Bill Little Articles Part V

Bill Little articles For https://texassports.com–

• In the End, it is about Time

• Time to Play

• Run it Again

• The Rest of the Mail Route

• The Road to #1 as Told by Dan Jenkins

• Yellow Brick Road

• The Road to Thankgiving

• For Love of the Game

• Tears of Joy

• Monsignor Fred Bomar— the Stone and the Fiber

   11.11.2007 | Football

Bill Little commentary: In the end, it’s about time

Every now and then, you have a perfectly perfect day. And that’s what Saturday was in Darrell K Royal -Texas Memorial Stadium. All of systems, all of the karma, just seemed to come together.And you gotta love it when a plan works.

Two months and a few days before, Texas had opened its 2007 season.As the sun set Saturday, it seemed the days had fairly flown off the calendar. It was ending; it seemed it had only started.

But now, here they were, those seniors of 2007 and their fellow Longhorns, running onto the field for the last time. Emotions run deep in such moments. Parents cry, and so do players.Goodbye is a hard thing to say, especially when so much of the last four or five years of your life have been invested in it.

Juxtaposed with that was the fact that it was Veterans’ Appreciation Day – a time to say thank you to all of the veterans to whom the stadium is dedicated.

And the irony was the common purpose of the two – Senior Day and Veterans’ Appreciation Day – was bonded together.

For it is in the military, in the essence of combat in battles for survival, that the importance of what happened Saturday is underscored.

Once, when he had risked his life against all odds to charge bravely against the Germans, World War I Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Alvin York was asked why he had done it.There were hundreds of the enemy, and at times he seemed to be all alone.

“Did you do it for the glory?” a cynic asked.
“No,” said York.
“Well, then,” asked the reporter, “were you thinking of your family back home?”
“No,” York said again.
“Your country, then?” the question came.
“Nope,” York said.
“Well, why then?”asked the frustrated reporter.”Why did you do it?”
“I did it,” said York, “for the guys in the fox hole with me.”

At the end of a team meeting on Thursday, Mack Brown had excused his seniors and kept his underclassmen in the room.

“Do not,” he had said emphatically to the young men remaining in the room, “do not let them lose their last game in this stadium.”

I thought about that when they loaded big Tony Hills onto the cart to take him out of the stadium with a leg injury that ended his day.In the communications booth, Curt Fludd, who directs the video shown on the world’s largest television set in the stadium, had seen the cameras focused on Hills, and out of respect for the injured player, he had just told the TV truck to switch off its shot of him.

And then suddenly, Tony Hills pounded his chest and thrust his right hand toward that perfectly blue Texas sky with a “Hook `Em” sign.

The anchor of the offensive line was gone.A week before, the other senior starter, center Dallas Griffin, had seen his senior year end with injury.

It was the second quarter of the game, with lots of time remaining.But when the versatile Chris Hall slid over to Tony’s spot, and Buck Burnette took over at center where Hall had been playing for Griffin, there was one overriding message:”Do Not Let Them Lose.”

The seniors had been a part of a remarkable period of Texas history. They had played in, and won, the first two Rose Bowls in Longhorn history. They had won in the Horseshoe in a first-ever meeting with Ohio State. They had a league championship, a National Championship, and with last year’s Alamo Bowl victory, three straight bowl wins.

So the Veterans’ Day message from Sgt. York fit perfectly with Mack Brown‘s admonition.Teams and warriors fight, not for themselves, but for each other.

With that as a back drop, it is fitting to recall that sophomore Colt McCoy and junior Jamaal Charles would work behind a young, retooled offensive line to move past the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday.

Even without Hills, the offensive line came together to account for 551 yards of total offense in a 59-43 victory over the Red Raiders. The victory stretched Texas’ record on the season to 9-2, making the Longhorns the only team in the nation to win nine games in each of the last 10 seasons.

The defense had done its part as well, limiting the high-powered Texas Tech offense to just 294 yards and 20 points through three quarters when the game was still a viable contest.

Most of all, the story of the game would be about time. Texas would control the ball for 40 minutes. Tech would have it for only 20. Time and again, Texas would make plays when it had to have them.The start of the third quarter, when the Longhorns effectively stretched away, included an 86-yard, 17-play drive that took almost seven minutes. The Longhorns converted 12-of-18 third down attempts; 4-of-4 on fourth down.

McCoy played as complete a game as any Texas quarterback ever has. He threw for four touchdowns, ran for two more, completing 21-of-30 passes for 268 yards and rushing for 51 more, including a tough 22 yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

When the day ended, they had honored the Veterans and celebrated the seniors. For the ninth time in his 10 years at Texas, Brown’s seniors had left their last game on Joe Jamail Field in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium as victors.

The game provided memorable plays, and superlative moments…thrilling performances and poignant memories.

The nature of the college game is that players spend four or five years of their lives as part of a team, as representatives of their school. When that day, that senior day comes, it always seems that it comes too soon. The years of youth are special, and then they are gone.

We will remember Tony Hills and the others, for all that they have meant. We will look forward to the next games, which will be in College Station and then at other destinations. Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium will not look the same the next time folks gather there. A north end zone project which is due to be completed next year will rise into the northern sky, and the view from the tunnel entering the field will change dramatically.

But in our minds, we will still see Big Tony, pounding his chest and thrusting that big right arm up in determined defiance.

And we will remember the day when seniors and their teammates played the last home game of the 2007 season, determined to do it for each other.

They had come into the season with the motto of “Earn The Right.”

And Saturday, they did.

 

12.04.2009 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Time to play

· Dec. 4, 2009

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

ARLINGTON, Texas — There is nothing left to say and little to do as Saturday’s Big 12 Championship Game between Texas and Nebraska approaches. The formula at this point is really simple – just go play.

Television commentators, newspaper scribes and fans from both sides have “what iffed” this thing to death. Any crystal ball by this time would be really cloudy, just from the hands that have passed it from pundit to pundit.

The bottom line for Texas was articulated well after the final home game in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. In the Longhorns’ locker room, senior center Chris Hall made a strong point about a simple visual that all of those in that place following the Kansas game could easily relate to.

“Every game we play, from now on, is about putting a number up on the wall,” he had said.

“The wall” is the chronicle of history that is marked in the team meeting room by various superlatives. That day, Texas had secured the right to place “2009” along with the other teams who have won the Big 12 South Division. The victory over Texas A&M added another year to the accounting of “unbeaten regular seasons.”

There are two categories remaining, and next on the list is the Big 12 Championship. And that, of course, is the entry passage for the right to play for the prize of the final category on the wall, the last notch of which was put up in 2005.

The Big 12 Championship game gives the seniors of 2009 a chance to win their first league title – a right that was lost by a second in Lubbock and a few BCS percentage points last year.

The first Texas team to sweep through a 12-game regular season unbeaten stands at the precipice of achieving its dream of playing for a National Championship, but to get there, it must accomplish its final goal of winning the Big 12 Championship game. Many people have groused that college football should have a playoff system, and in 2009, it is does for Florida, Alabama and Texas. It is one and done if you lose.

But again, we are repeating old news here. Just play the game.

In a way, I am reminded of Augie Garrido and his Longhorn baseball team a day or so before UT won yet another College World Series championship a few years ago. Sensing the pressure on his team, Garrido took them out to the outfield before one of their final practices. He talked there about a bat and a ball, and a game they had been playing since they were kids.

That is exactly what Mack Brown did when he talked with his team after its last full practice on Wednesday. He talked about the game, and the practice, but most of all, he talked about the precious value they have as a team, and about having fun.

“You don’t ‘work’ baseball,” Garrido had said. “You ‘play’ it.”

And that was the message Mack left his team with as they looked toward the Big 12 Championship game in Cowboys Stadium in Arlington. It will be everything you could ask for – two of the storied programs in college football and a repeat of the original pairing of the very first Big 12 Championship game in St. Louis 14 seasons ago.

There will be a packed house, and a national television audience will be watching. The past, and the future, will not be hanging from the rafters of the stadium, like the famous video board does.

In that space, it will not matter that the Longhorns have won all of their games or what Nebraska’s record is, or where the North and the South Divisions are rated in some computer model.

It will take three and a half hours to play 60 minutes of football. Sixty minutes of hopes, goals and dreams. For a week now, folks have been speculating, surmising, wondering.

In time, it will be about a record in a book, or a number on a wall.

But Saturday night, it is time to play.

 

  

 

10.12.2012 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Run it again

        

· Oct. 12, 2012

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

For some reason, likely because of the formation of the new Big 12 Conference, the Texas-Oklahoma game – AKA the AT&T Red River Rivalry – seems to be rushing upon us.

While in other years the game seemed to be anticipated for weeks, this one, it seems, is suddenly here. And while students were scurrying to hustle to Dallas for the weekend, the Longhorn football team was practicing in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

Beginning on Monday, even as folks talked about the exciting game with West Virginia on Saturday, annual ritual had gotten underway. Doug Smith, who for years worked as an assistant sports information director here at Texas, always said the second best game of the week (second only, of course, to the football game itself), was predicting who would be the first to ask the question, “When ya goin’ up?” That was not, however, the most uttered statement at the team’s final practice Thursday.

“Run it again,” was the repetitive phrase from co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin. If practice makes perfect, then Harsin and his offense seemed striving toward that goal.

What the years have told us about the game is that on the first or second weekend in October, a “happening” in college football will occur on the grounds of the State Fair of Texas in Dallas. And as qualifying material, understand that this unique meeting between the universities of Texas and Oklahoma has a way of taking on a life of its own.

Heroes emerge and legends are made in the space of three and a half hours on the floor of the Cotton Bowl Stadium. I have often said the day is like a kaleidoscope of the senses. Sights, sounds, smells. Texas Longhorn head coach Mack Brown‘s memories – as a guy who grew up in the farm country in the foothills of the Tennessee mountains – include the team’s ride into the Fairgrounds, past the livestock shows and into the sea of red and orange that engulfs the people waiting for the team buses.

It is Brown’s 15th trip down the tunnel as a head coach, and that is the fourth longest tenure of any head coach in the series. Darrell Royal was the head coach at Texas in this game for 20 years, Bud Wilkinson served as OU’s head coach for 17 years and Barry Switzer for 16.

The configuration of the seats changed dramatically several years ago when the stadium capacity was increased to over 90,000 with the addition of upper deck seats in the end zones, but the seating breakdown – burnt orange in the north half and crimson in the south – hasn’t changed. The fabled “tunnel” from whence the players and coaches enter remains the same, as if waiting for the entrance of the gladiators into the coliseum.

Interestingly, the game’s many unique qualities include the fact that each year the game changes, with new players and sometimes even different conference arrangements, and yet there are qualities that never change.
The caravans, both south from Oklahoma and north from Austin, begin moving the 200 miles between the two schools early in the week, but it is on Thursday that the travel really swings into full gear. This year, the eclectic nature of Austin gets a test as the Texas-OU game in Dallas is matched in the Texas Capital City with the popular Austin City Limits music festival. Promoters say that as many as 250,000 people may attend the three days of ACL. That many people will be on the State Fairgrounds on Saturday alone.

Ninety-thousand will fill the stadium for the early 11 a. m. kick, and the rest are weekend Fair attendees who are more worried about how little Johnny’s calf does in the livestock show or how Aunt Suzy’s pickles rate against the best in the state.

Heisman trophy winners and all-Americans have had their shining moments in this game, and teams have been vaulted toward national championship contention more times than not. This season brings a different dynamic, with the new Big 12 in full swing. For so many years this game was like a mid-season meeting of two warring nations, which came together at this neutral site and fought fiercely for a day, and then went their separate ways. Oklahoma could return to the Big 8 and compete for the right to go to the Orange Bowl as the league’s representative, and Texas would go back to play for the right to go to the Cotton Bowl game as the Southwest Conference official representative.

That all changed, of course, when the two teams were aligned in the South Division of the Big 12 in 1996. With rare exception, the winner of this game had the inside track to represent the division in the league championship game, thereby advancing to a BCS game – and many times the BCS National Championship game.
This season, with every team in the league playing each other, all of that has changed. Both teams are 1-1 in a league that is giving every indication of being the strongest in the country. The winner still has a long way to go before clinching anything. Much, therefore, remains at stake.

That’s why defensive coordinator Manny Diaz and his defense, and Harsin and co-offensive coordinator Major Applewhite‘s offense worked intensely Thursday. That is why, over and over again, they ran plays. Applewhite has played in this game, and Harsin grew up around car racing. Both have a great understanding of the engine it takes to win in this arena, and the fact that to do it, it needs to be fine-tuned.

That is why, over and over again, a drill would be followed by another.

“Run it again,” may have been the command for the Texas offense Thursday.

But for the thousands who will come to the stadium and the millions more who will watch on TV, it is also a request. Many are looking for the next big thing – the now and future star. Others, however, treat this game as they always have – the border battle for bragging rights. They will celebrate their trip with beverages and fried things and a corny dog. They may challenge their skills at pitch and toss on the midway, or take a whirl on one of the carnival rides.

The players, however, will remember the tunnel, the arena, and the unequalled atmosphere. They know that in practice you can “run it again.” But in this game, you do not get “do-overs.” It is an extended moment in time, where the re-runs come on television, and the memories stay for a life time.

 

 

 

10.19.2012 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The rest of the mail route

           

Oct. 19, 2012

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

In the 1940s and 1950s, when the U. S. Post Office was seen as one of the most reliable establishments on the face of the earth, Eddie Little drove a mail route out in Winters, Texas. Long before there was tweeting and the internet, letters and telegrams were the only written communication folks had.

Country folks relied on their mail carrier. Every morning, Monday through Saturday, my Dad would drive 70 miles close to the foothills near the mountains of the Callaghan Divide in west-central Texas, delivering everything ranging between mail order catalogs to letters from the front in World War II, Korea and later Vietnam.

There were muddy days and snowy days, days when high water meant an hour or so detour and times when he was so late he stopped and ate chicken soup with his patrons before going on.

And that is the point here. People at the end of the route were waiting, and the day wasn’t done until the last piece of mail had been delivered to the last person on the mail route. If you were a kid waiting for your Dad to come home, you came to understand the commitment that “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

In other words, he wasn’t finished until the job was done. It was a 70-mile journey, not 35. It had nothing to do with “go the extra mile.” It was all about “going the distance.” And as the Texas Longhorns stand at the half-way point of the regular football season of 2012, the most important thing I learned from my Dad in the midst of those days on the mail route was this: when a flat tire stopped him for a while (as it would often do on those old dirt roads), he never once approached the rest of the trip as, “I have to go on.” He, instead, loved his patrons and enjoyed his job. He always approached the journey with, “I get to go on.”

For the football team, Saturday’s Baylor game is a chance to get back on track after that flat tire in Dallas. For the fans, it is a chance to try and recapture the excitement they shared in the electric atmosphere that was the West Virginia game.

In Texas football, all losses are painful. Lose in the closing seconds and you always wonder about the might-have-beens. Lose big, and you are embarrassed. The great thing about games, and the great thing about life, is that whatever happens there are two givens. One is that you cannot change the outcome, and the second is, we have a God-given right to try the game again.

Saturday’s meeting with Baylor manifests that as two teams which have both suffered two straight losses meet in a crucial Big 12 Conference contest. Both had similar losses to West Virginia – Baylor 70-63 and Texas 48-45, and both were handily defeated by TCU and Oklahoma last Saturday, respectively. All week, Mack Brown, his staff and his players, have been focused on what can be, rather than what has been. It is, after all, the only way that competitors can function.

The product on the field, Mack has told them, is what matters the most. You can talk about injuries, and for better or worse, the fact is those folks will be only seven days better on Saturday than they were last week. You can reference age, which is a very fair assessment, but those players will be only a week older when they take the field Saturday in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

Co-offensive coordinator Major Applewhite spoke to the Austin Longhorn Club Thursday, and on the way over to the arena he recalled a saying posted on the wall of John Calipari, who coached his Kentucky Wildcats to an NCAA National Championship in men’s basketball in 2012. “Coach your team,” is what the sign says. The point, of course, is to get back to basics. Focus on your job.

That is the attitude the Longhorn family has tried to achieve all week. There are a lot of positive motivational things that can be said, and all of the support the team and coaches have received is greatly appreciated. But the message that resonates the most is that Texas has a 4-2 record through six games.

I have said this before, and you will likely hear it again if you hang around long enough, but my memory of my brother’s high school graduation was a guest speaker who quoted the poem which says, “Isn’t it strange that princes and kings and those who caper in circus rings and common folks like you are me are builders of eternity? Each is given a book of rules, a pair of hands and a set of tools. And each must build, ere his time is flown, a stumbling block, or a stepping stone.”

In other words, it is not where you have been, but where will you decide to go? Folks are waiting for you down the road.

 

08.07.2013 | Bill Little Commentary

Bill Little commentary: The road to No. 1 (as told by Dan Jenkins)

Following the Longhorns’ strong seasons of 1961 and 1962, Texas drew a lot of attention as the autumn of 1963 approached.

 Bill Little’s note: Following the Longhorns’ strong seasons of 1961 and 1962, Texas drew a lot of attention as the autumn of 1963 approached. But while prognosticators across the country generally had UT among their top ten teams nationally, only one publication actually crawled out on a limb and picked Texas as No. 1 in the country in preseason.

In the early 1960s, arguably the greatest collection of sports writers ever assembled were coming out of Texas. Among the leaders was Dan Jenkins, a young TCU alum who had risen from the star-studded sports staff of the Fort Worth Press (which produced several of the top sports journalists in the business) to become the lead college football writer for Sports Illustrated — the nation’s premier sports magazine.

In the magazine’s college football preseason issue in 1963, Jenkins tabbed the Longhorns as the eventual national champions.

Since that time, Jenkins has gone on to become one of the most famous sports authors in the country, publishing best-selling books and memorable newspaper and magazine articles. This coming January, Doubleday Books will publish Dan’s latest book. We asked him to tell us a little about why he chose Texas No. 1, and this was his response.

Much of what you ask about the ’63 Horns is in a chapter of my new book that will be out sometime after the first of the year. It’s called “His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir.” It’s basically a journey through the Fort Worth Press, Dallas Times Herald, SI, Playboy, and Golf Digest.

But without giving much of it away, allow me to babble a moment.

When I got to SI in 1963 and was made the college football writer, the magazine had not done a pre-season forecast in three years. This was because Herman Hickman followed by Red Grange had never made a decent prediction — ever. One example: In Hickman’s last year he picked Baylor as a national contender and the Bears went 3-6-1 and SI had suffered much embarrassment.

Thus, my picking Texas had a lot on the line for me personally. When I called Darrell [Royal] to tell him I was picking him No. 1, he said, “Have you looked at our schedule?”

I said,  “Of course.”

He said, “Then you know we play Oklahoma and Arkansas back to back and on the road.”

I said, “I noticed that.”

He said, “Good. I was afraid you might have lost your eyesight.”

He went on to say, “Everybody we play, their eyes are gonna be rolled up like BBs and they’re gonna come at us like real angry people”

I said, “Coach, that’s how your team plays, and it’s why I’m picking you No. 1.”

When I covered OU beating USC the second week of the season in Los Angeles, the Sooners’ Joe Don Looney and Ralph Neely and others almost gave me a medical condition.

“What have I done?” I asked myself. But after suffering a lot of pregame ridicule from various colleagues, the Horns turned the OU game into a laugher, and I thought I might be home free.

My biggest sweat was the Baylor game later on. I’d made it even worse when I quoted Darrell in an earlier piece saying, “Baylor has no football tradition to brag about, and their fans are the kind of people who wear green socks.”

So of course, 20,000 Baylor fans showed up in Memorial Stadium wearing green socks, and Don Trull and Larry Ellkins made Darrell’s life — and mine — miserable for four quarters.

I stood with Jones Ramsey (Texas’ Sports Information Director) in the press box when Baylor made that 78-yard drive in the last moments down to Texas 19-yard line, with the Horns holding dearly to a 7-0 lead.

Jones was a lot sharper in the moment of decision than I was. A few seconds after Duke Carlisle came from 12 or 15 yards away to make that leaping interception in front of Elkins in the end zone — greatest interception in UT history — Jones said, “Like Darrell says, three things can happen when you throw a pass, and two of ’em are bad.”

I wasn’t hoisted on shoulders and carried down the hall at SI for being a genius until the Horns beat Navy in the Cotton Bowl.

Obviously, that national championship wasn’t as much fun for me as it was the UT players and coaches, but for a rookie prognosticator and lowly sportswriter, it was a season I’d always remember better than what I had for dinner last night.

–Dan Jenkins

 

 

10.26.2012 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Follow the yellow brick road

·    Oct. 26, 2012

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

LAWRENCE, Kan. — It has been more than 70 years since we first learned about Dorothy, Toto, and all of the assorted cast of characters who weaved their way in and out of Kansas in the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”

But as the Longhorns football team travels to Lawrence Saturday for a meeting with the Kansas Jayhawks, it is a reminder that the road in the Big 12 Conference is an adventure not to be trifled with. And the story of the lion, the tin man, the scarecrow, the little girl, the witch and the wizard has its own reminder of the importance of lessons learned and what is real and what isn’t.

Texas, at 5-2, is in the third quadrant of its football season. It has survived the gauntlet that was the second “season” — against Oklahoma State, West Virginia, and Oklahoma. Texas started phase three with a win Saturday over Baylor, and now must face Kansas, Texas Tech and Iowa State. The final stage is the two-game stand against TCU on Thanksgiving and Kansas State in Manhattan on Dec. 1.

The tornado — and everyone who saw the movie remembers the tornado — was the whirlwind loss to Oklahoma. Somewhere in the middle of the victory over Baylor, the sun came out, and the Horns began to play. The tin man shook off his rust as he has gone in search of a heart, the scarecrow seeks a brain and the lion seeks courage. And through all of this, Dorothy and Toto stick together, the way teammates are supposed to do.

What you learned in The Wizard of Oz, and what the Horns are learning about themselves as they journey into Kansas, is that the only person in charge of what you do is…you. And therein lies the secret to success. The greatest enemy of self-esteem is fear.

Texas, a young and growing team, is looking to grow from the 56-50 victory over Baylor. Most of all, it is hoping to show improvement in every phase of the game. All of that starts, of course, by respecting your opponent. Lawrence is a lesson learned about what can happen if you don’t do that.

When the Horns played here in 2000, Texas trailed 14-0 early in the game before Chris Simms and Roy Williams put together a resounding statistical show in a 51-16 rout. The most dramatic game of the series, of course, came during the UT campaign to the Rose Bowl in 2004. Then, a Kansas team that would finish with a losing record, had Texas on the ropes late in the fourth quarter.

But in one of the most dramatic plays in his ultra dramatic career, Vince Young snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. Facing fourth and eighteen and trailing 23-20 late in the game, Young rolled right, jumped through the tackle of one of the best linebackers in the Big 12 and picked up the first down. With 17 seconds to go, he threw a touchdown pass for a 27-23 victory.

All of the message of the characters in The Wizard of Oz, and the story of Vince and UT’s dramatic comeback, reinforced one thing — just do what you can do. If you worry about the mountain, you cannot climb the hill. Such is the nature of the game, and the nature of life.

Dorothy and her friends at first believed that they needed to find strength from an outside source. What they learned is, the secret to success is within you, not outside you.

That is the message the Longhorns football players have been working on during a week of intense practice. They have worked hard at getting better, and have avoided the fear of failure that we learned so much about in The Wizard of Oz.

Victory is attainable if you are prepared, if you execute, and if you do not take your opponent lightly. The wicked witch expired because Dorothy and her crowd believed, and the characters in the movie succeeded because they learned something about themselves that was there all along.

Games can teach that. There is no substitute for pride. Confidence comes from believing that you can, and victory is achieved when all of those things work together. The “Yellow Brick Road” doesn’t lead to a real wizard at all. It leads, instead, to an understanding of yourself, and what it is that you really can do. The critics, and the cynics, may miss that. But the message of the movie, and the story of the chance to play a game, has been around for a long, long time.

  

11.27.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The road to Thanksgiving

Football and the Longhorns are a bonus on the day we celebrate Thanksgiving in America.

         

Even with new and improved highways and upgraded automobiles, it is still a five hour drive and almost 300 miles from Winters, Texas, to College Station, Texas. And as a high school senior paired with my brother and best friend, Harvey, and piled into his hand-me-down Buick on a cold and wintry day in 1959, I first saw Texas play live and in person on Thanksgiving Day.

In its own way, that trip was an important part of growing up at the end of the decade of the 1950s. Thanksgiving days have revolved and evolved since that trip. Life has its way of doing that. It is impossible to be around what the veteran announcer Chris Shenkel used to call “the color and pageantry of college football” and not respect the value of a singularly important national television appearance when America settles down from its turkey and dressing and watches Texas play football. The Longhorns have played more games on this special holiday than any BCS college football team in the country.

Fact is, the tradition of Texas and Thanksgiving Day dates all the way back to the beginning, when 120 years ago, a gathering of UT students crawled aboard a train bound for Dallas and walked down Main Street smoking big cigars as they prepared for the school’s first ever football game — an 18-16 victory over the vaunted “Dallas Football Club” in the school’s first-ever football game.

Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium was officially dedicated 90 seasons ago when UT defeated rival Texas A&M, 7-0, in 1924. Since that time, you can pick almost any year (with rare exceptions) and Texas and Turkey have run concurrently with moments and memories.

Thursday will be no exception.

The Longhorns are in the second year of the new Big 12, and are playing in Austin with what officials hope is becoming a tradition. Last year, Texas played TCU, this year, it is Texas Tech. As both Texas and Texas A&M adjust to the Aggies’ departure from the league, both schools bring strong state of Texas ties with their presence in Austin. The TCU rivalry is one of the oldest on record for Texas, and the Longhorns and Texas Tech have had a growing sibling rivalry ever since the Red Raiders joined the old Southwest Conference in the early 1960s.

Long before professional football began telecasting games on Thanksgiving Day, Texas occupied the mid-afternoon national television spot, just about the time the pumpkin pie was being served in households across the country. In 1972, as prime time television grew, Texas was a part of one of the early night games on Thanksgiving Night.

Thursday begins a new era of sorts, as FOX Sports takes over broadcasting the game to a national audience.

It will be a poignant moment in the stadium.

First, it is Senior Night, with as many as 20 or so Longhorns making their final home appearance. It is also the last home game for Men’s Athletics Director DeLoss Dodds. It has been 33 football seasons since DeLoss watched his new team open the season of 1981.

The final home game of this 2013 season also carries special meaning for the Longhorns football team. You could make the case that few teams in recent UT history have withstood as much as these guys have, and they have held together despite all that has been thrown at them. They have endured injuries to high profile players, and have pulled closer and closer together every step of the way in a season of challenge.

In their separate and similar ways, this year’s Longhorns — and DeLoss — have shared something rare and special. Both have had significant successes, but most of all, what they have earned is almost universal respect — and you can’t buy that at any price.

I began this commentary with a mention of that first Turkey Day game for me. The years are many, and the years are long, since that day Harvey and I rolled away on an early Thanksgiving morning to go and see the Longhorns play. It was a big deal. Time has its way of making you think about your values. Harvey’s gone now, and there are good folks — even with a freshman at UT this year — living in the house across the street from the high school. What you learn is that at Texas Thanksgiving Day is — as it should be — about faith, family and friends. And to that for the Longhorns you can add football.

It is true that highways and cars, television and so many other technological advances, have all changed. But what hasn’t really changed — and it is important to remember — is the reason for the season.

Football and the Longhorns are a bonus on the day we celebrate Thanksgiving in America. The heart and soul of the day is the opportunity that we have in our country to be free because brave men and women stand in harm’s way for us. For that we are thankful.

When the Longhorns played their Thanksgiving weekend game on Friday, the team used to meet after their meal on Thursday and one by one, each player had an opportunity to express what they were thankful for. When the game was moved to Thanksgiving Day, the schedule changed — and that’s a good thing. There is no way they could have withstood the emotion of the meeting and then gone out and played.

Because in that space, young men opened their hearts and arms to each other. They have played together, fought together, laughed together and cried together. And Thursday night, for the last time in the stadium they have all grown to love and think of as home, they will play together.            

  

10.14.2013 | Football

Bill Little commentary: For love of the game

In the end, this stop on the road in the middle of the 2013 season was, plain and simple, about “team.”

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

DALLAS — As he sat in the Longhorn Network studio and talked with LHN’s anchor Lowell Galindo a couple of weeks ago, Case McCoy spoke about a summer of searching. He had traveled 3,000 miles and spent ten weeks in the country of Peru.

But unlike those who in a time past sought wealth and treasure on such an excursion, Case McCoy was looking for something different:  he was trying to find himself.

“My life had been about me and about football,” he said to his dad. “I just decided that I wanted to do something for somebody else.”

In that interview, he reflected on the people he had touched — and those who had touched him — and he said this:

“I was just going through the motions here. I had lost my passion and I came to realize how much I loved this game, and there was a role that I could fill with my brothers on this team. I know that things haven’t always gone well for me, and the Cinderella story that I had dreamed for myself never happened….”

And so it was that on a hot, humid day in Dallas with over 90,000 people watching and millions more tuned in on television, Cinderella arrived at the ball — surrounded by friends that formed a cast of characters which body slammed their way straight into the finest moments of a series full of characters, and fine moments.

Kevin Costner did a baseball movie a few years back which perfectly fit the moment. He called it “For Love of the Game.”  There is truth in that, and it does take a commitment from players who are willing to pour themselves into the moments that transpire in the arena.

Saturday, however, was about far, far more than that.

Because to understand what happened in Dallas in the storied old Cotton Bowl Stadium, you first have to understand the people. The legendary attorney Joe Jamail talked to one of Mack Brown‘s first teams, and his subject was success. To boil it down and sanitize the language a bit, this was the gist of what he said:

He told them he had won more lawsuits and more money than anybody in that business, and he talked about the people he had faced on the other side of the courtroom. Then, he talked about a necessary key ingredient in any kind of competition — pride.

“If come up against me and you have pride,” he said, “then you’ve got a chance. If you don’t, I will whip you every time.”

Saturday’s 36-20 victory over Oklahoma was vindication for a maligned football team, true enough. Passion, pride, love of the game – all of that mattered. But for the Longhorn family, it was something bigger than that. It was a win for a coaching staff, and it is important to understand why.

Coaches, in the purest sense and at every level, are never in this business for money. Those who are do not last long. Coaching is like being a farmer. You work hard every day of the year dealing with elements which you ultimately cannot control. You teach, nurture and hope. Ultimately,  growth and maturity are the things that you cannot make happen.

But when it does — when that crop comes in on a West Texas farm and when players rise to, and beyond your expectations — there is the reward for a coach. You take pride, not in what you did (although that is certainly justified), but in what they did.

You celebrate the victory because half of the 90,000-plus people in the stadium are screaming and crying for joy. You deserve to take a moment to appreciate what you accomplished with a brilliant game plan and long hours in the office and on the practice field. Most of all, you gain your strength because, right before your very eyes, when the critics critiqued and the fans doubted, your players learned, and they — even if nobody else seemed to — believed.

Rival games carry with them commitment – and that is what Texas got from its entire football family. And while much of the limelight will be shared by Mack Brown and the players, every single person -from the student managers and trainers to the players who mirrored Oklahoma in practice – contributed to this one. That, as much as anything, is the definition of the team’s theme of “For the man on my right and the man on my left.”

The expanded football staff includes some really bright young people as well as veteran coaches. There are graduate assistants and quality control personnel who spend hours working with the full-time coaches. They have come from small schools and traditional powers, and all share a respect for Mack Brown and The University of Texas. As the Cotton Bowl turf filled with orange after the game and sweat and tears of happiness mingled with photographs and magic moments with the band, cheer, pom and service organizations, the smiles on the faces really did put special meaning in the phrase “The Eyes of Texas.”  The band played, the fans stayed, cheering as the players took turns wearing the Golden Hat — the trophy that goes annually to the winner of the game.

When the celebration was over, Case McCoy trotted toward the sideline where the Texas bench had been. There, he shared a private moment and a long father-son hug with his dad, Brad, who had made his way to the field after everyone had left. Major Applewhite, whose game plan Case had executed to near perfection, soon joined them.

The press conference after the game would feature the seniors – guys like Jackson Jeffcoat and Chris Whaley from the defense, Mason Walters and McCoy from the offense. They accepted the praise for their 3-0 start in the Big 12, but quickly pointed out that there was still much more to be done. At 4-2, Texas is on a quest to run the table with its remaining six Big 12 games and win the BCS Bowl berth that goes to the league champion.

That means that you can’t stop here. It is true that the moments and the memories of Saturday in Dallas will last a lifetime. But when Mack Brown was asked what he was thinking about, he said, “TCU.”  The Horned Frogs, of course, are Texas’ next opponent. The luck of the draw does give the Horns some time to take in their victory over the Sooners, since next Saturday is a bye week on the schedule.

The Longhorns are halfway through their season. The circle of unity has tightened, and when the TCU trip comes on October 26, their goals to finish strong are still intact. On Saturday they put together a game showing what they are capable of.

Chris Whaley said he dreamed of making a big play against the Sooners, and he did – with a pass interception for a touchdown from his defensive tackle position. Case McCoy said he didn’t sleep a wink on Friday night. Together with their teammates, they went out and made Texas Longhorn history with one of the best team performances in the history of the Texas-OU series.

They answered the critics who wrote them off, and they gave an affirmative answer to those who questioned  “Can they?” and now they have converted that to “Will they?”

In the end, this stop on the road in the middle of the 2013 season was, plain and simple, about “team.”

And whether you are Cinderella or a superstar or just somewhere in between, together you can go a long, long way.

 

  

06.13.2014 | Bill Little Commentary

Bill Little Commentary: Tears of joy

It has been a long journey for Mark Payton in his road back to Omaha.

         

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

OMAHA — This is a story of boys who cried, each at the same place, years removed, and the odyssey of life that has its own way of traveling.

The twilight Thursday brought a strange hush to the little park on 13th street, across from the big zoo and in the space where hopes and dreams were both dashed, and realized.  It was silent, with only a breeze lilting across the landscape as the Omaha skyline rose in the distance.  Faraway to the east, the mighty Missouri River meandered its way between Nebraska and Iowa.

It was here, where 65 seasons ago, Texas first came to Omaha to play in the College World Series in a place that would eventually be called Rosenblatt Stadium, that all of this magic in this city in the Midlands began.  Blocks away, where a new state-of-the-art stadium welcomed visitors to the College World Series, the flags and the pennants flew in the stiff northwest breeze that reminds visitors that the chill of the night holds on to the last vestiges of spring.

A Southwest Airlines jet had brought the 2014 Longhorns to Omaha, just days after the finish of an improbable run that had taken them through an NCAA Regional Tournament on the road in Houston and a sweep of two games in the Super Regional in Austin over the University of Houston.

For Augie Garrido, it is his 15th trip as a head coach at Texas and Cal State Fullerton.  The winningest coach in all of college baseball, he has led teams to CWS titles in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s.  Now, he returns for the second time in the decade of the 2010s.

But as the memories of the space deep on 13th St. where Rosenblatt Stadium stood, he remembers not only the moments of victories, but the tears.  You can add one more decade to Augie’s experience at Rosenblatt Stadium.  Where today a small park stands as a memorial to all those years and all those games, somewhere beyond where home place is immortalized is a curb where a disconsolate Fresno State player name Augie Garrido waited for a bus after a final loss in 1959.  An overthrow from the outfield that cost what turned out to be the winning run tore into his memory.

Fast forward, if you will, to another time, and another young player.  This one was a high school junior who had come from Chicago to watch the College World Series at Rosenblatt in 2009.  He had come to see his future team, the Arizona State Sun Devils, and his future coach, Pat Murphy, battle for the championship of all of college baseball. 

His name was Mark Payton.

History will show that Texas fought all the way to the finals of that tournament in 2009, and in the process the Longhorns eliminated the Sun Devils.  They came from behind in a 10-6 victory, and then sealed the deal with a 4-3 win that vaulted Texas into the championship series with LSU.

Payton, who was completely committed to attend ASU and play for Murphy, had a simple reaction.

“I cried,” he said.

Fortunately for the Longhorns, however, that is not the end of the story.

A season later, Murphy — whom Payton had known since he was playing summer league ball in Chicago — was fired at ASU.  And Mark Payton, an undersized outfielder who had a burning desire for the game and an exceptional ability to play it, was without a college home.

It was then that Texas pitching coach Skip Johnson traveled in the summer of 2010 to Jupiter, Florida, to watch players at a World Wood Bat Tournament.  He had not come to see Mark Payton.  There was a long list of guys who were on the Longhorns radar.  But once Johnson saw Payton play, and earn the MVP of the tournament, he came back to Texas convinced that the Longhorns needed to recruit him.

Johnson bargained with his fellow coaches, offering to trade a pitching scholarship for a position player if they would accept Payton, who would be a rare out-of-state recruit from Chicago.  Disappointed with the turn of events at Arizona State, Payton agreed to a visit.  And the fortunes of Longhorn baseball took a unique turn when he agreed to sign with Texas.

That season of 2010 proved one of the toughest disappointments for the UT baseball program in recent years.  Loaded with talent and returning as the national runner-up, the ‘Horns were shocked in the Super Regional by TCU, which won the right to go to Omaha.

The next season, Payton was a freshman who was capturing the hearts of the Texas folks, and was in the embryonic stages of becoming a super star.  The ‘Horns returned to Omaha, this time to the new ball park near the Old Market district in downtown.  Rosenblatt Stadium was a distance away, but the old grandstands still stood.

It has been three years since the Longhorns left Omaha in 2011, and in the time that has passed, much has changed.  Rosenblatt Stadium is gone now, replaced with the special memorial park by the Henry Doorly Zoo.  There are park benches and parking spaces, and there are pillars marking where first base was, and where third would have been.  Most of all, home place has been kept.  The green grass and the artificial surface base paths are all that remain.

Saturday, however, the boys that cried will be back in Omaha, this time together, this time battling for a National Championship.

Garrido went into the college coaching business, and as he takes this team to Omaha, his teams have won more games than anyone in the history of the sport.  And many of those wins in these last few seasons have been because of Payton.

Payton enters the College World Series with what is believed to be an NCAA record of 101 straight games in which he has safely reached base with a hit, a walk, or being hit by a pitch.  The old Big 12 record was 93, held over three seasons.  NCAA officials agree that, until proven differently, Payton’s mark will be listed as a national record.

So, as they begin this final trip together down college baseball’s finest hour, what is it that the two have in common?

First, it is an abiding love of the game.  Second, it as understanding of the value of the process.

When the Longhorns stumbled a bit toward the end of the season, Payton took a page from Garrido’s book of wisdom.

“We started concentrating too much on winning, and not enough on the process,” Payton said.  “We forgot to play the game.”

The sunset brought a particular serenity to the place where Rosenblatt once stood, the place where Longhorn teams came for 33 times in the years the series was played there.  Down the street, the vendors readied the sparkling new park for Saturday, when all of this will begin in Omaha for the 65th time.

Baseball, of all of the sports, is the one that has endured.  For more than a century, at little league parks and sandlots, at historic major league facilities and college stadiums, it annually brings little boys, and grown men who have never quit being little boys, to a place and time that seems eternal.

Augie Garrido and Mark Payton came to that space a full fifty years apart.  And now, together, they embark on another very special journey — where it is 90 feet from home to first, where the green grass grows and the winds blow, and memories are locked forever in a grand new stadium, or a little park where the evening brings the ghosts out for one more swing at the fence.

 

 

08.13.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Monsignor Fred Bomar — The Stone and the Fiber

· Aug. 13, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

The other night as I watched the vintage movie channel’s version of the western classic The Magnificent Seven (probably for the 400th time or so), my wife Kim walked through the room and paused for a minute.

“The amazing thing to me,” I said to her, “is that the actors pretty much have all died, and yet they seem so alive.”

The events of the past several months have reinforced that when it comes to the coaches and the other prominent figures surrounding the Texas Longhorns of the Wishbone Era. It was particularly brought to mind when two shocking stories about significant figures of the era came on Wednesday. First, there was the revealing that offensive backfield coach Emory Bellard was battling ALS. Then, word came of the unexpected passing of Monsignor Fred Bomar, who was the closest thing the team had to a chaplain and an icon around the Darrell Royal-coached UT teams of the late 60s and early 1970s.

The chain of events began in December with the death of R. M. “Pat” Patterson, who coached the defensive line. Then, two months apart–in March and May–the architects of the offensive line, Leon Manley and Willie Zapalac, passed away. Of the full-time assistant coaches on the 1968 staff, which created the Wishbone offense and launched the team on a 30-game winning streak that included two National Championships, only Bellard and backfield coach Fred Akers survive.

Monsignor Bomar’s link to Texas became forever cast in stone because of his unique role in the story of Freddie Steinmark, the Longhorn defensive back who lost his leg a week after the National Championship game with Arkansas, felled by a bone cancer that would eventually kill him.

“The Padre,” as Father Bomar was known then, became Freddie’s priest and almost constant companion over the 18 months that he survived. Although his time of close relationship with the football program ended when Darrell Royal resigned as coach in 1976, he remained a friend and adviser to many football players (past and present) and staff members.

Born in Luling in 1935, Monsignor Bomar’s deep Texas roots went back to the heroes of the Texas Revolution. In his own way, he maintained that fierce independence until the day he died. While serving as a Catholic priest for 50 years, he maneuvered a life that touched everything from football to politics. He served five terms on the Travis County Grand Jury. He was chaplain of the Texas House and Senate.

And in the summer, he would employ Longhorn football players to help maintain the grounds of St. Peter The Apostle Church, his parish in southeast Austin. In his later years, he would follow the sons of the young men whom he had known as Longhorn players. When Huston Street and his brothers, or Scott Ballew and his (the off-springs of James Street and David Ballew), were playing at Westlake High, it was standard procedure for The Padre to arrive early to their games, with his trusty lawn chair. He would watch with interest, and about the end of the third quarter, he’d fold up the chair and head back to the parish rectory and to bed. He surrounded the solitary life of the priest with his parishioners, and his many friends.

Until he felt the calling of the priesthood, Fred was on a path to come to The University of Texas and major in business, so he could assume control of his father’s lumber business in Austin. Though he went straight to seminary and never made it to UT as a student, he made up for it with his support of The University and the Longhorns. He was an active member of the Texas Exes, serving for years on their Executive Council. In athletics, he served in an advisory capacity and was a donor as a member of the Longhorn Foundation. He had spent a year as president of the Austin Longhorn Club.

When his support of specific athletes came under compliance scrutiny 40 ago, the equation was simple: When the rules of the NCAA come in conflict with the charge of an ordained priest under the law of the Catholic Church to help those in need, who wins?

The answer was, the kids did–and they continued to. He served on the board of directors of the Greater Austin Chapter of the National Football Foundation, and regularly purchased two tables to honor high school kids and their parents.

On the summer evenings when the coaching staff would gather for steaks at the St. Peter’s rectory, it was, like the movie, as if they would never grow old.

Fred Bomar got up from his desk on Wednesday morning, fell and hit his head. He called David Ballew, who came and called 911. He was still conscious when he got to the hospital, but the bleeding in his head was irreversible, and within hours it was fatal. As his last will and testament dictated, he was buried in the Texas State Cemetery within hours of his death. Street, Ballew, and a small gathering of friends were there.

A Memorial Service will be held at St. Peter’s Monday at 3 p.m., with a reception to follow in the Longhorn Centennial Room at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium.

For as long as I can remember, Fred and I attended both events and funerals involving UT athletes and athletics. He would give the invocation and I would serve as the master of ceremonies, or he would do the sermon and I would do the eulogy.

In late April, he finished a set of books that were a chronology of his life, including his 50 years as a priest and his time with UT athletics. When I opened the box a couple of months ago, I overlooked a note he had sent. I found it after I learned of his fall.

“There ought to be enough material in these volumes for an adequate `obit’,” he wrote.

The books were entitled “Faith, Ministry and The Modern World,” with a subhead “A Texas Priest Reflects on 50 years of Service.”

The preface to the book is a single quote from Pericles, the leader of Athens during its Golden Age from 495 to 429 BC.

“What you leave behind,” he said, “is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

In the movie The Magnificent Seven, the late Yul Brenner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Brad Dexter and Horst Bucholz and the only survivor Robert Vaughn are larger-than-life heroes who, as gunfighters, protect a small village in Mexico from the bad guy (in real life a UT ex named Eli Wallach). Forever young, they will always ride to the magic of the music, now moving across a silver screen that shows 3D and High Def in your very own home.

Emory’s illness and the Padre’s sudden passing remind us that life is fragile. Our memories capture the value of a moment, and the image of a time gone by. And in that space, they will always live, and they will always matter.

Because they are both the stone, and the woven fiber, in the mosaic of life.