A  BAD  HABIT:

WHEN WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING

Commentary by Larry Carlson  ( lc13@txstate.edu )

 Fan Allegiance

 It's long been said that while football allegiance is somewhat of a benevolent mistress, she can still be a demanding damn dame.  A cruel one, too.  Least ways, that's the way hardboiled mystery writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler might have phrased it.  Back before the PC Police banned 'em.

But it was one of the gods of baseball, the heretofore inscrutable Derek Jeter, who opined this in a recent docuseries:

"Loyalty one way....is stupidity."

Remember that, dear reader. 

While growing up -- and while settling into adulthood -- I never understood the people who made it a point of supporting and suffering with sports teams that never won big.  National media made it almost hip, marveling at the faithful "Cubbies" baseball fans on the north side of Chicago and offering comfort and succor to Boston Red Sox fans still lost in "the curse of the Bambino."  Closer to home, we dealt with, and still do, the peculiar cult called Aggies, warning opponents to "Wait until next year!" while reveling in ("Reveille-ing in?) the glories of that good ol' 1939 football squad.  Losers.  All of them.  Stuck with their own bad habits. 

Winning Expectations ruled the First Century of Longhorn Football

 Longhorn followers never had to fool with such nonsense.  Not for more than a century, anyway.  Plenty of wins, big wins, conference crowns, national titles, Heisman winners, DKR and Mack.  

Losing football games was once rare for the Texas Longhorns.  In the best six years out of the '60s, UT lost four times total.  In the best four years of the '70s, they lost just five.  Relatively recently (2004-2009) Texas was defeated only nine times in a six-year span.  Then again, perhaps that is but minutiae from ancient times.  I might as well preach to young folks about Genghis Khan's gameplan, the rugged practices of the Romans and Spartans, maybe the Huns.  And though this might no longer be mentioned in contemporary history classes, the ol' Team USA --- mostly comprised of walk-ons --- won back-to-back World Wars. 

Still, an aging, old scribe can look back fondly to when players hurt even more than their fans did after losses.  I never doubted as a kid, or even much later, that players of the teams I followed were taking it hard after losses, were voicing anger, feeling anguish and vowing not to let it happen again. 

So I contacted several former players, none of whom wish to be seen as curmudgeons or cranks who subsist on memories of glory days.  One said he still sees just individuals on the field for UT, not a team.

He mentioned the result of having lost the Cotton Bowl following a Southwest Conference championship.

"After that loss, (trainer Frank) Medina had a cleansing to do.  In the spring, the coaches were gonna find players.  It was a bloodbath in spring but it built camaraderie among players that lasted, and it lasts to this day."  He paused and added this:  "It must be difficult, coaching these days." 

Earlier this autumn, Nick Saban, the best football coach ever, reflected on the collective mindset of some of his most successful teams.

"We had some hateful competitors...and when they played on the road they were mad at 100-thousand people and not (just) the eleven guys they were playing against," St. Nick noted.  "And they wanted to prove something to everybody."

Saban sounded wistful when he acknowledged evolving standards for players today.

"As time goes on, I think that maybe just winning the game is the focus." 

A Longhorn who started for three of Darrell Royal's SWC championship teams shook his head about today's celebrations after routinely successful plays and what he saw as an excess of sideline congratulations from fawning assistant coaches everywhere in college football.  He recalled film room scrutiny of long ago. 

"Coaches might run an extraordinary play twice and just say, 'That's the way we play.' " Mistakes, not mundane successes, he said, were highlighted to emphasize accountability.  

"Hell came raining down on those.  You were supposed to do your job.  It created expectations."

A Baker’s Dozen of Bad Football at Texas

But now, here we are.  Supporting Texas and expecting the Longhorns to win is, well, just a bad habit.

We're in the baker's dozen year of scrimping on moldy bread and occasional donut holes of Alamo Bowl trophies for dessert.  It doesn't taste so good.  Teams named Texas Tech, Okie State and Texas Christian have eaten our lunch this fall and the Longhorns are -- at least outside of Brazos County -- the most overhyped underachievers in America.  It's been that way for a good while.

Since UT got rid of John Mackovic in 1997, the Horns have won two conference titles.  We're talking a quarter-century now.  It's been since 2009 that Texas hasn't lost at least four games in a full season.  

While Darrell Royal had nary a one losing campaign, Mack Brown had one just a year removed from the national championship game.  Then Charlie Strong was three-for-three in the losing season category. Tom Herman won as many bowl games in four years as did Fred Akers, David McWilliams and the aforementioned Mackovic in a combined 21 seasons.  But Herman and his teams consistently had their own problems and shortcomings, losing 18 games. 

Texas was supposed to be past that ugly decade-plus by now.  Herman got a surprise pink slip following a 

7-3 Covid season that ended with a resounding 55-23 shellacking of Colorado in San Antonio. Burnt orange boosters quickly got excited about the prospects of the nation's best play caller, Steve Sarkisian, cruising into the Forty Acres on a promising Crimson Tide of offensive genius.   

It was like you'd seen the most stunning creature striding purposefully down the beach. 

The future.  Rich.  Famous.  Well-spoken.

Even promised to warble The Eyes of Texas.  Had us at hello.

Sure, some results and reliability probs blemishing the old resume but....not lately.  Certainly not anymore.

This was gonna be one beautiful relationship. 

Twenty-three months later, things with the hot date have cooled.  For some, a six-game losing streak brought on regrets about no prenup arrangement.  But then came summer and the big news of a bouncing baby Arch on the way.

All seven 2021 losses seemed forgotten on a sunny September Saturday with the "almost a W" game against Alabama. It turned out to be fool's gold.  

Scarcely two weeks later, this writer was in Lubbock and all the doubts were back.  Texas had led a very pedestrian Texas Tech team by 14 points with two minutes to play in the third quarter, then lost in overtime. One after another, five key UT players came to the stuffy, cramped media room in the bowels of Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock and calmly told us they were okay, and that maybe losing was okay.  Perhaps not in so many words but in the way I translated their measured, media-trained, zombie-like "Stepford Wives" tones. 

Said one Longhorn:  "I don't think it was deflating.  I think it's a learning experience."

Another shared this with us:  "Life isn't over.  A loss is a loss to me." 

But losing is nothing to fuss over in the semi-new era of four teams per district advancing to the Texas high school football playoffs.  "Hey," we are told, "it's good for the kids."  More winners.  As it was in the fictional place of Lake Wobegon, every child is above average.  Get ready now for a vastly expanded NCAA football playoff in just a few years.  More success, more feel-good stories for more "kids."  Naturally, there will also be much, much more TV money for the schools. 

Another former player expressed both pride and frustration in the current Longhorn team following the loss to TCU.  "I will say we showed a passion for playing the game, but the result was the same.  We lost." That player said he feels that NIL money is having no positive effect.

The former Longhorn football player said, "The media this year has made both the coaching staff and the players into superheroes," he fumed.  "But their record says otherwise."

Yet, the Love for Texas football seems to endure.

 Twice this fall, ESPN's Gameday crew has set up in Austin. There have been raves for Coach Sark, raves for players who don't seem to get the ball in the red zone, raves for the barbecue, and for the self-proclaimed "Live Music Capital of the World." And Las Vega$ apparently loves sucker bets from Longhorn Nation. Texas is always favored and seldom covers. 

Now the possibility of another mediocre record and relegation to a third-tier bowl game is huffing and puffing at a straw house of a relationship.  Nevertheless, no former players I spoke with mentioned the need or desire for a fourth coaching break-up in nine years.

But about one-third of the Texas "faithful" had filed out of the stadium late Saturday before UT's defense made another big play, cut the TCU margin to 17-10, and handed the Horns yet another chance to win.

Perhaps they had left because the Longhorn offense -- with players who will play on Sundays -- again did not get all the right shots available to shine on Saturdays. Three straight games without a second-half TD from the offense. Three points from two first-and-goal chances inside the five. Three games lost to top ten teams that could've been toppled. Two games against top ten teams in which one chance on a change of pace substitution was never made.

One more opportunity gone a' wastin'.

Football is one of the very few UT sports not achieving top-level success now.

Football success at UT has become the program's black hole.  Baseball is great, and basketball good.  And

burnt orange athletes still excel and win championships in what are unfairly called "country club" sports.

Then again, Austin has become Austin-tacious LA  East, the planet's biggest country club theme park.

Nobody works but everybody has plenty of money.  Lamborghinis and Aston-Martins glide past as diners wait three hours for brisket, then move on to wash it down with $19 craft cocktails.

And UT football continues to languish in its biggest stretch ever without a conference title.

Stupid or not, the one-way loyalty prevails.  A bad habit.   

But another promising September awaits, no doubt.  It's always sunny in LA East.

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