2008 Texas Longhorns Football Team
The 2008 Texas Longhorn football team (variously "Texas" or the "Horns") represented the University of Texas at Austin in the 2008 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The team was coached by Mack Brown, who has a contract lasting through the 2016 season. The Longhorns play their home games in Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR), which during 2006–2008 was undergoing renovations to improve older sections as well as to add extra seating capacity.
The team entered the season ranked 10th in the USA Today Coaches' Poll. They won their first four games to rise to number 5 in the national rankings. Texas began Big 12 Conference play on October 4, 2008 with a trip to Boulder, Colorado and a win over the Colorado Buffaloes. On October 11, 2008 they defeated the number-one ranked Oklahoma Sooners at the Cotton Bowl, in Dallas, Texas, in the 103rd Red River Shootout and Texas moved into the number-one spot in the polls the next day. One week later, defending the number-one ranking in a home game for the first time since 1977, the Horns beat the number-eleven ranked Missouri Tigers. The following day, Texas was ranked #1 in the first Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings released during the 2008 season. The next week, the Horns beat previously undefeated Oklahoma State, who were ranked #6 in the BCS at the time.
Texas lost a close road game against Texas Tech, who were undefeated at 8–0 and ranked #5 in the Coaches' Poll. As a result, the Horns fell to #7 in the Coach's poll while the Red Raiders rose to #3. Texas fell to #4 in the BCS Standings, keeping alive the possibility they could still play for the national championship if other top teams stumble. Next, the Longhorns won a home game against Baylor and a road-game against Kansas, who were previously ranked but had fallen out of the polls since losing to Texas Tech. Oklahoma defeated Texas Tech, which returned Texas to a #2 ranking in the BCS and created a three-way tie (Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma) in the Big 12 South.
The final regular-season opponent for Texas was in-state rival Texas A&M, part of the Lone Star Showdown. The Longhorns won 49–9, the largest margin of victory in the rivaly for 110 years. Despite this victory, Oklahoma moved past Texas in the BCS rankings. The three-way tie was resolved by the fifth tie-breaker so Oklahoma advanced to the Big 12 Championship instead of Texas. This was controversial since Texas had beaten both Oklahoma and Missouri (the Big 12 North champion) during the regular season. Texas finished out the season with a 24-21 win over Ohio State in the 2009 Fiesta Bowl.
Read more about 2008 Texas Longhorns Football Team: Before The Season, Schedule, Players, Rankings and Championship Possibilities
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“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.””
—Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)