Next Saturday, I will be sitting at the Blue Light in the Marina District watching college football, drinking beer, and eating a quesadilla or three. I'll get there at around 11-11:30am and stick around until 7pm accompanied by 2-3 friends. It should be great.
I love college football. I love smell of the grass, the electric feel of 90K people all rooting for a common cause, and the pageantry of the whole spectacle. I will never forget my first home game at The University of Texas at Austin. It was against Missouri, and there was so much rain, that it came down in horizontal sheets. It was awesome. Watching a home game at Texas was amazing; friends and I would start gearing up Thursday night for the game. Gearing up entailed finding out where the opposing team was staying in Austin and waiting for them when they returned to the hotel after the team dinner. He hollered, spoke smack, and basically exuded hate. It was beautiful. On gameday, the friends living the furthest away began to walk towards campus roughly 2-3 hours before the game. At each intersection, you are joined by more friends and other groups of Texas fans. It is like watching a seed crystal in a salt solution - soon there is a mass of people in burnt orange and white heading towards the campus singing the school song, jeering at opposing fans, and picking up tailgate food as they approach the stadium.
Ah, yes the memories.
Here, between the end of last season(~mid November 2007) and this past week, a $150 million renovation was completed. This renovation mainly consisted of building up the North Endzone to add seats and complete the horseshoe shape of the stadium. The seating capacity is well over 90K now (94,113 according to Wikipedia and Rivals.com), and it is just awesome looking!
Here is a picture of what the completed North Endzone looks like:
Here is an architect's model of what the completed renovations looks like:
With that being said, let's talk some shop. I am going to focus on the Longhorns today. The next post (tomorrow) will deal with Cal and Florida initially, and then throughout next week, I will examine some of the other teams I follow or are important to my friends.
Texas has the potential to be a great a team. The talent is there, albeit young and inexperienced. The biggest question marks are at flanker and safety. The Horns need Fr-RS WR (redshirt freshman wide receiver) Malcolm Williams to step up. I think he will, but it is more of a question of when. And to be honest, when needs to be now. In the first 75% of the summer camp, Williams was absolutely amazing receiving quite a lot of praise, but towards the end of camp, he has seemed to hit the wall. He must overcome it for the Horns to be potent on offense. Williams is 6'3", 225 lbs, and runs a 4.4 sec 40-yd dash. He is a specimen to say the least. There are other wide receivers, but Malcolm Williams is Texas' best shot at maintaining its legacy for the flanker wide receiver on the offense.
Running back is not as big a concern as some critics think it is; Texas will be fine. The talent is there, and the offensive (OL) is set to be in the top 5 in the nations for the next 4-5 years. There is that much talent present on the offensive line (I am not kidding) and critics will be surprised.
Again, the key to the offensive is how explosive the young wide receivers will be and Colt McCoy, the QB, must cut down his fumbles and interceptions.
As for the defensive, the two freshman safeties will be the key to the defense. Earl Thomas and Christian Scott are raw but with immense upside. Both players are natural hitters with good coverage abilities. But how fast will they be able to recognize audibles from the offense and align the secondary to properly defense the opposition? There a lot of bad things that will happen with two freshman safeties, but here's to hoping it will be an overall positive experience with the good outweighing the bad.
The defensive line is going to surprise people. In my opinion, Texas has the best stable at 2 or 3 deep at defensive end of anyone in the country, bar none. This will be tremendous when facing the spread offense that is now permeating throughout the college game and has taken the Big XII conference by storm. I will focus on the development of the spread offense and how to defense it in future posts. The short story is tackling, speed, and execution. Defensive tackle is a gaping question mark after the two starters. Texas cannot afford any injuries at the defensive tackle position. Linebackers? I think Sergio Kindle is going to show the nation why he was a blue chip 5* athlete, but again, the linebackers have incredible potential that has yet to be fully harnessed.
Will Muschamp, the new defensive coordinator and hopefully future coach in residence, is fully responsible for the linebackers to develop. The past 3 seasons or the entire Mack Brown tenure has been marred with wasted talent at the linebacker positions. Mack Brown's concept make sense, in the sense the game has been evolving towards hybrid safeties and immensely quick defensive lines. But gosh-darnnit, I would love seeing the Sergio Kindles destroy receivers of the middle of the defense. I think linebackers who can rush the passer and ones who can cover backs or receivers have a place in the current game. The days of the hulking, powerful linebacker are nearing and end, at least in the college game, and with that, the 3-4 defense is also becoming a bit of an outdated mode of defense against the spread offense. Sergio Kindle has an opportunity this season to show he is a new age linebacker. At 6'4", 240-lbs, 4.45 sec 40-yd, dash he certainly looks the part.
I hope he looks like Tarzan and plays like Tarzan, not Jane.
Mack Brown says for every freshman a team starts, you should expect a loss. That's great, experience and knowledge of the game does mean something. But then, how does one expect USC or Florida to have the success they have had recently? I like that Mack is allowing the most talented to play despite their experience level.
I see Texas as a 2 to 4 loss team, anywhere from 11-2 to 9-4. If this team is injury-riddled, make it 5 losses. If everything falls into place, Texas can be 12-1 or 13-1. But that is going to take luck to go with the execution needed to play that level of football.
If Texas can have a 10-12 win season, it will be its NCAA leading 8th 10-win season in a row, and Mack Brown's prediction of a national title run in 2009 will be validated.
What do I think, more specifically? I think Texas will go 10-3 or 11-2 . I really do feel optimistically about the season, a far cry from how I felt 2-3 weeks ago. I feel as though the young players will develop on plan, and Mack Brown's new fire and renewed determination to bring another title home will permeate over the team. People love to rail on Brown, but I think critics forget how good he really is. Look at the numbers, they do not lie. Yes, he needs a couple of more conference titles and another national championship to be considered truly great, but he is in the top set of coaches right now when looking at all factors considered (coaching, gameday decisions, ability to change program direction, recruiting, representative of the university, ability to relate to players, connections with the NFL, wins, titles) [top college coaches - Nick Saban, Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer, Jim Tressel, Butch Davis, Bob Stoops, and Mack Brown].
Jim Grobe (Wake Forest), Paul Johnson (Ga. Tech), Jim Leavitt (USF), Greg Schiano (Rutgers), Jeff Tedford (Cal), Les Miles (LSU), Mark Richt (Georgia), and Rich Rodriquez (Michigan) still have a lot to prove, but there is a lot of future for them to do it in. Why is Les Miles on the list? Well, because he has proven to me he can win a national championship inspite of himself and with Nick Saban's players. Give Miles some time, he'll screw it up.
Texas needs to be undefeated going into the Red River Rivalry game with Mobilehoma, errr.., I mean Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a fielding a damn good team this year with quite a bit of talented experience. The stretch of 5 games in the month of October into the first week of November will show us what this Texas team is really capable of. It is a true gauntlet and no one can question Texas' schedule this year, with an armada of experienced quarterbacks they will face, 9 bowl teams, and well, just the normal hate they face anyways.
It is time for Texas to man up and win. Just win. I don't care anymore about these 10-win season streaks or anything. The talent is there. The coaching is there. The chemistry and team unity is finally back. Go win. Just f'in win. No more excuses. If you want to be the best, play like the best. First beat Oklahoma, beat the aggy, win the conference. That is by far the biggest smudge on Mack Brown's credentials - the lack of many conference championships. You still have time and an awful lot of talent - make it happen.
The luster from the 2005 national championship is still present, but it is slightly sullied from the past 2 season.
Just win.
I am excited. I am giddy. Hook'em Horns!
Tomorrow, I will overview Cal and Florida, which also feature two of the more innovative minds in offensive football.
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