Texas Christian v. Texas

Many years ago, in the 1930's, the legendary sportswriter Dan Jenkins grew up in Fort Worth, Tex. as a fan of the Texas Christian Horned Frogs.  Back then, the Frogs were a great power -- they won the National Championship in 1938, and they beat the University of Texas four years in a row from 1935 to 1938.

But things had changed a lot by the time Jenkins started writing about college football for Sports Illustrated in 1963.  Darrell Royal had built the University of Texas into a great powerhouse -- Jenkins proved his acumen to SI readers by accurately picking Texas to win the 1963 National Championship.  Royal added another title in 1969.  Meanwhile, Texas Christian languished as one of the weakest programs in major conference football.  From 1968 to 1991, Texas beat Texas Christian 24 times in a row.  To give you a sense of what it was like, here are the four games played while I was in high school (home team listed first):

1980:  Texas Christian 26 - 51 Texas
1981:  Texas 31 - 15 Texas Christian
1982:  Texas Christian 21 - 38 Texas
1983:  Texas 20 -14 Texas Christian


In case you think that 1983 score signaled that the tide was about to turn, you should know that in 1984 Texas went to Fort Worth and beat the Horned Frogs 44-23.  In short, Texas-Texas Christian was one of those annual games that no one could take too seriously, like Florida v. Kentucky or Vanderbilt v. almost anyone.  When Texas organized the break-up of the old Southwest Conference in the 1990's, leaving Texas Christian behind, it seemed likely that the teams would never play again.

But history is long and complicated.  Texas Christian's program not only survived the break-up of the Southwest Conference -- the Frogs actually thrived against the easier schedules they were able to play.  By 2007, they were back on UT's schedule -- only to lose 34-13.  Still, that wasn't the end of it -- Texas's new conference, the Big XII, shed so many members heading into the 2012 season that the Longhorns were forced to ask Texas Christian to join their depleted league.  And the Horned Frogs did so with relish, coming to Austin in 2012 and beating Texas 20-13.  Texas won 30-7 the next year, as Texas Christian struggled with the new level of competition.  But by last year, the Frogs had found their feet and they crushed Texas 48-10 in a UCFC game.

Texas still leads the all-time series 62-22-1, but for now Texas Christian has all the momentum.  This year, Texas Christian is 4-0, the Frogs still hold the UCFC, and they are ranked number-4 in the country.  Meanwhile, Texas is 1-3, and many Longhorn fans are already eager to dump Coach Charlie Strong, who is in his second year at Texas with a record of 7-10.  (Darrell Royal had coached more than three full seasons before he suffered his 10th loss at Texas.)

Vegas appears to have given up on the Longhorns for this game.  Texas Christian is favored by 15 points in a game where the over/under is 71.  That would work out to a 43-28 win for the Frogs -- which would actually represent a major improvement from the beat-down Texas suffered on its home field last year.

I'm of two minds about this game.  I find it hard to believe that the University of Texas doesn't have some students who are actually pretty good football players, and I could see the Longhorns rallying in an effort to save their season.  As we've seen in the last two weeks, Texas Christian has big problems on defense, which makes it hard for the Frogs to put teams away.  On the other hand, I could see Texas Christian coming out determined to bolster its case for the NCAA Playoffs by running up the score on You-Tee, while the Longhorns may be demoralized.  In this case, Texas Christian could easily win by a score of something like 63-14.

At the end of the day, I'm confident that Texas Christian quarterback Trevone Boykin will do whatever it takes to win this game -- he may be the best player in the whole country.  But I won't know how much he'll have to do until the game gets started.