Game Over 
Perfect 10
In the afterglow of UT’s Rose Bowl shocker, we revel in Vince Young’s mastery of the game, compare this year’s national champs with their forebears, and channel the ghost of Harvey Penick.
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The most amazing part about last night’s game is that while the Trojans had an embarrassing number of offensive weapons, Vince had to do most of the work himself. Tight end David Thomas was tough and dependable as always, but the others busted assignments, dropped balls, caused penalties, and mostly got in the way. Even the Texas defense got flustered. After the Longhorns forced USC to go three-and-out on the game’s first series, Aaron Ross coughed up the ball, trying to get an extra yard on a punt return. Helped along by a late hit by one of the UT linebackers, the Trojans wasted no time scoring. Then there was Mack’s astonishing decision to go for it on fourth-and-one from the USC 48, with the first quarter only half done and USC up by a touchdown. Can you imagine Darrell taking such a foolish risk? Mack’s blunder was compounded by offensive coordinator Greg Davis’s crazy call that gave the ball to the wrong Young—Selvin instead of Vince.
But my heart truly sank after UT’s first touchdown, when David Pino missed the extra point. A national championship game, and this boy misses a freaking extra point. (Later he missed a short field goal.) Teams don’t blow extra points against great teams, not if they expect to win. As Abe Martin might have put it, Pino ought to buy Vince Young a cream cone.
If you remember, Darrell used to lecture on how the game had three more-or-less equal parts: offense, defense, and special teams. There was rarely a time when DKR didn’t have a solid kicker. Coaches don’t seem concerned with that part of the game any longer. The Dallas Cowboys would be in the playoffs and might even have the home-field advantage if Parcells and Jones had bothered to look for a good kicker.
I wonder if Vince can boot the old pig hide? I’ll give you odds he can.
Jappy
>> January 5, 11:21 p.m.
Jappo:
You know how the TV announcers and color guys (they’re called analysts now) are always making hostile remarks to each other and then acting like it’s a joke and laughing heartily? They used to talk about Vince’s passing motion in that same tone, like he ought to forget about throwing the ball and stick to running with it and it was silly to think otherwise. I heard one of them say there are only two reasons he completes so many passes: (1) His receivers are always open, and (2) defenses are no good. That kind of comment reminds me of the political analysis we get on the cable talk shows—it’s both simple-minded and uninformed, a popular combination.
A number of critics still say that Vince will never make it as a pro because of his lack of classic form. He’s a three-quarters thrower instead of a put-the-ball-up-by-your-ear-and-let-it-fly-overhand picture passer. You’d never try to teach your Pony Leaguers to throw it that way, they say. But to me, Vince’s throwing motion looks very much like the one used by Drew Bledsoe, who has passed for more than 43,000 yards in the NFL, so he must be doing something right. And as you say, Vince often just flicks it. Of course, he can flick it 40 yards like a bullet. In the far-off galaxy he comes from, that’s how they do it in the interplanetary games. They call it “pegging the apple.”
I confess to being totally partisan about this. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been wearing an orange bracelet with the Longhorn image on it that UT media legend Bill Little sent me. Stamped on the bracelet are the words “Take dead aim.” The bracelets are not for sale, but they should be. I haven’t read much about them in the papers, but the theme of the UT football team this season has been “Take dead aim,” in honor of the tenth anniversary of Harvey Penick’s death and Ben Crenshaw’s downright eerie (there’s that word again) winning of the Masters just a few days after Harvey’s funeral.
“Take dead aim” was what Harvey called the most important message in his books. What he meant was, be aware and be in the moment. He said that once you address the ball, hitting it has got to be the most important thing in your life at that moment—that you should shut out all thoughts other than picking a target and taking dead aim, believe you’re going to hit what you are aiming at, and swing away. Bill told me the coaches were looking for a theme for the 2005 season, and Mack Brown’s wife, Sally, suggested “Take dead aim.” I doubt if any of the players had ever heard of Harvey Penick. They weren’t even born yet when Crenshaw and Tom Kite played for UT. But Mack explained to them that Harvey was a wise man and a great teacher and an Austin and a University of Texas hero—and they got it. So while you can’t exactly say they dedicated this season to Harvey, he was, in spirit, a large part of it.
I did the eulogy at Harvey’s funeral. Cactus Pryor sang, and Kite and Crenshaw were pallbearers. Ben cried on the plane on the way back to Augusta. People wondered if he would make it to the first tee, but there he was on Sunday, tied for the lead. I was pacing around the living room in front of my TV screen, and I felt so utterly involved that it was, well, eerie. I felt Harvey’s presence there. So did Ben. If Ben hit a ball into the woods, it bounced off a tree and went back into the fairway. (If you do it from heaven, it’s not cheating.) By the end of Sunday, when Ben sank the putt that won the Masters and then collapsed in tears, I was on my knees on the carpet. Ben told reporters that day that Harvey was the fifteenth club in his bag. The point is that a couple of those bounces at Augusta on that Sunday reminded me of certain events at the Rose Bowl—like when Vince tossed the lateral that went for a touchdown but his knee was on the ground and the replay equipment didn’t get it because Harvey Penick had his thumb over the lens. And I’m sure that Harvey’s spirit piled into the line on that USC fourth-down-and-two late in the fourth quarter, the play that failed because Harvey had told Reggie Bush to stay on the sidelines.
Back to the Longhorn bracelets: They ought to sell them like Lance Armstrong bracelets and split the money between the athletic department and the First Tee Harvey Penick Golf Campus.
Looking out my back windows, I can see the Tower lit up orange. I can’t see the big number one from here, but I just saw it on television. And we know that if we see it on television, it’s real.
Bud
>> January 6, 10:31 a.m.
Bud:
Wow! I knew the phrase “take dead aim” sounded familiar, but until now I never made the connection. Got to get one of those bracelets fast.
I found myself fighting the bitter disease of partisanship as the season wore toward what now seems like its inevitable conclusion. As sportswriters, we hated partisans (“homers,” we called them). Remember that sportswriter at the Dallas Times Herald who always referred to the SMU Mustangs as “we,” not just in conversations but in his damn columns? Pathetic. But I knew I had been infected just before Christmas when I went to the University Co-op and bought my sixteen-year-old grandson, Malcolm, an orange UT coach’s jacket and a white number 10 Longhorn jersey. Malcolm lives in Little Rock, but I’m hoping he gets the fever. Just to be sure, I’m going out today to buy him a poster of the orange Tower with the big 1 on its face.
In retrospect, the Longhorns didn’t just have Harvey’s eternal spirit in their locker room; they had the living legend of Darrell Royal too. Darrell and his wife, Edith, were ubiquitous in Pasadena—Darrell his usual strong, quiet, laid-back presence and Edith making sure nobody missed the symbolism. There was a funny moment at the front gate of the Rose Bowl when security stopped Darrell and Edith because he wasn’t wearing his credentials. “Delbert” (remember when we nicknamed him Delbert?) didn’t bother mentioning that he had coached three national championship teams at UT. But when they tried to force him through a metal detector, Edith took charge. “He’s got a pacemaker,” she scolded. “He’s not going anywhere.”
As I recall, we coined the name Delbert after UT’s first national championship season, in 1963. He had just been named coach of the year and was hiding out from the press. So naturally he came to Dallas and concealed himself in an apartment on Cole Avenue occupied by two sportswriters named Shrake and Cartwright. Perfect plan, heh? “Delbert” was so that nobody would know his true identity. Four decades later, I still call him that. By the way, do you and Delbert play golf semi-regularly anymore, or has age rained you out?
Inevitably, people will compare Mack and Darrell. There are similarities, not the least of which is that they both won national championships. Both are solid, fundamental, and charismatic. Like Darrell, Mack knows exactly who he is and what he’s about. Mack has been criticized for being too conservative, too uptight, and too nice. Forty years ago you could have said the same about Darrell, though nobody did. They’re from different generations. The game has changed.
My Library
