Lake Woebegon where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking,
and all the children are above average.”

A few of you may be familiar with writer and humorist Garrison Keillor’s fictional Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” A couple weeks ago while reading another one of dozens and dozens of blog articles about the 2023 Longhorn Football team, all of which described how dedicated, driven, strong, fast, and newly improved some player, position group or coach was, it occurred to me, these are the Lake Woebegon Longhorns.

Here in Longhorn Land, every August brings new hope and optimism about the upcoming football season. But this August, in my opinion, the preseason hype of the Longhorns has reached a level that we haven’t seen since 2005. Quarterback Quinn Ewers has been named to the awards watch lists for the Maxwell Award, the Davey O’Brien award, the Walter Camp Player of the Year, and the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. Ewers is also the number three preseason favorite to win the Heisman Trophy behind Caleb Williams and LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels. I don’t know, it seems like an abundance of hype around a quarterback who completed a paltry 58% of his passes in 2022 and frequently seemed befuddled in the pocket. He played particularly poorly in losses to Oklahoma State and TCU. Okay, I admit that I anticipate that Ewers will have a good season. I think he played quite well in the Alamo Bowl and if not for Xavier Worthy dropping a couple easy balls that were sure touchdowns Ewers would have led the Longhorns to victory. Speaking of Xavier Worthy, he’s also on the Walter Camp list.

Ewers and Worthy aren’t the only Longhorns to make award watchlists. Jaylan Ford, Ja’Tavion Sanders, and Kelvin Banks Jr. have been named to the Lombardi Award watchlist. Based on their 2022 performances, these players seem more worthy of the lists than Ewers is of the award lists he’s on.  

National Media

The national media has a more objective if not more informed opinion Texas’ 2023 prospects. The AP Top 25 has Texas slotted at #11 and the AFCA Coaches Poll has them at #12. The College Football Power Index—whatever that is—has Texas at a lofty #5 behind Ohio State, Alabama, Georgia, and LSU. The index includes an over/under on regular season wins. Texas’ is 9.7. If you held a gun to my head I’d take the over. ESPN’s Matchup Predictor has Texas winning every game except Alabama. It gives Texas a 68.5% chance of beating Oklahoma and a 61.4% chance of beating TCU. In all the other Texas games the Predictor gives Texas a more than 70% chance of winning. I think this Matchup Predictor is silly but somewhat interesting in its preseason projections.

My Reservation

I’m not talking about my hotel reservations at the sites of the College Football Playoffs. I’m referring to my reservation about Texas’s chances of having the championship season we’ve all been starved for since 2009 and it’s Steve Sarkisian

Readers of this column may remember that I’m not a Sarkisian fan. I think he is solely responsible for the Longhorns losses to Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, and TCU last season. His game management is poor when games get tight. I was glad when he was hired that he said he was the play caller. I thought it was refreshing change from previous coaches that deflected responsibility for play calling. After a couple of seasons, I’ve grown frustrated with Sarkisian staring at his laminated play sheet during games when I thought he should be more engaged with players and coaches on the sideline. To me he looks more like a technician than a leader during games.

The good news on this front is that Sarkisian hired a special assistant Joe Decamillis a 30-year NFL special teams coach. Decamillis comes to Texas from the Los Angeles Rams where he was Sean McVay’s game manager during their 2021 Super Bowl winning season. I’m told by an informed source that Decamillis will serve the same role on Sarkisian’s staff. I hope Sark listens to him.

Over Promise and Under Deliver

Steve Sarkisian is definitely not a believer in Under Promise and Over Deliver philosophy. Before last season he talked a lot about “culture” and how much better it was, and the team was after a bunch of bad apples were no longer on the team. He essentially blamed the 2021 5-7 season on the players who had departed the program. Way to take the high road Steve.

Summing up his preseason hyping of the 2023 Longhorns he said last week, “I think this team is on a mission, they’ve taken this mindset of being on a mission. They’ve kind of adopted the John Wick mentality. I think that they’ve kind of assumed this mentality of, ‘Embrace the hate.’ We get it. We’re the University of Texas, we get it. This is our last year in the Big 12. We can sit there and be a punching bag, or we can go attack the people that we’re going to play. And I think that they’ve assumed that responsibility to say, hey, we’re gonna go after everybody else too. I think that that’s the right mentality to have.”

I preferred the Darrell Royal approach during the preseason. Before the 1972 season Royal said, “We’re as average as everyday wash.” That team went 10-1 beating #3 Alabama in the Cotton Bowl and finishing as the third ranked team in the country. I guess it’s a generation thing. Royal was of “The Greatest Generation.” Sarkisian is technically a Gen Xer, but he talks more like a “Gen Zer.”  Oh well. I’m probably over analyzing here.

All that being said, I’ve set aside my reservation. I’m having a hard time imagining the Longhorns do any worse than 10-2 and qualifying for the Big 12 Championship Game. The team is too experienced, too talented, and the Big 12 is too average for them to achieve anything less. The offensive line is experienced and led by perhaps the best player on the team in Kelvin Banks Jr. Jaylan Ford will be an All American and will lead what should be the best defense Texas has had in a while.

And I’m buying into the hype surrounding transfers AD Mitchell, the receiver from Georgia and Jalen Catalon the safety from Arkansas.

Most importantly, I have confidence in Quinn Ewers. I don’t think he’s going to win the Heisman, but he’ll easily be the best quarterback in the conference.

Like I mentioned above, I’m going over on 9.7 wins for the Longhorns. Call it 11-1 in the regular season. After that, who knows?

Tuning up for the Aggies

We are just a year away from having the Aggies on our schedule. I played golf with anAggie a couple of weeks ago.  Nice fellow. We had an amiable conversation about our mutual hopes for our teams coming season.

He also informed me of a very interesting golf statistic. 80% of putts left short don’t go in.

Beat those pesky Owls!

Hook “Em,

W.E.

Songs of the Week

I’m going to feature two songs each week this year. The first one will be like previous years and be a selection from Willie Earl’s Mythical top 100 favorites. Let’s call that the category one song. Then there will be a category two song. I’ll be making up category two as I go along. This week category two will be called “Whimsical” I think you’ll understand the reference.

Top 100 Favorite

This is the ending from “The Last Days of Disco” If you haven’t seen it you should.

Whimsical Favorite