YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

by Larry Carlson for https://texaslsn.org

TLSN's Larry Carlson teaches sports and news media courses at Texas State University.  He is a member of the Football Writers Association of America.

It seemed like an average, pedestrian New Orleans hangover.  For the biggest game in 14 years, UT's Sugar Bowl Monday night felt somehow like a dull headache.  The play was out of sync, the Texas crowd was out of the game early and seemed curiously low key.  The Longhorns never led and, for a city below sea level, the gridiron terrain in the Big Easy seemed tilted uphill for UT all night.

To this observer, it was the OU game in deja vu.  All over again, as Yogi Berra supposedly said. Too many penalties.  Too many turnovers.  No pressure on the opposing QB, and when there was, he utilized a designed run and zipped through the middle for a big gain. Out-schemed and outplayed.  

But still the Horns hung on like Spanish moss, and had chances to pull of an unlikely midnight win.

I wrote a post for TLSN just four hours before kickoff time, noting the necessity for Texas to get it done in the red zone.  All season, Texas was among the worst of college football's good teams when it came to scoring touchdowns inside the 20.  On Monday night, the Steers  reversed that trend in the first half.  Each time Washington punched Texas with a touchdown, the Longhorns counterpunched with one of their own.

In the end, though, UT's only real season-long offensive weakness reared up and bit them.  Hard. Trailing by ten with less than two minutes to play, Texas somehow managed two trips into the red zone.

All they got was one Bert Auburn field goal on the first journey.  We know now that, had UT scored seven then, the final seconds after the semi-miraculous Quinn Ewers-to-Jordan Whittington bomb could have set up what would have appeared to be a simple, short Auburn FG for a stunning 38-37 win.

But like the first-and-goal from the OU one, it didn't happen.   Red zone blues had beaten the Horns again. Esteemed football analyst Mick Jagger noted long ago that, "You can't always get what you want."

And Jagger, no doubt watching the Sugar Bowl from afar on this New Year's night, likely nodded his head, empathizing with Longhorn Nation about one more game that – like in the seasons of 1961, 1964, 1977, 1983, 2008 and 2009 -- while in reach, somehow got away.  It is very hard to win a national championship.

But Jagger always tempered his axiom with a "glass half full" approach that particularly applies now for the UT football program and its burnt orange-blooded fans.

"But if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you nee-eed." Like a Big XII championship.  Like a team that found multiple ways to win games, and consistently, doggedly showed grit and fortitude.  Like a head coach who not only recruits extremely well but has found a way to sell young men on a "culture" that builds character, not characters, and bears fruit.

Like a promising, very challenging venture into the ultimate competitive hotbed of college ball, the SEC.

So it was, for the UT football program, another major leap forward, this trip to the College Football Playoff.

There are never guarantees that football teams or fan bases can get what they want.

But at long last, the Longhorns got something they needed for fourteen aching years.

The foundation is there.  More concrete and infrastructure will be poured and forged during cold winter conditioning, passionate spring drills and steamy summer workouts.  A noteworthy first season in the Southeastern Conference awaits in fewer than 270 days.  And hope again will spring in the fall for getting what all Longhorns really want.