40 Acres Sports

Horns basketball will get three Big Monday telecasts. Texas will make 11 national TV appearances in 2008-09 season.

Chip Brown is joining Rivals and Orangebloods. Best (only?) college football columnist is leaving the paper for the Interweb.

ESPN’s Pat Forde has his prognosticator hat on for the 2008 season and doesn’t go out on too many limbs. One of his predictions is that the Longhorns won’t reach 10 wins for the first time since 2000. Read on…

Texas’ streak of seven straight seasons with at least 10 wins will end.

The Longhorns don’t lack talent, but they drew a killer Big 12 schedule: three 2007 bowl teams from the North division (Colorado, Missouri and Kansas), and they’ll play two of those teams on the road. And in addition to facing Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, they must face trendy breakout pick Texas Tech in Lubbock. Burnt orange fans are encouraged to beat the rush and start criticizing offensive coordinator [tag]Greg Davis[/tag] now.

Definitely not a ridiculous opinion. The Horns struggled mightily to get to 10 wins in 2007, lost their biggest offensive threat, and face a tougher schedule this season. In Texas’ favor they should see a big improvement on defense thanks to new coordinator [tag]Will Muschamp[/tag] and those tough teams on the schedule could easily fall back to earth. If the offensive line and defense play more consistently the Horns should keep the streak going and be a lot more fun to watch.

The Texas baseball team is going for an important sweep of the Aggies right now (1pm on Sunday) live on Fox Sports Southwest. Last regular season game that could impact Big 12 tourney seeding as well as regional pairings.

Breaking News: ESPN is Not Biased Against Your Favorite Team. Of course that doesn’t mean they don’t suck.

Holiday Bowl Marred by Herbstreit and Musberger. I bitched about the awful job they did during my live blog, glad I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

No Texas game today so you can spend all day rooting against teams ranked ahead of the Horns, or you’ll have time to catch up on the chores your wife has been bugging you about since August. Either way you’ve got a busy day ahead of you. The game of the day is Ohio State at Michigan. Not as exciting as we thought it would be a week ago but the outcome will decide the Big 10 winner.

If you choose to tick off the misses, here’s what to watch today:

(7) Ohio State at (21) Michigan – 11:00 am on ABC. Winner goes to the Rose Bowl and Ohio State could still back their way into a national title shot if they win.

Duke at Notre Dame – 1:30 pm on NBC. Please don’t actually watch this, I just wanted to point and laugh at the worst nationally televised game in history.

(6) West Virginia at (22) Cincinnati – 6:45 pm on ESPN. Cincinnati “upset” South Florida and UConn the last two weeks but I don’t think they can hang with the Mountaineers if White and Slaton play the whole game. The Big East has been terribly overhyped all season but I think WVU is legit.

(17) Boston College at (15) Clemson – 6:45 pm on ESPN2. This is a game between two decent, ranked teams but I still couldn’t be any less interested in watching it. The media keeps screaming about how many second ranked teams have lost this season, maybe it’s because they keep putting decidedly average (or worse) teams like BC and South Florida in that spot?

(4) Oklahoma at Texas Tech – 7:00 pm on ABC. A win by the Sooners means they clinch the Big 12 South. If the dirt burglars win out they also are probably going to get a shot at the MNC. So in other words… GO RAIDERS!

FSN to air Texas 2007-08 basketball preview Monday night. 30-minute show will feature interview with Rick Barnes on the upcoming season.

Longhorns en Espanol Big in Austin. Nice article on the Spanish language broadcast on 1260 AM in Austin.

An SEC match-up between Auburn and Georgia is the only game between ranked teams today but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad day for college football fans. The Big 12 may be home to the day’s best games including a huge trap for the still undefeated Kansas Jayhawks as they travel to Stillwater to face Oklahoma State.

Here’s today’s lineup:

(12) Michigan at Wisconsin – 11:00 am on ESPN. After losing their first two games of the season Michigan has beaten a bunch of mediocre Big 10 teams to climb back up to number twelve in the current polls. Wisconsin beats them at home unless Chad Henne has a huge day.

Texas A&M at (6) Missouri – 11:30 am on FSN. This could be an ugly one for the Aggies, Mizzou quarterback Chase Daniel is going to light them up today and put the final nail in Dennis Franchione’s coffin.

Air Force at Notre Dame – 1:30 pm on NBC. 1-9. Ha. Go Air Force!

Texas Tech at (14) Texas – 2:30 pm on ABC. The game will reportedly be in high definition, finally. Tech is always a scary game for the Horns and today shouldn’t be any different.

(18) Auburn at (10) Georgia – 2:30 pm on CBS. The only game of the day between two top 25 teams. I haven’t been particularly impressed with either team this year but they play great defense and they’ve been winning tough games.

(4) Kansas at Oklahoma State – 7:00 pm on ABC. The Jayhawks’ defense has been incredible this season but the OSU Cowboys’ offense will give them one of their first tests of the year. I’m calling the upset, Okie State wins at home tonight in front of a national audience.

(17) USC at California – 7:00 pm on ABC. Not nearly the match-up we thought this game was going to be a month ago but still should be fun to watch. A battle to see which team will finish third in the Pac-10.