40 Acres Sports

Rose Bowl obviously #1. Several other good matchups and a lot of duds.

ESPN has decided to try and find out where the 2005 USC Trojan team fits in history, pitting them against the all-time Top 10 teams in college football. The funny thing is, they haven’t even proven that they are the best team THIS YEAR. And to make things even more ridiculous, they threw in the mediocre 2002 Ohio State team just to make sure that USC would win at least 1 matchup. Did Sean Salisbury come up with this crap or what?

Seriously though, where did all of this ESPN West Coast homerism come from? Did ESPN feel bad about only showing Reggie Bush highlights 12 hours a day during the Heisman race that now they feel they must kiss-ass to a USC team that hasn’t even won the National Championship yet? I can’t even comprehend what ESPN is thinking with this one.

Read the Ridiculousness

The 2005 Associated Press All-America team was released today and the Longhorns definitely had a good showing on the first team with four players, tops of any team. Surprisingly not a single second teamer and only three Horns named to the third team. I’m a little surprised neither Cedric Griffin or Michael Griffin got a third team mention, as both were pretty lights out all season for one of the nation’s best secondaries.

Congratulations to the seven Horns who were honored. Here’s the full list:

Offense

Defense

Third team Longhorns – OL Justin Blalock, OL Will Allen, and LB Aaron Harris.

Vince was definitely MVP, should have been at least closer for “most outstanding.”

A national title could pay off big financially for UT.

Of course USC has to have balanced attack if they want to beat Texas.

There are officially eleventy billion stories in the papers and on the Web about it now, but here are Vince Young’s comments from right after he learned he hadn’t won the Heisman Trophy…

“I’m just disappointed for my fans, especially for my teammates and my family for not representing them in the right way. I feel like I let my guys down, let my family down, let the whole cities of Austin and Houston down.”

Somehow the media tooks these simple comments from moments after he lost the award and ran with them. Every single story is based off these two sentences and every single story is bashing him for them. The comments most likely came in response to a question along the lines of “are you disappointed you didn’t win the Heisman?” (I say most likely because not a single one of the articles has printed anymore of the press conferences that excerpt.)

What was Young supposed to say? “I’m so glad I ended up losing this award, this was always my dream. First is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the hairy chest!”

If anything they demonstrate what a fine and selfless young man Vince is, and how much he cares about his team and about playing football. Seems to me like those are qualities that should be praised from our student athletes (and the same ones Reggie Bush seemed to have during his acceptance speech), yet the media is taking this opportunity to try to tear him down because of them.

I guess I should get ready for another three weeks of this garbage, There doesn’t seem to be any animosity between Texas and USC and there probably won’t be much controversy between now and the Rose Bowl, so I expect the media will set out to create their own stories and spice things up a bit. I’m sure there will be a ton of quotes they can take out of context to fit into their own version of reality.

I’m not sure I can take it.

“Prick – every rose has its horn”

Defensive back from Schertz Clemens (just north of San Antonio) James Henry has switched his commit from Oklahoma to Texas this weekend according to Orangebloods.com. Henry is a 3-star safety prospect who has good size (6’2″ and 195 pounds) and speed (4.4 40 yard dash) and was rising on many recruiting rankings before he broke his leg in October. Henry, who had offers from half a dozen of the nation’s top programs, becomes the 25th member of the Longhorns’ 2006 recruiting class.

It’s an added bonus to steal a commit from the Sooners, add a great kid to your program and subtract one from your rival at the same time.

I’m sure we’ll here his name for several jobs, I hope all this can wait till after January 4th.