Appealing to Voters, Texas Blasts State Rival

AUSTIN, Tex. — In preparation for his team’s Thanksgiving night game against rival Texas A&M, Texas Coach Mack Brown gathered his players earlier this week and read aloud the Bowl Championship Series standings.

He also read the standings of the USA Today coaches poll and the Harris Interactive poll, two components of the B.C.S. Brown then asked for questions, and not a single hand was raised.
“After that, we made a decision as a group that we would not discuss it anymore,” Brown said at his news conference Monday, “because we have a live audience of all the voters for Thursday night to see. That’s the only thing that we could do to affect the B.C.S. at all. Discussion doesn’t help us.”

With its 49-9 romp of hapless Texas A&M here Thursday before a record crowd of 98,621 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, Texas made a final impressive effort to prove that it deserved to jump ahead of Oklahoma in both human polls.
“I felt like they made the statement that they needed to make,” Brown said of his team’s performance.

The Longhorns led by 21-3 at halftime behind quarterback Colt McCoy, who finished the game with 311 passing yards and 2 touchdown passes and 2 rushing touchdowns.
“In many ways, it was probably the most complete game from start to finish,” Greg Davis, the Texas offensive coordinator, said.

Texas’ margin of victory against the Aggies (4-8, 2-6 Big 12) was more than that of Oklahoma (38 points), with whom the Longhorns are battling along with Texas Tech for the Big 12 South division title. But the victory did not resolve the Big 12 South race or make the national championship picture clearer.

Having beaten No. 3 Oklahoma (10-1, 6-1) and lost to No. 7 Texas Tech (10-1, 6-1), Texas (11-1, 7-1) must now wait until Sunday for the jumbled Big 12 South to be shaken out. If Oklahoma and Texas Tech each win Saturday, the two teams will join Texas in a three-way tie for first place.

If that happens, the tie breaker for the division is the B.C.S. standings, which will be released Sunday. The winner will play No. 12 Missouri (9-2, 5-2) on Dec. 6 in the Big 12 championship game.

Texas is 0.0084 ahead of Oklahoma in the B.C.S. standings. If the Sooners win Saturday at No. 11 Oklahoma State (9-2, 5-2), they are expected to move ahead of Texas, said Jerry Palm, an independent B.C.S. analyst.

But should Oklahoma lose at Oklahoma State and should Texas Tech win, the Red Raiders will win the division by virtue of their last-second 39-33 home victory against Texas on Nov. 1.
“The voters have a tough decision, because there’s a lot of really good football teams that are out there,” Brown said.

Regardless of Saturday’s outcome, Texas does not plan to bombard voters in the coaches poll or the Harris poll with a last-minute campaign, said John Bianco, an athletic department spokesman. Instead, it will again send out its weekly e-mail release about its accomplishments, he said.

“This week will focus on where we think we should rank,” Bianco said.
Yet Texas’ fans did plenty of their own campaigning for their beloved Longhorns during Thursday night’s victory. Many had 45-35 signs, the score of Texas’ victory against Oklahoma on Oct. 11 in Dallas.

Some of the 8 ½-by-11-inch signs read, “Remember the Alamo and 45-35,” “Every Sooner prays no one remembers 45-35” and “Settle it on the field? 45-35 It’s Been Settled.” Another used the B.C.S. initials in its message: “Better Consider Scoreboard 45-35.”

Each of the signs was available at www.45-35.com. The 35 on those signs was in crimson, Oklahoma’s primary color.
Asked about the crowd’s 45-35 signs after his team’s victory, Brown quickly remarked that he agreed with them, prompting laughter from members of the news media.

“It cost me a lot of money to make all those signs,” Brown joked. “But I think that’s the deal. We won head-to-head. Again, I don’t want to make a big to-do out of it. Alabama and Florida get to play theirs off and the Big 12 South isn’t going to get to play it off. If that’s the case, the two highest ones have already played it off. That’s why I feel like we deserve to go.”
Matt Parks, creator of 45-35.com, said the Web site had received $7,500 in donations. Of that money, $1,850 was spent to print 20,000 signs that he and others distributed before Thursday night’s game.

Another $2,800 was used to hire a pilot to fly a banner that reads “45-35. Settled on a Neutral Field” over Stillwater, Okla., during ESPN’s live telecast of “College GameDay” on Saturday morning, Parks said. The remaining money will be donated to charity, he said.

“We’re just kind of hoping that it will remind everybody of what happened,” Parks, 21, a Texas senior from Houston who is majoring in government, said in a telephone interview. “It’s got better in the news media, but more and more, it seems that people don’t even remember the game.”

The Daily Texan, Texas’ student newspaper, printed 25,000 editions Wednesday with an orange-and-white insert with the 45-35 score. There is also a Facebook group with more than 17,000 members called, “Texas did beat OU 45-35, lest we forget.”
That certainly will not be forgotten by Brown and his Longhorns in the next three days. And while it may not help in the B.C.S. standings, they will be sure to mention it to any voter who will listen.

“I do think that if we go to the Big 12 championship,” Brown said, “it will probably be because we are a great football team and we did beat Oklahoma on a neutral site.”
By- Thayer Evans