From a conversation on the unimpressive state of Texas Longhorns sports, athletic director DeLoss Dodds to Kirk Bohls:
Texas Longhorns now comparing themselves to Missouri: Congratulations!
There’s not much sadder than the nation’s most advantaged football program comparing itself to a middleweight.
Jamie Squire
“We’re going to have good years again,” Dodds promised. “Our bad years are not that bad. Take a school like Missouri. Our bad years are better than their good years. But we’ve created a standard.”
This line is so off, it had to be intentional, but I can’t reconstruct the intent, other than LOL DELOSS TROLLS U.
The facts are easy. Both football teams have gone 5-7 in the last three years, but only Mizzou has had a 10-win season in the last three years. Mizzou’s 5-7 also came in a tougher conference than the Longhorns’ 5-7 did. And the Tigers won the last meeting between the two. Missouri has won more games than Texas has over the same period.
Three years is an arbitrary cutoff, with Texas having been to a national championship just before that span, but Missouri also came close to a title of its own in 2007. On-field results since Texas’ decade of resurgence are a wash. And basketball? A gimme in Missouri’s favor. We could keep going.
The thing here: Texas doesn’t get to use Missouri (or anybody) as an excuse.
Texas has major advantages over every school in the country, regularly ranking No. 1 in money (Missouri would be lucky to rank in the top half of its division) and reigning as the chief brand in the country’s most football talent-dense state. The state of Texas produced 54 four- and five-star players this year, Missouri only three -- and that’s standard.
Dodds and the Big 12 entered the 2012 season stressing the recent BCS success enjoyed by newcomers TCU and West Virginia, which was indeed more impressive than what the outgoing Missouri and Texas A&M had done. Now that A&M has demonstrated its program is currently in better shape than every program in the Big 12 (via destroying Big 12 co-champion Oklahoma and out-recruiting Oklahoma and Texas), those feel-good sights have narrowed to just poor lil Mizzou.
Sniping at an ancient, in-state rival was one thing, but picking on the SEC East’s fifth-best team? Longhorns fans should hope that next February, Dodds hasn’t adjusted his sights to focus on fellow Big 12 evacuee Colorado.
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