40 Acres Sports

CBS Sportsline’s Dennis Dodd has a new Heisman leader.

Lots of negative ones but Vince did become the 7th player in NCAA history to throw and rush for over 200 yards in the same game.

Vince took the team on his back and saved the season.

Seeing as how the Horns suffered so many injuries yesterday, here’s the Statesman’s injury report from this morning:

• DE Brian Robison strained a calf muscle in the first half and did not return.
• WR Brian Carter injured his left knee in the first half and did not return.
• OT Jonathan Scott injured his left leg near the end of the third.
• RB Selvin Young appeared to tweak his ankle in the third quarter and did not return.
• RB Jamaal Charles suffered cramps throughout the game.
• LB Robert Killebrew and RB Chris Ogbonnaya both limped off the field very late in the 4th.

It sounds like Carter’s may be the most serious one, let’s hope it’s nothing too bad. The kid is a senior and has stepped up and made some big catches this year. Robison’s is also a little troubling.

We’ll have updates when/if they become available.

Update

The Dallas Morning news reports that Robison, Carter, and Ogbannaya are all out for Saturday’s game against Baylor. No further information on the severity of the injuries or how long they’d be out is available. (11/3/2005)

Tonight’s game will be the first TBS televised game I’ve watched all the way through, so it will be interesting to see what kind of job they do. I don’t recognize either of the announcers but they can’t be any worse than the guys ABC trots out there every week.

First Quarter

• Good kick by Greg Johnson and an even better hit! [tag]Oklahoma State[/tag] returner had a seam and Johnson just came flying up and laid him out.
• Good first series from the defense, had a chance to get a turnover but still forced a three and out.
• Ramonce Taylor drops a wide open pass and we’ve got 4th down. If he catches that one in stride he might be able to get into the end zone with his speed.
• I don’t know what the wind is like but I’m pretty confident that David Pino won’t make too many 52 yard field goals. We should have tried to pin them back deep or go for it, but we don’t and we get the kick blocked.
• Great play design on 4th and one by Okie State for the touchdown. They rushed up to the line, looked like they were going to go for the short gain with everything they got and snuck a wide receiver out of the backfield. Dajuan Woods ran wide open down the field all by himself.

Texas 0, Okie State 7

• Great run from Vince Young on 3rd and long, 45 yards or so. He’s looked a little off again today so let’s hope this settles him down.
• Another holding penalty from David Thomas. He seems to get one of those and a false start every week. We just flat out can’t do that on first and goal. 2nd and goal from the 5 is a lot better than a tough 10 yard penalty.
• Wow, Vince air mailed that one about 10 yards over Quan Cosby’s head. Wasn’t even close. Somehow the announcers blamed it on Cosby.
• Another holding penalty. We may have the best offensive line in the country but we are the worst at holding I’ve ever seen. We seem to get caught more than any team I’ve ever seen.
• Touchdown David Thomas! Great pass from VY on 3rd and goal from the 20 yard line. Threaded it in there. Thomas needs to do more catching with those great hands of them and stop using them to hold.
• Did they just claim the holder, Matt Nordgren, falst started on the extra point? It looked like the right side of the line moved, but I’m pretty sure they said number 7. Crap, it just caused us to get the kick blocked. Way too much penetration in the middle of the line.

Texas 6, Okie State 7

• We’re playing absolutely terrible, the only way this game is remotely close is if we give it to them. We’ve got to settle down on offense.
• Decent kick and much better coverage. Of course, we were freaking offsides on the thing. How many penalties is that already? 4? 5? Ugh.
• The Cowboys are just playing with a lot more energy than we are. It sure looks like we must’ve spent all week celebrating our number one BCS ranking. Another big run and they’re inside our 10. They’re running right down our throats right now.
• Anytime they run the toss we have about 5 guys crash down inside for no reason and then they can just run untouched around the corner. We’ve got to pull our heads out.

Texas 6, Okie State 14

• Another high throw from Vince and this one’s picked off.
• And Oklahoma State immediately converts it into points. Our defense looked like they’d never seen the zone read before as OSU QB Al Pena runs untouched into the end zone. Embarassing.

Texas 6, Okie State 21

• Let’s come out and run it down their throats with Vince and Jamaal Charles.
• Big keeper from Vince. Down to the OSU 30.
• Looks like the OSU defense is forcing Charles outside and then they’re bottling him up. No seams up the middle for him yet.
• Vince has missed every throw by a mile. He hasn’t been close at all. 4th down.
• Pino converts the 45 yard field goal. More bad protection but he gets the 3 points.

Texas 9, Okie State 21

• Deep kick into the end zone by Johnson and great coverage. Cowboys will start at the 15 yard line, let’s hope we take the field position and get the ball back for our offense.

(more …)

Apparently Virginia Tech isn’t going to be the only fashion victim this week, the Florida Gators are playing well so far in their upset bid but they’re looking terrible doing it. Not even HD helps.

According to Fanblogs, Nike is punishing the fans of 4 different teams for not buying enough Nike gear. Or maybe it’s part of a special promotion. One of those two.

Billy Pittman and Ramonce Taylor have been close friends for 10 years.

Only one real big game this week (not including Thursday’s Virginia Tech game) and it’s the “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.” The matchup between undefeated Georgia and underachieving Florida is by far this week’s marquee matchup. The Bulldogs have been squeaking by opponents and will be without quarterback D.J. Shockley today. Can the Gators play up to their ability today and pull off the upset? Can they bring tears of joy to Urban Meyer’s face? The game is at 2:30 pm CST on CBS (in high definition, ABC sucks).

There’s one other game today between two ranked teams, #25 Michigan at #21 Northwestern, but that’s not particularly exciting. The Big 10 has a bunch of pretty good teams, but Penn State and Ohio State are the only teams really worth watching. Meanwhile, Texas plays a very, very bad Oklahoma State that should have Vince Young standing next to Mack Brown for the majority of the second half. The game will be on TBS at 6 pm CST.

Here’s how we think this week shakes out:

Related Links

• Last week’s picks
• SI.com Top 25 Scoreboards

“Texas’ 35-point victory over No. 10 Texas Tech stands out more than Tech’s 20-point victory over No. 13 BC.”

That’s certainly not breaking news, but Skippy has outdone himself this time. In his latest article on ESPN.com writes that there’s no way Texas should be number one in the country and that we wouldn’t stand a chance head-to-head against USC. It’s one thing to have that opinion (though I think it’s completely wrong), it’s another to then not back it up with rational argument. Hmmm… I wonder why he’d have such an irrational hatred of Texas?

He attempts to bash our schedule so far, despite it being better than both USC and Virginia Tech’s no matter how you look at it. Our opponents have a better combined record. We’ve beaten just as many (or more) top 25 teams. We beat a top 5 team on the road and demolished a top 10 team at home, USC and Va. Tech have done neither. Yes our schedule gets weaker from here on out, but just because we played our toughest games early doesn’t make them any less difficult, in fact it makes upsets even more likely.

He then claims that USC has to take every team’s best shot each week. Um, Skip, do you think the Horns are sneaking up on people? As Walter Cronkite says, “We’re Texas.” No matter what our ranking is, everyone wants to take us down. Factor in our national title aspirations and there’s nothing in the world our opponents would rather do than knock us down. They took “Arizona State’s best shot at Arizona State.” Whoop-dee-freaking-do! They’re 1-3 in Pac 10 play, they’re terrible.

My favorite part of the article is when he states Ohio State would give the Trojans a better game than we would. Wait a second… Didn’t we beat the Buckeyes? At their place? At night*? That doesn’t count Skip says, we didn’t win that one Jim Tressel lost it:

“Ohio State coach Jim Tressel blew that game more than Texas won it. Tressel appeared to be channeling Bevo by starting and finishing with quarterback Justin Zwick, even though Troy Smith led the Buckeyes on five scoring drives and built a 22-16 lead through three quarters. Zwick’s late fumble clinched a 25-22 Texas win.”

His basis for that argument? “Smith led the Buckeyes on five scoring drives.” Wow, five scoring drives? They must have been really rolling with him at quarterback. Oh wait, they weren’t. Not even close. Ohio State had one good drive and it ended with Smith’s best play of the night, a 36 yard pass from Smith to Santonio Holmes for a touchdown, but the rest of the night they did next to nothing with or without Smith at the helm. Those other 4 scoring drives? 5 plays for 8 yards. 9 plays for 22 yards. 6 plays for 11 yards. And finally, 4 plays for a whopping -1 yards. Look out Peyton Manning! Playing Smith the whole game would not have changed the final score.

A valid argument could definitely be made that the Trojans should be number one, but Texas has just as strong of a case. I think most people believe they’re clearly the top two teams in the country. I don’t understand the outrage over this week’s BCS rankings from the national media. The Trojans probably have the nation’s best offense, while Texas’ defense is second to none. Texas has played better against tougher opponents so far, but if USC plays well over their next difficult stretch they’ll likely jump back into the first spot anyways. Both teams deserve to be where they are and the exact order doesn’t mean much. After all, whether you’re number one or two in October doesn’t really matter, as long as both teams win out we’ll find out on January 4th in Pasadena who the better team is.