And It's Goodbye to A&M

. . . even if it wasn't pretty. All I could think while I was watching the game was how extraordinarily comforting I found it to know that USC does not run the option. That's the play that allowed Aggie redshirt backup Stephen McGee—playing his first touch in his college career—to throw off Texas and put first-quadrant numbers against the Texas defense. The option! What Rodrique Wright was doing before he swatted the ball from McGee in the fourth quarter to force the turnover, I can't say, but he should have been closing down that option and making Mr. McGee take to the air. Because there's simply no way that a redshirt freshman can pick apart Michael Huff and the Texas secondary.

Say that we didn't show up to this game, but in fact we showed up too thoroughly—I think Texas was looking at an A&M team and seeing a W, not a hungry team with nothing left to lose, looking at lights out, led by a squeaky quarterback with nothing-but-nothing to prove. If McGee can make not one but two attempts sneaking on the corner for the TD in the third quarter, then Texas didn't fully appreciate the fact even that late in the game. The Longhorns' bad hands early on strike me as exactly what you might expect of an extremely overeager team.

It's fine, ultimately—an ugly victory still goes in the win column, and perhaps Vince Young will play with a little more hunger now that the Heisman isn't on the table but an even bigger question mark looms over the Rose Bowl. And that game is most definitely still up to question, naysayers be damned: Texas has played extraordinarily since last year's Rose Bowl triumph over Michigan and weathered a steady promenade of gloom and doom from the commentariat, from the upset over OSU through talk of the inevitability of Vick's Va Tech squad. Acknowledging that Reggie Bush is a very special player—no question—I'll say nevertheless that 1) Texas's juggernaut committee of runningbacks is an unquestionable threat, 2) Texas's secondary is stingy enough to squash any aerial threat in college football (holla, Huff), and 3) Vince Young is the most valuable quarterback in college football. That'll be more than enough to see us through the big dance.

Speaking of naysayers (sort of). The Washington Post article calls this season the greatest in college football history, highlighting USC as "the best team ever assembled"; proclaiming Reggie Bush as "the most exciting player in the modern era"—whenever that means; and noting a renaissance among historic programs Alabama, Notre Dame, and Penn State.

The last point is inarguable. But was it so recently as 2003 that Oklahoma was crowned Teh Best Squad Evar? And how did that turn out? Maybe it's less than wise to take one team as your data point (in the Post's case, USC), draw a hasty conclusion about the fate of the season, and stamp it for posterity. Texas ought to at least figure in for a mention, if this is indeed the best season of all time. That brings up the real question at hand: how does the paper get away with having Tommy the Trojan write its sports opinions?