PROLOGUE TO Lubbock 2008, Ten Years After

Sept. 20, 2021

by Larry Carlson

Dateline: Lubbock, November 10, 2018

Many of us began the elevator shuttle from the press box down to the floor of Jones AT&T Stadium, with about six to seven minutes on the clock. Texas had entered the fourth quarter with a lead of 17 points. The biggest moments for Tech followers had been again seeing many Red Raiders who had participated in the 2008 upset of top-ranked Texas in Lubbock. That Mike Leach-coached squad had been honored at halftime by the sold-out crowd, though QB Graham Harrell (coaching at North Texas) and Michael Crabtree (Baltimore Ravens) were unable to commemorate the biggest play in Red Raider annals. Their connection for a touchdown with one second left in the '08 matchup will live on in replays and in the hearts of Tech supporters forever. It delivered the season's biggest upset with ESPN Gameday as the backdrop. And it likely cost Texas a national title. (This writer will always believe UT's '08 team that finished 12-1 was clearly better than the '09 edition that played Alabama for the championship.)

But back to 2018. As we rode the elevator down, the operator let out a yelp of joy, tore off his headset and roared to a crammed chamber, "WE just recovered the onside kick!"

By the time media members got to the sidelines, UT's lead was down to seven. A few moments later, the game was tied and the noise from a previously somnambulant crowd was rocking the stadium. Doc Brown and Marty McFly were furiously feeding tortillas into a time machine.

There we were, my colleagues and I, in the same corner of the stadium where Crabtree's magic had happened. This time, though, Texas was driving as the clock moved to under one minute. Sam Ehlinger feathered up a well-thrown ball and Lil' Jordan Humphrey went up as if doing the standing broad jump over a West Texas grain silo. He came back to earth with the ball and scored a touchdown. Texas survived the final 28 seconds for a 41-34 victory.

You could say, accurately, that the stakes of this game were penny-ante, compared to the chips won and lost on the same square of gridiron real estate ten years earlier. But without the win in Lubbock, Texas would certainly not have celebrated New Year's in New Orleans with a convincing win over favored Georgia.

The 2019 Horns-Raiders game in Austin wasn't nearly so dramatic. Texas rolled up 610 yards and crushed the visitors, 49-24. But the scoreboard blowout came after Tech had led early, 14-0.

Last season's game ended up, you'll likely recall, as UT wildest successful late charge ever in games on the South Plains. Refresher course: Texas frittered away a second-half lead and trailed by 15 with 3:13 to play. A calm Sam Ehlinger told Tom Herman the Horns would still win.

Then he hit Brennan Eagles for a TD. Then the Steers pulled off an onside kick and Slingin' Sam hit Joshua Moore for six points and Eagles for the conversion. Sam stayed en fuego for OT and hit Moore for another touchdown and Texas won, 63-56, in its wildest win ever out on the Caprock, where the Comanches and buffalo once roamed.

So now it's time for the resumption of the rivalry that, at least for now, looks like it will continue as a non-conference affair even after Texas heads east for the SEC. The tailgate menu for Saturday's game will feature breakfast tacos for an eleven a.m. kickoff.

But first....a glance back at a very, very notable game for both teams back in the autumn of 2008.

 Remembering Longhorns' fateful night in Lubbock 10 years later

By LARRY CARLSON Nov 9, 2008

I was about 30 feet away.

I remember watching Curtis Brown get shucked like a tamale before Michael Crabtree regained his balance from Brown's attempted tackle and tiptoed in for the biggest Texas Tech touchdown of all time.

The first night of November 2008.

Dateline: Lubbock, Texas.

What seemed like a lot more than 55,000 Red Raider fans shrieked as one, and hordes of them poured immediately onto the field.

It had been an exhilarating college football atmosphere, starting with the drive out west. Not far past the edge of the Hill Country, the air had grown cool and crisp and I noticed red and black streamers decorating gnarled, weathered fence posts and shiny ranch gates, starting even before we hit Brownwood. West Texas is Red Raider territory and there's always a palpable spirit of such, as cotton fields and telephone poles scoot by beneath electric-blue skies.

It was going to be a huge game. Texas had ascended to the No. 1 spot in college football by beating number one Oklahoma, 11th-ranked Missouri and seventh-ranked Oklahoma State in a 15-day span. So now the swashbuckling pirates of Texas Tech coach Mike Leach would be hosting ESPN's GameDay crew along with the Longhorns.

Hundreds of Tech students, warmed and fueled by copious amounts of beer and bourbon, had been spending the week camping out next to Jones AT&T Stadium. Friday night was Halloween and the craziness really got amped outside the stadium, with still almost 24 hours until kickoff. A few of us walked through the tent city, talking to giddy students and fans who were sharing food and looking forward to ESPN's national spotlight being, for the first time, on the South Plains come sunrise.

When Crabtree scored with one second on the clock, I thought Curtis Brown had carved himself an ignominious spot atop the short list of all-time Longhorn goats. Maybe he would crowd out the unfortunate Craig Curry, forever linked to his fumble of a Georgia punt that enabled the Dawgs to beat Texas, 10-9, and keep the Horns from a national championship on the first day of 1984.

I said as much to another member of the media as we all huddled a short distance from the visiting Longhorns' media room, awaiting the nod to enter and hear from Mack Brown, Colt McCoy and company at the post-mortem.

"What about Blake Gideon?" came the writer's response.

Teammate Aaron Williams said that Blake was so upset he wanted to fight anyone and everyone. “We just told Blake it could have been any of us. We told him we had his back and he was a great player.”

From the hazy perspective on the opposite sideline, all I could tell from the play before Crabtree scored was that a hurried Graham Harrell pass had fallen incomplete, inciting a collective gasp from the crowd. Sidelines are not the best for vantage points and depth perception. But the other writer had witnessed it clearly from the press box before a late descent toward the interview area. He had seen the pass skip off a would-be receiver's hands and surprise Gideon, the aggressive freshman standout who couldn't secure what would have been a game-clinching pick. And a few seconds later, the Raiders had aimed at their best receiver over on my sideline as the clock ran low.

If Brown had wrestled Crabtree successfully and downed him in bounds, it's possible that Tech wouldn't have been able to call timeout and try a short field goal. Or maybe they would've missed or had a second one blocked on this night.

Maybe if McCoy, one of the headiest players in UT history, had stayed in bounds instead of deliberately going out — admittedly, after taking a ruthless pounding all game long — right before Vondrell McGee's go-ahead touchdown from the 4-yard line, with 1:29 to play, perhaps Tech would never have had the time to do what it did.

Or maybe if Texas hadn't allowed the Red Raiders to return the ensuing kickoff all the way out to the 38-yard line, Harrell couldn't have dinked-and-dunked to set up the game-winning pass.

Maybe if Texas hadn't come out flatter than the South Plains topography and fallen behind 19-0 (with Greg Davis-hating fans cursing the offensive coordinator for a safety on UT's first play from scrimmage, a deep handoff from the 2-yard line), well, perhaps things would have worked out from the get-go.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Blake Gideon was a 19-year-old freshman that night. He had already started every game and had played very well. He would go on to start all 52 games in his Longhorn career, second-best on the "starts stats" at UT, and merited honorable mention All-Big 12 honors all four seasons.

He's now an assistant coach at Georgia State, after getting tutored by his old defensive coordinator, Will Muschamp, at Florida and South Carolina, plus a year on his own at Western Carolina.

It's possible that he is haunted by what might have been on that strange night in Lubbock that's now a decade in the rearview mirror. Or maybe, as defensive backs are reminded, he forgot it in time for the next play.

And in spite of that Crabtree catch, you don't hear people cursing Curtis Brown.

And they shouldn't.

What Texas fans should remember is the 2008 squad emerged from the loss in Lubbock to go down as one of the very best burnt orange units ever.

They not only beat three stellar ranked teams in a row before the "woulda coulda shoulda" dance with Tech, but they bounced back and ran off three more wins in November (including delivering a 49-9 body slam to Texas A&M on Thanksgiving night ) and beat another top-10 team, Ohio State, in the Fiesta Bowl for a 12-1 record. In the current playoff era, Texas would’ve been a cinch for the semi-finals. This writer will always, always consider them a notch above the team that played Alabama for the national championship the next season. Who knows? A play here and there and Texas wins three national crowns in five years.

So it has been a decade, and a strange one at that, for football at the University of Texas and the legions of fans who back the burnt orange. Maybe it's one long fever-dream. Mack, Emmanuel Acho and Jordan Shipley now call 'em as they see 'em from the broadcast booth. Colt carries a clipboard. Earl Thomas carries on with accolades albeit not in his desired Dallas Cowboys uniform. And though Muschamp was given the keys to "coach in waiting" status behind Mack barely two weeks after the Crabtree catch and 39-33 Red Raider triumph, he never saw the open road on the Forty Acres.

Maybe the Twilight Zone didn't begin when Colt McCoy grimaced and held his shoulder as he came off the field during the opening drive against Nick Saban and Alabama. Maybe it started 14 months earlier, out on the flatlands that Sports Illustrated, perhaps unfairly, used to regularly refer to as "America's ugliest campus."

I watched a Western movie recently and was gripped by the climactic scene of impending doom. One grim-faced cowboy complained to another about their misfortunes as a desolate nightfall approached.

"Luck don't live out here," is all his fatalistic friend could reply.

And I thought back ten years, to Lubbock in 2008.

Larry Carlson saw his first Longhorn victories in 1960 and grew up in a bedroom that was painted burnt orange. He was the sports director and host of "Longhorn Locker Room" for KVET radio from 1977-79 and later co-hosted "Longhorn Pipeline" on San Antonio's ESPN Radio affiliate from 2008-2011. He has been teaching broadcast journalism at Texas State University since 1984 and resides with his wife in the Alamo City.

Write to Larry Carlson at lc13@txstate.edu