40 Acres Sports

The Longhorns and Red Raiders will match up today in the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals at 11:30 a.m., so plan your escape from work/school now. The game will be featured on ESPNU as well as ESPN+ in many markets. Below is a list of the ESPN+ affiliates carrying the game:

We’ve got tickets for tomorrow’s games, so a Longhorn victory will not only help seal a #2 seed but will mean I didn’t waste $100 bucks.

Hook ’em.

Sure am glad I didn’t actually try to watch this whole thing. Longhorns were only on for about a minute, but still some good PR for the Horns with the female/unemployed market segment. A little bit of video of Matthew McConaughey and the team before the Rose Bowl and celebrating the win, and then some short stuff from Mack Brown, Rashad Bobino, and Limas Sweed. Bobino seems like a fun kid.

Video including Craig Way saying “the Texas Longhorns are college football’s national champions” in front of ten million television viewers is below.

Video removed by YouTube. The DMCA is dumb.

VY won their poll, but ESPN the Magazine tabs both him and Reggie Bush as NEXT anyways.

Vince was on PTI yesterday for their “Five Good Minutes” segment. Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon ask him about his frustration during the A&M game, how important the Heisman is to him, his childhood, whether he’s headed to the pros, and more. The university definitely has turned on the PR machine the last week or so for his Heisman campaign. He’s been on TV at least twice (Best Damn and PTI) and made the covers of both ESPN the Magazine and Sports Illustrated. I’m sure he’s done the national sports radio rounds as well. Let’s hope the media takes notice and then he goes out on Saturday and shows them of what he’s capable of.

Click here to watch the entire 4+ minute interview. (Note: Video playback requires Flash Player 8.)

Everyday Should Be Saturday has 52 hilarious and dead on reasons that ESPN/ABC/Disney sucks. I stole a few and came up with some of my own to put together my top 10 reasons ESPN and ABC suck…

1. The ruination of College Gameday, formerly the best show on ESPN. It used to be entertaining and informaative, then it was just entertaining, now it just sucks. I used to watch it religously every Saturday morning, but even though my TiVo’s still set up to record every show I’ve hardly watched it this season. Notice how about half of EDSBS’s list (several mentioned in a second, plus #23 Desmond Howard, #25 Lee Corso, #34 Mark May, and #35 Lou Holtz) is something wrong with Gameday. Anytime you make me long for the days of Trev Alberts, something has gone horribly awry.

2. Skip Bayless. You made me like Woody Paige (EDSBS #30), you must really suck. How did those guys miss Skip?

3. Stuart Scott. I know you can’t fire him because his creepy eye injury happened on the job, but at least give him PGA/beach volleyball duty so we don’t see him as often and when we do see him he can wear sunglasses. He freaks me out.

4. No high definition college football. This one is kind of weird. ESPN has at least a couple college football games a week in HD, while before this weekend ABC had shown one all season. I really hope they get this fixed by next season, they’ve got to at least be able to do one game every Saturday in HD.

5. Mike Lupica. A few weeks ago he attacked the Longhorns for running up the score against Kansas by kicking a field goal in the first half. Clearly doesn’t watch much (if any) college football but still has a strong opinion on it. One of the best examples of the media’s East Coast bias.

6. Nick Lachey on Gameday. How many millions of dollars do you want to bet he’s gone next year now that he’s no longer Mr. Jessica Simpson? I think there’s a better chance he’s working at Chili’s next year than at ESPN.

7. Fake news conferences. Seriously, what in the world were they thinking?

8. Stephen A. Smith. He’s an annoying ass when talking about the NBA, he’s an incompetent jackass when it comes to everything else. He’d almost be tolerable if he stuck to basketball.

9. Big and Rich. It’s as if they found as many ways as possible to ruin Gameday this season. These guys are genre-defying terrible.

10. Max Kellerman. He’s not even on ESPN anymore but I blame them for his existence. How do you take a boxing analyst and make him the host of a show? Nothing’s worse than stupid and opinionated.

Vince Young and the entire Longhorn team had an off day Friday versus the Aggies. While they managed to put 40 points on the scoreboard, the offense was misfiring all game and Young finished with only 181 total yards. Now some morons are bashing Vince for pouting on the sideline during the game because he “lost the Heisman.”

While he was clearly disappointed (and rightly so) with the way he and his team were playing, to jump to conclusions because you saw an eight second clip of him on TV is asinine. Maybe he was mad he just overthrew a deep ball, or because his buddy Selvin Young wasn’t getting any playing time, or because the offensive line was picking up the blitz, or maybe the turkey he had the day before wasn’t sitting too well, or because Courtney Lewis, his best friend and high school teammate got hurt, or… or… or… about a 1,000 other things. You know what happens when you assume don’t you?

Next time I see Vince smiling on the sidelines I’m going to assume he’s thinking about puppies. Makes almost as much sense.

…the Longhorns only hope to retain him.

Pretty good article and a cover for Vince Young in last week’s (it came Friday) ESPN the Magazine. Definitely a lot of love for his skills with the football and his character on and off the field. Maybe that’s why he had such an un-Vince performance against the Aggies, an “ESPN the Magazine” cover jinx!

The article has some comments on Vince’s fun, confident, and fearless attitude as well as his leadership ability. That’s a great quote. Interesting stuff on Vince’s relationship with his mother, Mack Brown, and Greg Davis and the lack of one with his father. You’ve got to love the passion and emotion Vince seems to have about Texas and his teammates, “Being QB of this team is what God put me on Earth to do.” You can see why the family atmosphere Brown has created would be hard to pass up for so many top high school athletes and their families.

One slightly scary quote though from Vince on his future near the end…

“It depends on the season, then I’ll sit down with my mother. Right now, I’m just playing.”

First time I’ve heard him say anything other than that he was definitively coming back next year. As Longhorn fans, let’s hope he knows he probably needs another year in school to improve his skills, even if it might not change his actual draft slot.

Related Links

• Gallery of photos from the article

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.

National and regional listings, don’t miss a game!