Burnt Orange Nation

TWIQ is back with another top ranked weekly post.

"It was a fun night, the crowd was great and I thought it was probably as good of a first half that I've been involved with as a football coach." - Mack Brown. We had the same thought. As a matter of fact, the only half of dominance which we thought came close (outside of the '05 season when they all more or less looked that way) was the second half of the Oklahoma State game in 2004. The only difference being Okie State was staked to a 35-14 lead to start that game. 

"But the Longhorns haven't been tested the way they will be. Entering this weekend, half the SEC's 12 teams were ranked in the top 20 nationally in total defense. Only three Big 12 defenses ranked in the top 40, and half the league's teams ranked 70th or worse." -- ESPN's Mark Schlabach with this week's dumbest quote of the week. What Mark doesn't mention is that one must travel 26 spots down the offensive rankings charts to find an SEC team (Georgia), and if one travels 50 spots down the charts one will only find 3 SEC teams (Florida #37 and LSU #40). This isn't to suggest that Texas would inherently beat an SEC team if they matched up against one in the post-season, rather we'd just like to point out that the notion that playing insanely good offensive teams is somehow less of a test than playing strong defensive clubs is laughable.

"Body language? I don't know. I just play football." - Brian Orakpo. This is just the best of several great quotes in a great article by The Kansas City Star's Joe Posnanski. Not much commentary needed there. You can catch a couple more after the jump.

"The Tigers left Texas broken after a 56-31 loss to the Longhorns. They left with the unmistakable awareness that they are nowhere close, that there are three mountain west states, two army battalions and a canyon of fire between the Tigers and Texas, the best team in America."

And...

"Missouri could have come into this game with a game plan designed by Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh and Dwight D. Eisenhower and it still would have been a mismatch. Missouri did not lose Saturday. Texas won and won huge." -- Both previous quotes from same link as Orakpo quote above. After a win, we always enjoy checking out the postgame reaction from publications in enemy territory. It's easy to find glowing reviews in Austin, but the real fun comes from seeing how the vanquished opponents felt about the Longhorns' performance. In this case, Texas seems to have sucked the life out of the once-cosmic dreams in Missouri. We're very ok with it.

"After video review it's determined that the catch was made with a foot in the white, which means it's incomplete." - Texas vs. Missouri referee Randy Christal's long winded explanation of an incompletion which was reviewed by the video booth. A simple "after review, the ruling on the field has been reversed" would have sufficed and made us panic just a little less.

And, your quote of the week:

"Coach Gundy is not going to let that happen. You would think we were 0-7 after some of the meetings we have had." -- Oklahoma State Co-Offensive Coordinator Trooper Taylor, when asked if he and the team were thinking about what would happen if Oklahoma State beat Texas. The 'pokes are saying all the right things this week--Texas is really good, we're going to play hard and see what happens, we're not thinking about the national championship yet, etc. The fact is, we may be witnessing the beginnings of T. Boone Pickens' successful largess to OSU, and this may be a rising national power over the next few years. But as far as 2008 goes, we say: Bring it on, Pokeys.