A Tech fan weighs in

Hey, UT fans who want to make nothing count except head-to-head, and who are so addicted to the magical words "45-35" that you may actually have contributed to the flyover banner UT alums have purchased for the Bedlam game...Shane Walker has a couple of words for you. Like, "Thirty-nine, thirty-three." In fact he has more than a couple of words:

“It’s a day Longhorn fans have forgotten,” said Walker, who said he contributed $500 to the cause. “We realize we got thumped by OU, and if OU wins tomorrow, we’re done in the national championship race.

“But we want to go to a BCS bowl. Based on Texas’ head-to-head argument, we should get the BCS bowl over them.”

Um...yep. You Longhorn types, you believe head-to-head trumps everything, right? So you would consider it an injustice for you to go to a BCS bowl instead of Tech after Tech put a sixty-two-yard touchdown drive on you to, um, beat you head-to-head? Right? Those of you who pitched in to help buy the 45-35 plane, you're also going to pitch in to help pay for the 39-33 plane, right? Because, after all, 39-33 is just as real as 45-35, right? And what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

Right?

“We find it amusing they say they beat OU on a neutral site,” Walker said. “We would’ve loved to have played OU on a neutral site. We would’ve loved to have seen what would’ve happened to Texas if they went to Norman.

“It seems like they’re not counting our victory over them because they dropped an interception at the end. But we went (62 yards) in the final minute. Does a championship team allow that kind of drive?”

All good questions. Would any Longhorn like to (a) say that nothing in the OU/UT debate should count except head-to-head, and then also (b) answer Walker's questions? Whatcha wanna bet any UT fan who tries to answer Walker's question, will try to answer by appealing to something -- anything at all -- rather than 39-33? In fact, whatcha wanna bet that sooner or later the UT fan, in trying to say why UT should go ahead of a team that beat them fair and square head to head, will sooner or later bring up -- in a whisper, after looking furtively over his shoulder to make sure no OU fans are within earshot -- the numbers 65 and 21?

Because 65-21 is a real number, and it counts, as long as you're using it to say what UT should go to the BCS instead of the team that beat them head-to-head. But if it's a question of whether OU or UT should go to the BCS...oh my God, quick, quick, change the CD...45-35, 45-35, 45-35, 45-35...whew, that was a close one.

Funny how the only thing that matters are numbers, up until the numbers go against you and suddenly everything else in the world matters except numbers. As my childhood friend Russell's grandmother used to say, "If you're the one keeping score, and you're losing, it's your own damn fault." I think you'd find that Shane Walker objects to Longhorn fans' attempt to be the Official Scorekeepers...and I'd sure be interested to hear any Longhorn argue his way out of Walker's appeal to 39-33without simultaneously undercutting his own appeal to the untrumpability of 45-35.

(Yes, I know that home field advantage matters. But so does margin of victory, which is just as empirically real as, and happens on the field just as surely as does, home field advantage. So does on-field improvement over the course of a season. So do ferociously vicious schedules in which teams are forced to face four Top Ten opponents in a row. So do critical injuries at highly inopportune times, something that both OU and UT know something about -- and if you don't think that in a sports-bar discussion between UT supporters and Tech supporters the subject of Quan Cosby's injury won't be raised early and often, by exactly the same people who would object to any reference by Okies to Ryan Reynolds as "making excuses," then I doubt you know many UT fans. Lots of things matter, actually, when a round-robin tournament ends in a daisy-chain three-way tie. To point out things that matter and remind people that they matter, is to participate helpfully and meaningfully in a discussion. But to pretend that the only things that matter are the things that ever-so-conveniently happen to support your partisan view...that's what we mean by special pleading, and it is a species of dishonesty. -- But I've already talked through all of those points here and won't repeat myself further.)

(Also, I know that there are fair-minded UT fans who recognize that it is not a cut-and-dried matter. They're not the ones I'm ridiculing in this post...but then, they also wouldn't have contributed money to pay for a plane to fly back and forth above T. Boone Pickens Stadium with a sign saying "45-35," hoping the rest of America would be too stupid to remember 39-33 and 65-21.)