oghoufo. It looked hopeless. Daniels let the ball fly from way back at the 18. That, too, looked hopeless.
Just then, though, the eye might have shifted to this daydream of a sight. There, just behind the goal line, waiting for the ball, stood a fullback. A fullback! Maybe no one even knew he was Jared Casey, that he hadn’t caught a ball all night or all year, that he’s from Plainville, Kan., 25 uncluttered miles due north of Hays. When the ball nestled into his gut and his teammates began falling zanily upon him, from tight end Trevor Kardell to receiver Lawrence Arnold to lineman Mike Novitsky, the dot of Kansans had just witnessed the damnedest 57-56 win anybody ever saw, so it bounced with a madness only sports can create.
By all means, do go to the stadium.
AUSTIN — The radio kept telling of something too outlandish to resist, and it kept telling it to a bent mind barreling out of Waco from Baylor vs. Oklahoma and dodging through the loathed 101 miles down Interstate 35 toward Austin in 6 p.m. darkness.
It told how perpetually sad Kansas (1-8) had taken the opening kickoff, hogged the ball for a whopping 7:02, led 7-0 and soon led 14-0. Then it said eternally entitled Texas (4-5) had tied the game at 14, so okay, but then it said perpetually sad Kansas (22-116 since 2010), which had scored 66 points across nine previous first halves in 2021, had gotten a touchdown drive, a sack fumble, another touchdown, a pick-six and a 35-14 halftime lead.
This could be a case of a peasant walloping a kingdom. This could be a case of a nadir of Texas nadirs across the past 12 seasons sailing sideways with the four head coaches and the 65 losses howling at the 82 wins and the lavish resources. This could be a case of a 31-point underdog standing 0-56 in its past 56 Big 12 road games, celebrating on a storied field. Clearly there seemed no choice in life but to aim for Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium and park for free in a garage that had stopped bothering to charge and had tucked away its $25 sign. Clearly it became mandatory to walk the great Austin streets toward the lights as if in some trance.
Along Colorado Street, people here and there filed toward home. On a TV pinned to the trunk of a healthy tree, the latest Texas coach overmatched in a capital of underachievement, Steve Sarkisian, did a sideline interview in which he apparently noted “one of the worst sequences I’ve ever seen a team play that I’ve been a part of.” Along E. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, people filed out in mild droves. At some junctures, it grew tricky to dodge them. Some ushered home children, who might get reasonable sleep anyway.
Near the stadium, people in burnt-orange filed away. It seemed impossible to buy a ticket at that stage, even for the last kook who craved one. People filed away. Texas scored to make it 35-21, and the speakers played “Stayin’ Alive.” People filed away. You could sit outside and wait. People filed away, most jovially, maybe because they live in Austin and Austin makes people jovial. You could spot the Bevo van backing up inside the fence and wonder whether Bevo, too, might depart soon.
He would not.
Don't impugn Bevo like that.
Soon, you could enter the stadium with a nod, maybe even a nod of pity.
The Saturday already had brimmed as November Saturdays do. Kingdoms real or alleged or both had found peril, their coaches twirling on imaginary spits. Florida had trailed Samford 42-35 at halftime yet had decided to play the duration and won, 70-52, amid mass lampooning. No. 8 Oklahoma had run into a fence of a defense at No. 13 Baylor, prompting a double field-storming — one at 0:03, then a field-clearing, then another at 0:00, of which outstanding Baylor linebacker Terrel Bernard said, “We didn’t know, really, what was going on.” And then old No. 6 Michigan had gotten the big play it seemed to hunt across seven seasons under Jim Harbaugh, and it came from tight end Erick All, who caught a fine dink over the middle 47 yards from a Penn State end zone with 3:37 left, then romped to the right sideline and then up it for a 21-17 win.
Thus did Michiganders toast an Ohioan.
But here, here in the great Austin, this was batty stuff. The stadium had emptied slightly less than imagined. People reveled one after another in one of the pinnacles of American life: appearing suddenly on the big screen. They sang “Livin’ on a Prayer,” revealing again how those unborn during Bon Jovi 1986 know all the lyrics. Five shirtless guys in the cold spelled T-E-X-A-S on the big screen, and the “E” seemed to have done the best gym work. People stood on giant verandas near the bar, gulping from beer cans.
That damned cannon kept going off after scores.
Scores kept happening.
Where it might have seemed impossible to care about some dreary Kansas-Texas game, it had become possible to care about nothing else.
Kansas hero Jalon Daniels, the quarterback from Lawndale, Calif. — ! — steered the Jayhawks 73 yards in nine plays for a 49-35 lead. Clumps of people filed out. Some 8:47 remained. More clumps of people filed out, including that one guy in the stylish shoes who sort of stomped and harrumphed out. Bevo remained.
Texas got it to 49-42, of course, and it grew sad to think of Kansas losing yet again after all this. Kansas played to win and missed a gutsy fourth and one from its 34-yard line. Texas got an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty for a celebration comprehensively absurd. Texas threw an interception invitation toward the goal line, and Kansas got O.J. Burroughs’s interception with 70 seconds left, and a tiny clot of college-aged Kansas fans down near the end zone went berserk, bouncing merrily off a nearby stadium wall in one case.
They chanted the common taunt toward grifters Texas and Oklahoma: “SEC! SEC!”
Some guy walked over and taunted them for having reached 2-8.
They were about to win, except they weren’t.
Texas called its three timeouts, got the ball again and scored with 22 seconds left on Cade Brewer’s fine reach-up grab of Casey Thompson’s 25-yard pass up the right sideline. Overtime beckoned. The stadium, maybe half-full, maybe not quite, sort of rocked. People held up their phones to make lights in the tens of thousands. It did get noisy. The Texas cheerleaders swayed in both unison and a frenzy.
And holy Bevo mercy, if suddenly you looked back over the overhang behind the bar and out toward the street, you might see smatterings of people hurrying back in!
They were about to win, except they weren’t.
The Longhorns they might even still love grabbed a 56-49 lead in overtime and incurred another unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty, preposterous in every single way possible, for celebration against Kansas. Kansas faced a third and seven on its possession, and Daniels ran a beauty of a quarterback draw to gain seven. Devin Neal plunged in from the 2. Coach Lance Leipold, guts established, went for two.
The wee group of Kansas sorts waited with looks that seemed knowing. Standing behind them felt strange, like maybe an intrusion upon someone’s eternal pity party. Daniels took the snap and hurried right to escape surging edge rusher Ovie Oghoufo. It looked hopeless. Daniels let the ball fly from way back at the 18. That, too, looked hopeless.
Just then, though, the eye might have shifted to this daydream of a sight. There, just behind the goal line, waiting for the ball, stood a fullback. A fullback! Maybe no one even knew he was Jared Casey, that he hadn’t caught a ball all night or all year, that he’s from Plainville, Kan., 25 uncluttered miles due north of Hays. When the ball nestled into his gut and his teammates began falling zanily upon him, from tight end Trevor Kardell to receiver Lawrence Arnold to lineman Mike Novitsky, the dot of Kansans had just witnessed the damnedest 57-56 win anybody ever saw, so it bounced with a madness only sports can create.
By all means, do go to the stadium.
