If you look around the college football landscape – or happened to watch Oklahoma fall off it Saturday – it is easy to see Texas playing for the big one Jan. 4.
But first, coach Mack Brown has to win a big one.
Brown, the most embattled coach ever to come off an 11-1 season, will have a good chunk of his career defined in two of the next four weeks. Saturday night his No. 2 Longhorns visit No. 4 Ohio State.
A win would put Texas on as much a clear path to the national title game in the Rose Bowl as any team in the nation, including top-ranked Southern California. Only one problem. Under Brown, dating to 1999, Texas has lost its past eight games to teams ranked in the top 10 at the time.
Winning at Ohio State, a one-point favorite, should erase any doubt that Brown is finally a BMOC in Texas. Then again, maybe not.
“I don’t know that it will,” said Keith Moreland, a Texas radio analyst and Longhorns safety in 1973-74, as well as a 12-season major- league baseball player. “The biggest thing out there, if you’re talking about the critics, is beating Oklahoma.”
That brings us back to the 0-for-8. Five of those losses came against the Sooners. If Oklahoma makes it six straight this year, considering its pratfall last Saturday at home against Texas Christian, those cattle horns on Texas’ helmet may as well be those of a goat.
Brown may never live it down.
This is Brown’s best team. He has a Heisman Trophy candidate in quarterback Vince Young. Tailbacks Selvin Young and Jamaal Charles have more breakaway speed than Cedric Benson did – and that doesn’t include Henry Melton, a 6-foot-3, 270-pound Jerome Bettis-type backup.
Brown’s offensive line, secondary and defensive line are among the nation’s best.
If the Longhorns beat Ohio State, their only remaining games against a currently ranked team will be Oklahoma in Dallas and No. 21 Texas Tech at home. By comparison, USC’s toughest opponents – Oregon, No. 15 Arizona State, No. 20 Notre Dame and No. 16 California – are all on the road.
To say Brown can’t win big games isn’t quite accurate. His teams have won 10 of the past 11 against those ranked from 11-25. However, only one of those games – a 17-14 win at Kansas State in 2002 – has come as the visiting team.
But you have to figure a victory against Ohio State would give the Longhorns unmatched confidence against an Oklahoma team that seems in desperate straits for a quarterback and an offensive line.
“Bob Stoops’ football team will get better,” Moreland said. “Remember, Bowling Green pushed them late into the fourth quarter last year. They just didn’t lose. But this is a rebuilding year for Oklahoma. I would think this would be a great opportunity.”
Beating Ohio State would also be a major boost for Brown because this Texas team is an underdog Saturday. The Buckeyes are well over the hangover and stench Maurice Clarett left, are even more loaded than Texas and are at home.
They have perhaps the best linebackers in the nation, and can someone explain how Texas will contain receivers Ted Ginn and Santonio Holmes, both of whom are making the NFL drool?
“If (Texas) can withstand the first quarter, they have a chance to win,” Moreland said. “Anytime you go into a hostile environment, early in the game is so key. If Ohio State scores, gets a big turnover and another score it could be 10-0 or 14-0 and could be a long (game).”
But imagine a Texas win, then imagine it waltzing into the Cotton Bowl against an Oklahoma team with lots of issues. Then imagine Mack Brown actually being popular in Texas.
LSU to cope on the road
It’s a coach’s job to make players ignore distractions, things such as trash talk, NCAA scandals and internal turmoil. First-year Louisiana State coach Les Miles never bargained for ignoring a killer hurricane.
“Here you don’t do that,” he said. “It’s an emotionally charged issue. Basically, you have to address it.”
The first item on the agenda for LSU and Tulane was locating family members. Miraculously, no player lost a family member.
Second, Tulane had its class situation settled. Its athletic teams will scatter to universities around the South.
Third, LSU gets the emotional wringer of playing its scheduled home game Saturday against Arizona State in Tempe. Many players’ displaced families have moved into their campus apartments, which are holding up to 10 family members.
“You have no idea how significant the individual takes the situation, the memory of the state and what’s going on and how he carries that individually,” Miles said. “I am very concerned.”
However, LSU’s campus, used as a support for New Orleans, 80 miles down the road, is returning to relative normal, and LSU expects to host Tennessee on Sept. 24. Meanwhile, Tulane will host Mississippi State on Sept. 17 in Shreveport, La., and may play the rest of its home games there.
White taking back seat
Chatfield High School graduate LenDale White, USC’s top rusher the past two years, finally may be taking a back seat to Reggie Bush. The Heisman candidate not only started over White on Saturday at Hawaii, Bush was also used in the goal-line situations normally reserved for the more bullish White.
Although White rushed for 69 yards on 13 carries, one more tote than Bush, the Coloradan had only two of USC’s first 10 rushing attempts. Bush had the other eight.
“I have no clue at all what’s going on,” White told a bevy of reporters after the game. “You’ve got Bush on the team, and that’s what happens.”
White indicated he never discusses playing time with his coaches and isn’t worried about it. But when Bush scored on a 41-yard run in the second quarter, 10 teammates raced to the end zone to greet him. White, meanwhile, ran to the sideline.
“It was hot,” White said. “I was tired.”
Footnotes
The last time Steve Spurrier took a team to Georgia, his Florida Gators rolled 52-17 in 1995, the only time Georgia has given up 50 at home. Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks visit Athens on Saturday. …
Ty Willingham, whose Washington Huskies host California, was 7-0 against the Bears while the head coach at Stanford.
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
