Bill Little Articles Part III

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

• The Bugle and the Flag

• A Day at the Fair

• The Magic Switch

• The “I” in Rise

• the “R” word

• A Moment for the Soul

• Faith, Family, and Friendship

• NCAA Chronicles

• NCAA Chronicles part II

 05.28.2012 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The bugle and the flag

        

May 28, 2012

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

Perhaps – just perhaps – it is the story of the bugler that will allow us all to surround ourselves with the meaning of Memorial Day, 2012.

For most of the past 22 years, retired Navy Commander Harvey Edward Little walked to the front of the First Presbyterian Church in Ambler, Pennsylvania, on the Sunday before Memorial Day. There, he stood with the light shining in through the stained glass windows, and talked about the power of the weekend, and what it all meant.

Monday, as the sun was about to burn through the mist in a forest-like cemetery in the Pennsylvania hills, we buried my brother.

And the bugler played taps.

The month of May had begun for the Texas football family with Mack Brown introducing Admiral William McRaven at an event in Austin. There, he watched the architect of the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden become emotional as he talked about the realism of war, and the loyalty of America’s fighting men and women to each other. He cried because a brave fellow Navy SEAL had been among those killed in a helicopter crash on a mission in Afghanistan.

Less than a week later, we all celebrated our own Nate Boyer, a staff sergeant in the Green Berets currently serving with the 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group in the Texas National Guard. Nate, a bronze-star winner after two Special Forces tours in the Middle East, received the Outstanding Young American Award from the Greater Austin Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame. He will spend the first part of his summer deployed – and take along a football and pads so he can continue to practice as he tries to earn the starting role as the Longhorns’ long-snapper for punts this fall.

Friday completed the span of the generations, as ardent Longhorn fan Frank Denius was honored again by the French government for his bravery following the D-Day invasion of World War II in June of 1944.

Through all of that, Memorial Day looms as a reminder that while we may always remember, at this time each year we stop to say thank you.

Admiral McRaven, a UT ex-student, reflected in his emotion what Nate Boyer said to the high school graduates honored at the Austin NFF chapter banquet.

“I fight,” he had said, “for the person on my left, and the person on my right.”

The author, William Manchester, said that well in his book, “Goodbye Darkness,” when he said that he had learned that the Marines who died on Okinawa had given their lives…not for God or country, but for each other.

Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium was built in 1924 and first dedicated to the Americans who had given their lives in the fighting of World War I. Several Longhorn football players were among them, including perhaps the best two-sport star of the era just prior to the war, Pete Edmond.

When America was drawn into the conflict in Europe, Pete Edmond gave up his banking job to enter Officer’s Training Camp, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He left for France in April of 1918.

At first, he wrote letters every day – even if they only contained a few lines. A last letter arrived on October 24, 1918. It painted a grim picture of war on the western front as the fate of the world hung in the balance. That was the last his family ever heard from Pete Edmond. Months later, after searching for word through the military and the Red Cross, the family received a cable gram from General Pershing himself.

“Deeply regret to inform you… ,” it began. It went on to describe where Edmond had been buried, in what would become the largest overseas cemetery in United States history.

Later, the family would begin to piece together the story of Lieutenant Pete Edmond.

On August 6, 1918, he made a personal reconnaissance of German positions in the area, covering almost two miles of ground under heavy fire. For that, he was awarded the Silver Star, the third highest recognition in the US military.

On September 26, he was wounded, but refused to go to the rear and stayed with his men as company commander.

And then, on October 11, 1918, he was killed charging a German machine gun position in the battle of the Argonne Forest, one of the bloodiest campaigns in the history of American warfare, where 26,000 American soldiers died.

He died fighting for his men, and fighting for his country.

Almost a century later, my son, David Little, left his law practice in Austin to return to active duty as a Marine lieutenant colonel. For most of a year’s tour of duty, he served in the broiling heat of the vast Al Asad province in Iraq.

David stood, along with his cousins in uniform at the graveside for Commander Harvey Edward Little. Together, they represented the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines.

His mind drifted back to the sands of the Middle East, to his fellow officers who had to write letters to the families of fallen Americans who had died fighting for freedom, much as General Pershing had done almost a century before. Harvey Little had seen that, serving in the middle of the Vietnam War as an officer aboard the USS America, and during his 22 years as a naval officer.

In the history of American military, the bugle has a long and honored tradition. I thought of that as I remembered the scene at the little cemetery in Pennsylvania, where the naval officer had played flawlessly and beautifully. It was still drifting through my mind as I climbed on a plane in Dallas to head to Oklahoma City for the Big 12 Baseball Tournament.

There were at least a dozen young men and women on the plane who were headed to Oklahoma City so they could get on a bus to travel 90 miles to Fort Sill, near Lawton, where they would begin two months of basic training in the army of the United States of America. Chris, the young man sitting next to me, had left his home in Jonesboro, Arkansas, that morning, and fell asleep as this leg of his journey with a dream of becoming a medic was about to end.

The gate agent had said the same thing to each young person who had checked in.

“Thank you for your service.”

The next morning, a bugler would awaken them in southwestern Oklahoma, to a totally different cadence and melody.

In the cemetery with the tall spruce trees and the wistful look of a mini-forest on what is called Rose Hill, the bugler finished his playing of “Taps” and laid the shiny instrument in the dew-kissed grass and joined his commander at the graveside. Together, they meticulously folded the flag which had draped the coffin. When they were finished, the commander turned to Harvey’s wife, Joan (who had been a Navy nurse) and looked straight into her eyes, and this is what he said as he handed her the folded flag:

“On behalf of the President of The United States and a grateful nation, I thank you for your husband’s service to his country.”

In November, we as Americans celebrate Veterans Day on the anniversary of the end of World War I. In May, we stand together with the members of our U. S. Forces and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

When David Little returned from Iraq, he sent an e-mail home before he left.

“I cannot leave this place,” he wrote, “without remembering those who will not return. Both friends and Marines and sailors I did not know shed their blood and gave their lives here. They believed in what they were doing. They took a stand and made a difference with their lives, and are to be respected for that. They stepped up and faced death so that others would not have to, and they are to be honored for that.

“And, they gave of themselves selflessly so that my children and yours can play in the yard, go to school, and live their lives without fear…they are to be thanked for that.”

And so it should be, on Memorial Day in a May of memories.

Bill Little commentary: A day at the fair

·  Oct. 3, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

DALLAS — We’ve said this before–the State Fair of Texas on the day of the Texas-Oklahoma game is like a kaleidoscope. You twist it and turn it, and it is a myriad of the senses–smell, sight, sound, touch and taste.

The game itself, year after year, will likely be a contest of wills, buoyed by swings of momentum and emotions. And that is exactly what happened Saturday in Dallas.

After a stretch where a No. 1 national ranking and a possible path to the national championship always seemed hanging in the balance, this one was right back to being an old-fashioned football game between Texas and Oklahoma.

In the end, there were two significant senses that reflected the day–not necessarily at its best–but at its finest. For the teams and for most of the fans, this one was about pride–not about the outcome of the game, but for the way they fought to play it. The first sense you realized when it was over was one of touch–when you walked by Texas’ Alex Okafor and patted him on the back and felt the sweat splash your hand.

That was what Mack Brown told his team in an emotion-filled locker room after the game. The Longhorns had left everything they had on the field. They had fought until they ran out of time.

It would be a cliché to simply say it was a “hard-fought” game. It is a truth to say the game brought back memories of some of the old-time matches between the two schools, where the two teams slugged it out like a pair of heavyweight boxers.

The game would, in the end, be decided by a series of plays determined by inches.

Three of the four Oklahoma touchdown drives were kept alive by critical penalties when it appeared the Longhorns had drives stopped. And that doesn’t include a play when the Longhorns were ruled offsides after appearing to have forced a turnover deep in Oklahoma territory.

Each, of course, had their heroes. Despite once trailing by two touchdowns and having the ball for fewer than four minutes because of the extended Sooner drives in the first quarter, Texas rode a 60-yard run from D. J. Monroe to a 14-7 deficit after the first 15 minutes of the game. But a pass interference call on third down midway through the second quarter gave Oklahoma new life on their next touchdown drive, and the Sooners took a 21-7 halftime lead.

On the first possession of the second half, Texas converted a fake punt en route to Justin Tucker‘s first field goal of the game, and the score was narrowed to 21-10.

Eleven points separated the teams entering the third quarter, and Texas appeared to have grabbed the momentum when the Longhorn defense stopped Oklahoma on a third-and-20 incomplete pass near midfield. But a personal foul call gave the Sooners 15 yards and an automatic first down. The Sooners’ DeMarco Murray tiptoed down the west sidelines for 20 yards and the touchdown that made it 28-10. In a game of inches, Murray did a marvelous job of just staying inbounds on the run.

The Longhorns put together their best drive of the game on their next possession. The big plays of the nine-play, 76-yard drive were Garrett Gilbert‘s 33 yard pass to Cody Johnson and Johnson’s five yard touchdown run. It was 28-17. The Longhorns, whose will had been questioned just a week before in the loss to UCLA, were trying to come from 18 points down in the fourth quarter, and they would darned near do it.

The defense foiled a Sooner fake field goal on the next drive. Then, after an exchange of punts, Texas drove to the Sooner four-yard line, and Tucker kicked his second field goal of the game to cut the lead to 28-20.

The final one minute and 39 seconds of the game would provide a picture of how emotional and physical the game was. Tucker’s kickoff sailed over the Oklahoma front line, and as the Longhorns desperately chased the free ball, it rolled into the end zone for a touchback. On the second play of the Sooners’ drive from their own 20, Emmanuel Acho forced a fumble by OU quarterback Landry Jones, and in the scramble to try to get the ball, it rolled about three inches out of bounds before Texas corralled it–and Oklahoma retained possession.

Still the defense held and forced a punt. Thirty-six yards away at his own 41, Aaron Williams tried to make the play of the game, and lost the football. Oklahoma recovered and ran out the clock.

As the Longhorns left the field after joining in the Eyes of Texas, there was sincerity in the OU band directors who congratulated the Texas players for a tremendous game as the `Horns headed up the tunnel.

There, an emotional Mack Brown told them how proud he was to stand as their head coach. A week after he had talked about embarrassment, this week he spoke of pride.

Throughout the history of this series, it is unique in that after the game, whichever team loses leaves a State Fair grounds void of the fans who came to support them. If Texas wins, the only color you see is orange. If Oklahoma wins, it usually has been red. Therefore, the final “sense” of the day is that of sight and this time there was an exception. Hundreds of Longhorn fans, their hands up with the Hook `em Horns sign, outnumbered the Sooners’ fans.

The recent history of this series tells you that the winner of this game does not have a free pass to the Big 12 South Division title. Oklahoma won the game in 2001 and didn’t make the title game. Texas was victorious in 2006 and 2008 and didn’t play in the championship. In the parity world of college football, particularly this season in the Big 12, absolutely nothing appears certain. When you have seven games remaining, there is a bunch of football left to play.

That is what Mack Brown saw in his disappointed team in that dressing room in Dallas. For a young team, there were things to build upon. There are challenges remaining – with a tough road schedule and a South Division that appears the most balanced, perhaps, in its history. But Saturday left the Texas Longhorns with some real positives.

And the greatest among those is that, win or lose, there is importance in fighting until the end.

Most of all, it reinforces the value of not what, but who you are.

Bill Little commentary: Memorial Day

May 30, 2011

Editor’s note: The following article is a reprint of a classic Bill Little commentary that originally appeared on May 25, 2008.

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

“In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago;
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you from failing hands we throw&;
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die;
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.”

Sitting in the back of an ambulance near a battlefield in France, a Canadian doctor, Lt. Col. John McCrae looked out on a cemetery where a gentle breeze stirred the wildflowers that provided the imagery for this classic poem of World War I. A friend lay buried in the field, one of thousands who died in what was called “The Great War — the war to end all wars.”

Sadly, that lofty goal has never been realized.

“The torch” has been passed from generation to generation. Brave men and women stand today in harm’s way, fighting to preserve the life we know.

Memorial Day is, and should be, a day of honor. Since the days of the War Between the States, this has been a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service. And in that space, history both mourns, and applauds, who they were, and what they did.

And as the massive remodeling of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium nears its completion during this summer, what started in 1924 as a concrete edifice dedicated to those Texans who died in World War I re-emerges as a majestic monument to them, and to all those men and women who have served our country in any foreign conflict.

Juxtaposed with the Louis Jordan Flagpole in the southeast corner of the stadium (a monument honoring the first former Longhorn killed in World War I) are a plethora of significant factors that recognize the value of leadership, as well as the importance of history. The stadium veterans committee is already working on a re-dedication of the stadium this fall, as well as a plaza outside the north end that will serve as a special place to remember the veterans and memorialize those who died.

Mack Brown‘s office contains a healthy supply of pictures and flags sent by Longhorns serving in the Middle East, and the stirring memory of Marine Ahmard Hall carrying the American flag onto the field started a tradition that is repeated each year.

About a month ago, Coach Brown sat in his coaches’ conference room talking to more than a dozen touring cadets from the United States Military Academy at West Point. The subject had to do with teamwork and leadership.

A little over ten days ago, Penn State coach Joe Paterno and Hall of Fame wide receiver and Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Lynn Swann came to Austin to help celebrate the launching of a Distinguished Chair in Leadership in Global Affairs in Mack Brown‘s name.

The Chair will be connected to the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and it is not without irony that one notices that the LBJ Library and the stadium — two of the three most recognized structures on the UT campus (the Tower being the other) — sit across the street from each other.

The students who helped raise the money for the construction of the original Texas Memorial Stadium did not have the benefit of today’s technology to understand about “global affairs.” All they knew was that school mates had died in faraway fields whose names they couldn’t pronounce.

It was a big, big world, then.

Today, instant communication and travel have made the world a lot smaller, and yet larger with the challenges. And as Mack accepted the honor of the Chair named for him, he acknowledged that leadership cannot come without teamwork, and teamwork is about relationships. All of which goes back to the benchmark principles of his football program — communication, trust and respect. All applied with a common purpose.

Global affairs have to be about all of that. That is the power of education, the reason for reasoning. But as we dream of a world where we can all work together, it is important to remember that reality says there will be a time where, despite the best of efforts, men and women will have to stand and fight against the demons of greed and jealousy.

That is why, on the lake or at the barbecue or at some distant outpost where death bids hard to take the valiant, it is important to understand what Memorial Day is all about.

The men and women of the United States Armed Forces fight, not to make war, but to achieve great peace. Death is, and always will be, a part of the reality of war. That is why, on Memorial Day, America pauses to honor those who have lost their lives in battle.

Because the men and women we honor, whether it is amid the white crosses at Arlington Cemetery or a family plot in a little town in West Texas, died fighting for our freedom.

And there is no thanks great enough, or memorial big enough, to repay them and their families for that.

Or, as another poet wrote as a reprise to McCrae’s poem, “We cherish too, the Poppy red that grows on fields where valor led, it seems to signal to the skies that blood of heroes never dies.”

10.24.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The magic switch

·Oct. 24, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

I’m going to tell this story again because it fits. Once, on a trip back from a basketball game in Iowa (of all places), our seasoned airline pilot backed the plane away from the terminal, and turned in the light snow to head to Dallas–and he hit the jet bridge with the tip of the plane’s wing.

As we realized that we were going to have to wait for another aircraft to take us to Dallas, where we would have to spend an unexpected extra night on the road, the captain calmly came over the plane’s speakers. After apprising us of the situation, he finished his statement with these words: “no explanation…no excuses.”

If your cell phone inexplicably locks, they tell you to take out the battery, wait a minute, and then put it back. When your computer doesn’t work right, the IT support people first have you unplug it and then plug it back in.

Coaches don’t have that luxury. In the world of human behavior, Mack Brown has called it “responsibility without control.”

Saturday had begun at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium with a pre-game delay and warnings of a storm that never came. It was an omen for a day that, for Texas, never seemed to get started.

All week Mack had tried to tell his team, and all those associated with Burnt Orange, that this 2010 football team needed to play hard and well to win. Not just all the games…ANY game. He knew that coming off of a great road win over Nebraska that his team would be praised, and feel good about itself. He never bought in to the general consensus that a magic switch had been found, and that this team – which had lost back-to-back games a week before to UCLA and Oklahoma – was suddenly the Longhorns of 2008 and 2009, which had lost two games in two years. “This team,” he had said, “is not good enough to just walk out there and assume a win. We could win the rest of our games, or we can lose the rest of our games, depending on how we play.”

He knew that Iowa State would come in and play with passion. The Cyclones had beaten Nebraska in Lincoln last season, and they had been embarrassed in their previous two games. They had never beaten Texas. Ever. In pre-game warm-ups, Mack didn’t like what he saw. After a week of good practice, his team seemed to be complacent.

“Arrogance,” is what he would call it in his post game interview.

Being a coach is like being a parent, and if you have raised kids, you know exactly what he saw. And if you think these guys aren’t “kids,” think again. There are no humans smarter, or parents dumber, than the blessed age of teenager to about 21 or 22 years old. After that, they figure out that maturity does, after all, have wisdom. That’s not a bad thing, it is just a true thing. They simply don’t think it can happen to them.

It doesn’t help much to remind yourself that this kind of thing is happening all over America. In fact, things are so topsy-turvy in college football this season that after Nebraska’s defeat of Oklahoma State and Missouri’s win over Oklahoma, the Longhorns – with two defeats – are still mathematically in the race for the Big 12 South Division title. In the final moments of the Big 12, the South Division is looking like the North did those many years, when every team was about the same.

What is important here, as the team and coaches try to figure out how to get there from here, is to appreciate the great run Texas has had. This team, and this staff, are not ready to give up on what has been the longest era of sustained success in school history.

That is why Brown spoke Saturday of his resolve to get “this thing” fixed. It’s why he is mystified by a defense that stops Nebraska and then surrenders 80 and 90 yard drives to a team that will finish no better than fourth in the six team North Division. It’s why he calls “unacceptable” an offense which has averaged 40 points per game in recent years but puts only 21 on the board against a team its archrival thrashed 52-0 the week before.

It is pretty well accepted in college football that the team which wins a national championship often suffers from what Mack calls an attitude of “entitlement” in the years that follow. That is not new. In the Darrell Royal era at Texas in the early 1960s, the Longhorns lost a total of three games in the four seasons between 1961 and 1964. Then, they had three straight four-loss seasons. My friend Cliff Gustafson once told me, after his team had lost a double-header in baseball for the first time ever, “Bill, if you stay in this business long enough, there are no more firsts.”

In the locker room following the game, Mack was as stern with the team as he was with the media. Now, he had said, is not the time for finger pointing. It’s a time for soul-searching. When he stood in the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles and talked with his team prior to a practice for the 2005 BCS National Championship game, he asked his players to figure out what they, individually, could do to help this team win.

When you are 4-3, that is a lot harder than it sounds. Winning breeds contentment. Losing fosters frustration and dissention. Mack came to Texas after the 1997 season, and he found a team whose spirit had been broken, not only by the losing, but by the very visible criticism which followed from the fans and the media. The single most important thing to all of us — and athletes are at the top of that list — is self-esteem.

Prominent trial attorney and Longhorn donor, Joe Jamail, told Mack Brown‘s first team that a long time ago.

“If you have pride,” he had said, “then you have a chance. If you don’t, I will whip you every time.”

Mack had preached all week that the most important game for Texas in the last half of the season “is the next one.” That is the one thing that hasn’t changed after Saturday’s loss.

It is the nature of the sport that confidence is a huge factor in everything you do. Iowa State went into Nebraska and beat the Cornhuskers last year. They knew they could do it, and when you have an opponent like that, the only way to quell that is to hit them early, and prove it is your house into which they have come.

Texas didn’t do that. Folks say you fight your hardest when your back is to the wall, and when the Longhorns get up off the floor from Saturday, that is exactly where they will be standing.

Years ago, I remember a story that was supposedly true about a great man of wisdom who came in to see a guy who was in his last moments. The man in the bed looked into the eyes of the philosopher and asked, “What’s the answer? What’s the answer?” The man of wisdom looked down and asked, “What’s the question?” And the guy died.

That is the supreme challenge for the coaches and the players, and that is the most frustrating part of being a coach, when what seem to be good parts are not working. You are looking for answers, but first you have to define the question.
 


 

 

08.23.2012 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The ‘I’ in RISE

     

Aug. 23, 2012

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

“Across the fields of yesterday
He sometimes comes to me,
A little lad just back from play —
The lad I used to be.
And yet he smiles so wistfully
Once he has crept within
I wonder if he hopes to see
The man I might have been.”

In the spring of 1963, as the Texas Longhorns practiced in preparation for a fall season that would produce The University’s first national championship in football, a referee at a scrimmage missed a penalty call.

From the sidelines, All-American tackle Scott Appleton screamed at the man in the striped shirt, “Come on! We’re not out here for FUN!”

Welcome, my friends, to “intensity” — the second letter in the “RISE” theme.

The little poem by Thomas S. Jones, Jr., reminds us of what might have been, while Scott Appleton plugs into the theme of the 2012 Longhorns like a jack hammer pounding on concrete. A week or so ago, we talked about “relentless,” and how you have to have a commitment to stay the course, regardless of the obstacles.

In the theme chosen by the team, intensity reminds us that, in the language of today, you have to “bring it” every play.

The subject in the poem is one who had great intentions. We all have been there. You plan on doing something. You have every intention of getting it accomplished. Lost in the equation, however, is the fact that desire doesn’t equal accomplishment without a healthy dose of intensity.

You have heard the expressions. There is pressure, and then there is “intense pressure.” The same is true with heat, and “intense” heat. Former Longhorn Dusty Renfro, when he talked with the seniors on this 2012 team, suggested that the first two letters be combined to read “relentless intensity.” There is validity in that.

There is no way to describe the mindset created by a college football training camp. Each day at the practice field, the Longhorns look up at a sign that counts down the days until the first game. During the camp, days run into each other, and meetings blend into practice. Meals and sleep are important. Long days dissolve into the next as the calendar and the clock click down. Tuesday, the Longhorns held their 20th practice of the training camp.

And yet it is here that the mettle of champions are tested. The letters — Relentless, Sacrifice or Swagger and Emotion — cannot be successful without Intensity, and that is what Mack Brown and his coaches are demanding from themselves, and from their team, right now. The training camp ends on Friday morning, and it is now that everyone is challenged not to ease up.

It is important to understand, however, that while intensity can translate into determination, it doesn’t necessarily equate to reckless abandon. An intense mindset doesn’t mean swinging wildly. The boxer who lands the quick strike jab often delivers the knockout punch while his opponent is raring back to clobber him.

It will take too long, and will make little sense, to deliver a lesson on the fine art of spinning a top. But it is worth it to make a point. Back in the day, you would wrap a heavy string around the bottom of the cone of the top, and with a quick motion fire the missile toward the ground. The secret, of course, was how tightly you wound the top. Too loose, and it didn’t work. Too tight, and it wouldn’t unravel. Done perfectly, the strike ejected the top, spinning on its steel point.

So it is with intensity. It is imperative. It is vital. Intensity, unbridled, can translate to “out of control.”

But with apologies to Scott Appleton, intensity, coupled with just plain fun, is a combination that is hard to beat. Football is a very hard game, so it is darned important to have fun when you play it. It is in that space that you finish — not frustrated with what might have been — but with the creation of a stepping stone as opposed to a stumbling block.

 

08.13.2012 | Football

Bill Little commentary: The ‘R’ word

      

Aug. 13, 2012

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

Little could they have known, these football Longhorns of 2012, that even as they were about to be challenged to fulfill its meaning, the word represented by the first letter of their theme for the year would be played out by a fellow Longhorn on the planet’s biggest stage half a world away.

With a little less than three weeks remaining before the start of the 2012 season, the theme of “RISE,” is now being put to the test. The team picked it — each letter of the word as part of an acronym with a powerful message. The “E” is emotion. The “S” represents sacrifice that translates to swagger. The “I” is for intensity. But it is the “R” — representing the word relentless — that will initially determine how it all plays out.

Webster tells us that the word “relent” means to slacken, to soften, to become more mild, and finally “to yield.”

Relentless simply means “incapable of relenting.”

Now, it is time to prove that the word isn’t simply lip-service. It’s a chance to show that they mean it. On the practice field, day after day and sometimes twice a day, the Longhorns drill and drill and drill. The hot summer takes its toll, the aches and strains can challenge the day, and it tests a person in a simple way: You have to love this game to play it. Coaches drive hard, it is their charge. On the field and in the meeting rooms, there is little room for error if you mean it when you say your goal is to “Rise.”

If you are to be relentless, it means you never stop. The sea, the wind, the summer heat — all are relentless.
And in London, in the basketball game for the Olympic Gold Medal, the United States men had to keep coming. Near the end of the third quarter of a game that seemed always in doubt, the American men’s team, led by the greatest players in the game, had actually trailed a twice-beaten team from Spain. The score was tied, 80-80, with 1:39 left in the period. That was when Longhorns-ex Kevin Durant took a pass in the right corner and in seemingly one motion drilled a three-point shot to put the Stars and Stripes ahead, 83-80. America would never trail again, winning the game and the gold, 107-100.

Durant scored a game-high 30 points and ripped down nine rebounds, and at the end he was part of an all-star cast of super heroes who deflected personal credit in deference to the goal of the team.

In the theme of the Longhorns team, each letter carries significant weight. Each plays on the other. When former Longhorn Dusty Renfro spoke to the seniors at a dinner prior to the start of practice, he suggested you could tie the first two letters together and make it read “relentless intensity.” There is strength in that. Certainly it is appropriate not to discount the importance of intensity. But the power of relentless is that it means you never stop coming. Think, for example, of the sea. The waves come, over and over again. Sometimes bigger and with awesome power. And sometimes less, but always, always, rolling in. The wind has its moments as well, but from the storm’s force or the gentle breeze, you always know it is there. And undeniably, that is always the case with the Texas heat.

Relentless on the football field means your opponent always knows you are there, and that you are a force to be reckoned with.

That is why this weekend is significant to this Longhorn team. The players picked their theme, and committed to the words. It is easy to be pumped at the start of practice, and when game week comes in a little over ten days, you expect the normal excitement.

It will be in the grind of the days of August, when the calendar serves no purpose and time is measured only on where you are to be and when the true character of relentless will come.

Just a week into practice, the Longhorns will soon hold their first scrimmage and begin to get a gauge of how things are progressing. The players understand that the team goal is to achieve an excellence where a lot of players will play, and Mack Brown has challenged each person to find something that they can do to help this team win. When you have a lot of good players, success is determined by playing a lot of good players, and the coaching staff is committed to finding a way to do that.

It is significant that Kevin Durant’s shot put the U.S. ahead, but it took great plays by a lot of great players to win the game. When the defense focused on Durant in the fourth quarter, other all-world players stepped up to seal the victory.

They won, and they won for one simple reason. They kept coming. Even when things were not going well, even when they were behind. They found a way to win. They defended, they shot, they rebounded, they drove and they scored. And Spain always knew they were there.

They were, after all, relentless.

10.28.2012 | Football

Bill Little commentary: A moment for the soul

       

Oct. 28, 2012

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

LAWRENCE, Kan. — Some people live for the moment; some moments live because of the people. All season long, Mack Brown and his co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin have insisted that the 2012 Texas Longhorns had two capable quarterbacks. Sophomore starter David Ash had pitched Texas to five wins in its first seven games. Junior Case McCoy had spent most of those games on a headset in communication with Harsin, joining freshman Conner Brewer in signaling in plays.

When he came to Texas from Boise State, Harsin described the role of the backup quarterback in his system. “He will be on the headset and play every play as if he were in the game. He has to know exactly what we are trying to do. He has to prepare as if he is going to play every down, even though he may never get into the game,” Harsin said.

Every day at practice, the two quarterbacks split the offensive snaps, and both work with the No. 1 offense. All summer, as he worked in the off-season, McCoy worked hours with football strength and conditioning coach Bennie Wylie. He gained more than 20 pounds of muscle. He renewed his love affair with the game of football, and he committed to do whatever he could to help his teammates win. He and Ash were selected as members of the team’s leadership committee, which offers input on the celebratory good days and togetherness in the moments of concern.

Regardless of how hard the coaches tried to paint an accurate picture, it was impossible for a very young team to understand the task they were facing in Saturday’s trip to Lawrence. In the original Big 12, Texas visited Lawrence every four years. This year the game fell on the schedule after a rugged four-game league string that included games with Oklahoma State, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Baylor. The fans and the media had long ago written off the Jayhawks, and despite what they had been told, the team likely was taking a collective deep breath between that gauntlet and next Saturday’s visit to Texas Tech in Lubbock.

And for much of the game, that is how they played. Mack Brown had seen it before. In the much discussed victory here in 2004, Vince Young had to extract Texas from the jaws of defeat in the closing seconds, converting an unimaginable fourth and eighteen into a first down on the game winning drive that help carry the Horns to their first ever Rose Bowl appearance.

I remember my time as a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman standing in a Rice locker room in 1965 when the legendary Jess Neely’s Owls (a 24-point underdog) had upset a Texas team which had been ranked No. 1 the week before. When he was asked how he could explain the fact that his team had defied the “experts” and beaten Texas, Neely looked the reporter squarely in the eye and asked in his finest Southern drawl, “Who are the ex-purts? There are no ex-purts when young boys get together and play.”

Sadly, in a world where cynics and critics get mired in the morose, it is easy to diminish the joy of success. And when Texas needed a hero, all of a sudden, here came Case McCoy.

“It wasn’t anything that David didn’t do,” he would say after the game. “We just needed to go score.” He had done as Harsin had asked. He had watched and listened. He had remained committed to his school and his teammates, and had heard his head coach tell the team which was trailing at half 14-7 that they had to believe. What he found was, believing is contagious. He believed, and others believed in him.

The game has started easily enough — in fact probably too easy — for the Texas offense. Texas had converted a 43-yard drive on its first possession into a 7-0 lead. But when Kansas got its run game going and scored on consecutive second quarter drives, the Jayhawks took control. Four times between late in the first quarter through midway through the third, Texas started drives inside Kansas territory. One ended with a Jayhawk goal line stand at the one, the other two with interceptions. The second one of those brought Harsin, the offensive staff and Brown to take the headset off of McCoy and tell him to warm up.

Texas had the ball at its own 16 yard line when McCoy came into the game. In seven plays, he engineered a scoring drive that tied the game at 14-14 with just less than ten minutes to play. Kansas, however, answered. Grudgingly, the Texas defense surrendered 61 yards on 14 plays as the Jayhawks used seven minutes and thirteen seconds to drive to a field goal that made it 17-14.

When D.J. Monroe returned the kickoff to the Texas 30, only two minutes and twenty-two seconds remained. As McCoy and his teammates came back onto the field, Texas was seventy yards away from the north end zone. The significance was not lost on the Longhorn faithful who had been in Lawrence eight years ago. Case McCoy was driving his team toward the same place that Vince Young had made history in 2004 with a fourth down play and a touchdown pass.

But when his first pass fell just short of a possible interception, another was incomplete and the third went for only four yards, security folks were scurried into place to help prevent the KU students from rushing the field. It was a celebration that would never come.

As Case remembers it, he was in the fourth grade at Jim Ned Elementary in Tuscola and Jaxon Shipley was in the third grade at Rotan the first time the two ever played catch with a football. The early morning cold was turning into a sunshiny chill as Texas broke the huddle. Jaxon Shipley cut across the middle, toward the east side and the Texas bench. He knew if he could get open, McCoy would somehow find him. It may seem a long way from West Texas to the plains of Kansas, but for two kids who have grown up to fit into those white “storm trooper” Texas road uniforms, it really isn’t very far at all. “McCoy to Shipley.” Has a ring to it. And 18 yards downfield, Jaxon had a first down at the Kansas 48.

Mike Davis has embraced the fact that his middle name is “Magic,” and two plays later he was streaking past the Kansas bench down the left sideline when McCoy — with the strength of all that off-season work — laid a perfectly thrown pass into his arms at full stride. He ran 39 yards to the three. It would be third and goal from the one when McCoy dropped back to pass after a brilliant run fake. The senior tight end D. J. Grant had drifted into the end zone all alone as the Jayhawks tried to duplicate their goal line stand of earlier in the game. Allen Field House — Kansas’ basketball arena, which is four blocks to the south — was closer than the nearest defender as Grant cradled the victory and Anthony Fera kicked the extra point with twelve seconds remaining.

Texas had won, 21-17.

The Longhorns will take the victory and continue to work on getting better. The victory may have been a lot harder to get than it probably should have been, and it would be wrong to discount a Kansas team which fought so hard and came so close. There is nothing in sport that matches the joy of a comeback, particularly one that occurs when the odds seem against you.

The blessed ones are those who do, in fact, live for that moment and embrace that role. It is for the rest of us to celebrate them and respect them. It gives us a chance to feel good because in playing a kids’ game, they have excelled, and achieved. That is part of the human spirit, which transcends to heart, and resides in the soul.

  

 

10.29.2010 | Football

Bill Little commentary: Faith, family and friends

      

Oct. 29, 2010

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

There is probably nowhere in our lives where a yearning for instant gratification is more present than in the world of sports. And that is why Saturday at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is a great opportunity for retrospection, hope, and faith—all at the same time.

It will include the retirement of a jersey of a Longhorn great, a poignant, touching moment of the reality of a battle against breast cancer, and a football game matching two teams whose desire is to prove something to somebody—if only to themselves.

Chip Robertson, the veteran equipment manager for the Longhorns, doesn’t know why he pulled out a No. 12 jersey when the young kid from the little town in the Callaghan Divide country south of Abilene walked into his life that day in 2005. Colt McCoy doesn’t know why he got it, either. He had worn No. 4 as a star playing for his dad at Jim Ned High School. He did greatly admire Roger Staubach, who wore No. 12 as a college player at Navy and a star with the Dallas Cowboys, so it was okay with him. Fact is, he says, from junior football on he had worn just about every number you could think of.

Now, however, it is No. 12 that will be front-and-center significant Saturday night. Following a policy approved by the Board of Regents of The University of Texas several years ago, five former Longhorn football players have had their jerseys retired, and are recognized prominently high above Joe Jamail Field on the rim of the Red McCombs Red Zone at the north end of the stadium. Now, there will be six.

The policy is clear. Players in the modern era of the sports of baseball, men’s basketball and football earn the right to have their jersey retired by being named national player of the year in their sport. In the case of the late Bobby Layne, who played for the Longhorns in the 1940s when there was only one recognized national player of the year, an exception was made. Tommy Nobis and Vince Young both won the Maxwell Award presented by the Maxwell Football Club of Philadelphia. Ricky Williams won that as well as the New York Downtown Athletics Club’s Heisman Trophy. Earl Campbell also won the Heisman.

McCoy was a two-time winner of the National Player of the Year as presented by the Walter Camp Football Foundation of New Haven, the nation’s oldest all-American team. He also won the Maxwell his senior season.

After the pre-game unveiling of McCoy’s name and number about 5:40 p.m., emphasis shifts from the euphoria of sports to the reality of life. The Longhorn team, last year, following the lead set by NFL teams, requested that they be allowed to do something to further the effort to bring attention to the disease of breast cancer. Calling their effort “Horns for Hope,” the team will be wearing a pink ribbon decal on their helmets, as well as pink remembrance wrist bands. The coaches will wear pink ribbon lapel pins. In pre-game, three women whose lives have been affected by the disease and have significant ties to the Longhorns will serve as honorary captains. The team physician, Dr. Andrea Pana, underwent surgery last summer. Safety Blake Gideon‘s mom, Ralene, also had surgery last summer. Brenda Davis, wife of the team’s academic counselor Brian Davis, is a cancer survivor as well.

The football game matches a Baylor team which is trying to beat Texas for only the second time in 18 years with a Longhorn team that is seeking to find itself. Baylor is ranked in the top 25 for the first time since 1993. Texas is out of the top 25 for the first time in years. The Bears, at 6-2, lead the Big 12 South with a 3-1 record after victories over Colorado, Kansas, and Kansas State and a loss to Texas Tech. The Longhorns are 4-3 overall, and are 2-2 in league play with wins over Texas Tech and Nebraska and losses to Oklahoma and Iowa State.

The Longhorns are coming off of a good week of practice following a disappointing loss in Austin last Saturday to Iowa State.While a good bowl game, and a remote chance to get a piece of the Big 12 South title are still possibilities, Saturday’s game for Texas will be about pride. And despite their early success this season, that is also exactly what the Bears will be playing for. The motivation, therefore, is clear for both teams.

The truth is, all three of the events of the weekend for Texas are about one simple word, and how you choose to handle it. In each of these stories—the boy from the little town who came to the big college, the men and women who face the ominous diagnosis of breast cancer, and those who will take the field and play the game for Texas on Saturday—the message to be addressed is fear, and how you handle it.

Once, when my son Bobby was frustrated as a young college graduate unsuccessfully finding a job, he told Darrell Royal, “Coach, I’m afraid.” To which Coach Royal replied, “Never be afraid. Be concerned. There is a difference.”

The difference is, fear is paralyzing. Concern brings awareness.

Colt McCoy became Colt McCoy because he had faith in himself, and in his God. Even in the toughest times, he never lost that belief. We love him and will always remember him, not for what he did, but for who he is.

The cancer patients fight a battle of the unknown. The Fred Steinmark scoreboard is a memorial to the little Texas safety who lost his leg and later his life to cancer in the early 1970s. But today, the cancer that killed him is almost 90 percent curable. That is where efforts like those of the sports teams are significant. Modern medicine, with its continual progress, is winning the battle against the disease. That, and a large dose of faith, family, and friends must carry people through in the dark days.

It is true that football is a game, and it pales in comparison to the magnitude of reality battles. But it is also a teacher of life’s lessons. You will have losses, and you will have fear of failure. In a desperate time in America in the 1930s, wasn’t it President Franklin Roosevelt who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself?”

Colt McCoy‘s monument will last as long as the stadium stands, and the jersey No. 12 will never again be worn by a Texas player. The cancer victims will bravely face tomorrow. And the players will play a game. Each is an example of lessons learned, and those that are still being absorbed.
And as we watch, let us remember that part about faith, family and friends. Because that, in the end, will make all the difference.

  

06.05.2009 | Baseball

Bill Little commentary: NCAA chronicles

June 5, 2009

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

Texas and TCU will begin a best of three series for the right to go to Omaha and play in the College World Series Saturday, and sold out crowds of more than 7,000 and national television audiences will watch.

That’s a long way from when the two were rivals in the Southwest Conference, and the right to advance in the playoffs came down to a battle between the two schools that would be settled in three different years by a coin flip, an uncharacteristic weekend of rain (aided, some say, by a well-placed water hose), and an upset by the last place team in the league. In every case, Texas won.

To understand the deal, you must understand the characters, and the situation.

In those days, only one team from a conference — the winner or the team that held the edge in a tie — got to go to the NCAA playoffs. In the season of 1966, Bibb Falk was in his next to last season as the Longhorns head coach. He had ultimate pride in the game. His teams had won two National Championships in 1949 and 1950, and Falk was “the Big Leaguer” — a former Longhorn who replaced Joe Jackson in left field for the Chicago White Sox when the “Black Sox” scandal broke in 1920.

TCU was under the tutelage of young coach Frank Windegger, who would spend most of his years as the Frog coach trying unsuccessfully to outwit Texas coaches. So crafty was Windegger that he rearranged the left field fence at the TCU Diamond to accommodate his right handed power hitters.

As the SWC season was coming to a close, Texas had everything on the line when it went to Fort Worth to play the Frogs. The Horns had to sweep a doubleheader. By now, you have figured where part of this is going. The late Joe Gideon, a Texas outfielder who didn’t have much power, hit a two-run over (“It was no more than that a pop fly,” he would say) the 300-foot left field fence as Texas won, 2-1. And then the Longhorns won the second game by the same score.

But the Longhorns celebrated a little too soon, and Texas A&M swept Texas to gain command of the conference with a 9-5 record, needing only a victory over the 8-6 Frogs in Fort Worth to clinch the playoff spot. Somehow into the mix crept 9-6 Baylor, and by the time the Aggies and Frogs were ready to play in Cowtown, Texas, which had finished its season at 9-6, had already put its equipment away, assuming the season was over.

Given the outside possibility of a four-way tie, each of the schools involved sent representatives to Fort Worth in case a coin flip was needed. Falk, who had no interest in pursuing the season further, declined to attend, and Texas sent its junior assistant in the ticket office, Bill Ermel, as its representative. The last thing Falk said to Ermel was, “go up there and lose that `#%&#’ thing.”

So, when TCU shut out the Aggies, the four representatives of the new quad-champions gathered at home plate. “We oddmanned out,” recalled Ermel, and Windegger’s bad luck held — TCU was the first team out. Then it was Baylor.

Finally, it was between Texas and Texas A&M, and Ermel called the flip. “I don’t even remember what I called,” Ermel would say later, “All I remember thinking when I won was `Bibb Falk’s going to kill me!” Texas regrouped its team, and after rain forced the NCAA District 6 playoff with Houston into the newly constructed Astrodome, Texas won the first indoor college game ever played and advanced to the College World Series, where the Horns beat Arizona but were eliminated by St. John’s and Oklahoma State.

Two years later Cliff Gustafson was in his first year as the Texas coach, and he had patched together a team with young recruits and the remnants of Falk’s final team. Again, Windegger and TCU were in prime position to win the league and claim the playoff spot. The final series of the year found Texas A&M playing at Clark Field, and the Horned Frogs, who had finished the season at 13-5, needed only one Aggie win to represent the league in the NCAAs.

Things looked dire for the Longhorns, when star pitcher James Street came down with tonsillitis. But that was when Mother Nature, with possibly a little help from an old Longhorn icon named Bully Gilstrap, took over. Texas, you see, was 12-4, and held a percentage point lead over the Frogs of .750 to .722. If the teams didn’t play at all, Texas would win.

Despite a morning rain on Friday, Gustafson and Aggie coach Tom Chandler met at noon at Clark Field and determined that the game could still start at three o’clock, but that it was too wet to take batting practice. Later, a heavy shower hit.

Heavy clouds hung over the southwestern sky. Larry Janes, still a Longhorn fan who then was a student working in the UT ticket office, walked into the sports information office. “The Southwest Conference championship,” he said, “is five miles south of town and moving in.”

At five minutes to 3 p. m., the skies opened. It rained throughout the afternoon, but by late evening the sun had come out. A doubleheader was scheduled for Saturday. About midnight the phone rang at Cliff Gustafson’s house. It was the old Longhorn, Gilstrap. “Bully wanted to know if I wanted him to go turn the water sprinklers on the field to wet it down more,” Gustafson remembered. “I laughed and told him we’d just have to take our chances.”

Whether Gilstrap acted or not is a secret he took to the grave with him long ago, but it didn’t matter — at 5 a. m. Gustafson woke from a fitful sleep to the sound of steady raindrops. At nine that morning, with the rain still coming down, the game was officially called. Texas played Pan American in the District 6 playoff, and Gustafson’s team took its first trip to the College World Series.

The final heartbreak for the Horned Frogs and Windegger during those years came in 1972, when TCU had the playoff spot all but wrapped up. Texas had finished its season with a 12-6 record, but the Longhorns had taken two of three from TCU. Its only hope, however, was for 5-12 SMU, which was hosting the Frogs in a make up game, to somehow beat the 12-5 Frogs and force a tie.

Interest in the game was so high in Austin that the network that carried the Texas games sent one of its owners to Dallas to broadcast the game.

In the bottom of the ninth, with TCU leading, 3-1, the Mustangs rallied. When the Ponies got a freak base hit on a bad hop to score the winning run, the announcer was speechless for a moment, and then started screaming, “Texas wins! Texas wins!”

At home in his easy chair listening to the game, Cliff Gustafson jumped straight up in the air. The Longhorns were going to the playoffs. It would be more than 20 years — the season of 1994 — until TCU would finally win the Southwest Conference title. And even at that, Texas won the league tournament and got the SWC’s automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.

As Texas and TCU meet in the Super Regional, beginning at 5 p. m. Saturday, the NCAA Tournament, with its 64-team field, Regionals, Super Regionals, and even a best two-of-three championship series has changed immensely since those days.

Teams in the SWC in those days played a regular season of 30 games, and now, including conference and NCAA playoff games, teams can play half that number in a month.

But in the pages of history, the character, and the characters, of the old league will live.

 05.25.2009 | Baseball

Bill Little commentary: NCAA chronicles

· May 25, 2009

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

It is hard to believe that it has been 60 years since Bibb Falk loaded his Texas Baseball team on a train and headed to Wichita, Kan., to win what would be the first of six NCAA crowns for the Longhorns. And it is even harder to believe that once, what we now know as the campaign to the College World Series was so little regarded that Falk himself had opted not to take his team to the playoffs only the year before.

So when the 2009 version of the NCAA Baseball Committee anointed Texas as the nation’s No. 1 seed in a field of 64 teams and eight Big 12 teams made up an eighth of the entire field, it underscored the simple fact: college baseball has come a long way.

The Austin Regional underscores that fact as well as any. First, here is No. 1 seed Texas–long one of the dominant programs in the sport. But where did these other guys come from?

Texas State, which has been building as a quality program under former Longhorn player and assistant coach Ty Harrington, got into the tournament as an at-large selection after it lost its Southland Conference championship to Sam Houston State. For years, the Southland was relegated to only one team, its champion.

As far as Texas fans know, the only baseball played in Boston comes from the hallowed setting of the professional Red Sox’s Fenway Park. So now here is Boston College out of the Atlantic Coast Conference, making its first NCAA appearance in 42 years.

The final piece of the Austin Regional mosaic is Army — that’s right, the Black Knights of the Hudson from the United States Military Academy at West Point. The Cadets won the league by claiming the first two games in a best of three series against Lafayette, and are 34-19.

And for those prone to look ahead — which can be a dangerous mistake — the winner of the Austin regional will be paired with the winner of the Fort Worth regional at TCU, which will include the Horned Frogs, Wright State, Oregon State and Texas A&M.

For the Longhorns and the fans here in Austin, the best news is that championship baseball is back at UFCU Disch-Falk Field, and it’s the first time for the Longhorns to host in the sparkling newly renovated ball park. Exactly 30 years ago, in 1979, Regional tournaments took on a new dimension.

For much of the time during the 1970s, college baseball toyed with neutral sites. That provided good competition, but a less-than-desired attendance. The Longhorns played host to two regionals in San Antonio which included Pan American and Trinity, and then played at Turnpike Stadium in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex — the predecessor of the facility which is now The Ballpark at Arlington.

But the world of college baseball opened to the campuses in 1979. That first “Central Regional” as it was called, featured Pan American, Lamar and BYU. The next year, Hawaii bested the field and advanced to the CWS. Starting in 1981, Texas started seeing not only the marquee teams, but marquee players.

Stanford, for example, sported a right fielder whose arm wowed everyone watching, even in practices. His name was John Elway.

By 1983, the tournament field was expanding, and some six-team regionals were staged. And that year probably featured the most famous match-ups of regional competition in these parts. Texas, of course, had a great pitching staff, including eight players who would pitch in the major leagues, including Roger Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi. Mississippi State’s team was led by Will Clark, Bobby Thigpin and Rafael Palmiero.

Texas fought its way out of the losers bracket, and beat the Bulldogs in the championship game, 12-3, behind the pitching of Clemens and Schiraldi, just a few years before the two would combine to pitch the Boston Red Sox to professional baseball’s World Series.

In all, Texas hosted 16 straight regionals in the first two decades at Disch-Falk, until the string was broken in 1995 when Texas traveled to Oklahoma City. Then, in one of the rare dips in the history of the program, Texas slipped from the national radar.

But all of that ended on a dramatic day in the desert in 2000. Texas was playing in the Tempe Regional against highly touted Arizona State, and when the Sunday mercury reached 114 degrees, it appeared the Longhorns would be, if you will pardon the pun, “toast.”

Somehow, however, Texas survived the first championship game in the afternoon, winning 6-4. And then, behind ace Beau Hale’s dramatic finish, the Longhorns took the night cap, 9-7. That was the second year the NCAA had employed the use of “Super Regionals,” and when Penn State was an upset winner in its regional, Texas was awarded the Super, and swept its way back to Omaha in two games.

Thus, for five of six years in the first decade of the 21st century, Texas went to Omaha five times, winning twice, finishing as runner up once and third once. The string ended in the final season of what we knew as Disch-Falk Field in 2006. The next year, because of construction at home, the Horns hosted at Dell Diamond, but ran into a super team in Cal-Irvine. Last year, the Horns had to try to fight their way out of the loser’s bracket at the Rice Regional, and couldn’t make it happen.

All of that brings us to a new day in a new facility against a couple of new folks and a respected local foe in Texas State.

The crack of the bat and the heat rising from the turf that became such a welcome experience is back. The parking lots will be buzzing, the crowds likely will be sweltering in the afternoon games, and enjoying the cool breeze in the evenings.

For the 53rd time since the tournament play began back in 1947, Texas is back in the hunt, and the hunt begins right here in Austin.

The great moments — the thrills and the heartbreaks — of regionals past will be cussed and discussed anew. Augie Garrido will tell you that baseball is a game determined by the unexpected. History also tells you that playoffs make strange heroes.

What we know is, the tournament’s return to Austin is like the welcoming back of an old friend, where the past and the present meet to determine somebody’s future. That is, after all, the coolest thing about baseball.

Because as cliché-ish or trite as it may sound, the truth is, it really isn’t over, until it is over.