Memories of Rout 66: Texas vs. UCLA 1997

Rout 66?

Enjoyed that. The post, not the game.

And if you mailed that same envelope 13 years later, SWAT would knock down your door a couple of days after.

That was the first Longhorn game that I ever attended in person. My first year in college. I took a date — a beautiful girl from the hell that extends from Northern Mexico up to San Antonio. We sat on the student side after extensive tailgating. Wearing orange. Excited.

I took two things away from that day: (1) a hatred of John Mackovic that never went away; and 2) a solemn vow never again to bring a date to a football game (except OU) so I could freely curse and chew tobacco in the event that things went horribly wrong.

Just reading this is making me want to vomit.

I bet Macovic’s quote “They had to live with the Big12 championship last year and they’ll have to live with this too” went over real well with you!

I was at some random sales conference … In california … Afrer talking shit for weeks about how we were going to pants UCLA.

One of the California people had a pager(!) that had score updates. I still remember the sound the pager made on the table everytime he slid it over to me to show me the score. Eventually i just let it sit int the middle of the table buzzing away until one of the other people tossed it off the table.

I remember that game quite well. My date was late so we didn’t get to the game until the end of the 1st quarter. Just in time to watch Texas drop a TD pass and look up to see that we were down something like 21-0. I remember not believing and thinking that I shouldn’t drink so much before games. We left after the 2nd quarter, I had completely tramatized my date to the point were for most of college you looked at me like horns sticking out from my head. She did end up meeting and marrying one of my good friends, which is the only positive I can gleem from that day.

FYI, I’m pretty sure Marty Cherry played in the ’99 cotton bowl, in another drunken rage I found myself cursing his name to anyone who would listen, until after about five minutes the girl in front of me turned around introduced herself as his sister (or sister in law, this is bit fuzzy) and told me to shut the F up.

Postscript -

I went to the game the following year at the Rose Bowl, when Walton went out early with an injured finger and some kid named Major Applewhite – who, pre-Internet, I was stunned to discover was a WHITE kid – came on in relief …

But Ricky had a decent day, we had the new guy as coach – though I felt much better about the absence of Mackovic than the presence of Brown – and I left with a feeling relief that we lost “only” 49-31.

It was, in retrospect, the end of the beginning.

Fuck that shit.

Long time reader, first time poster. As usual, fantastic post Scipio….the ’97 UCLA game certainly is a day that will live in infamy. At least Marty Cherry further embarrassed himself by proclaiming that the modeling runway is more intimidating that the tunnel in Dallas before Texas/OU.

http://abercrombiemodels.blogspot.com/2006/08/abercrombie-fitch-male-model-marty.html

I was working radio play-by-play for SW Texas State and we were playing Hofstra in New York. They periodically passed out in the press box updates of games from around the nation.

I thought it was some kind of typo.

After the game we got on the subway went down to Times Square. Ended up in some huge sports bar with TV after TV showing game highlights. One of the more surreal times of my life.

I’m glad I’d married my wife about a year before that game. Had she seen me at that game first, she may have backed out.

I also painfully remember that Baylor game, though for some reason I was thinking it was 60 something to 7, probably just morphing those two traumatizing days.

Jesus, you even put up a picture. Maybe you could come over later and shove some bamboo shoots up my fingernails.

A friend and I stayed for the whole game, but I spent much of the second half doing the crossword from from Friday’s Daily Texan. I remember the guys behind us started yelling “Olé” at every missed tackle. At some point in the fourth quarter, I looked around to see that there was no one sitting within 20 yards of us. There couldn’t have been more than a couple of hundred people on the east side of the stadium. Surreal.

I was in 7th grade. I had no family affiliation with the Texas Longhorns at that time but I remember watching that game with my dad who to SMU and my mom who went to the U. My dad wasn’t a Longhorn lover or hater but I remember him saying over and over again how embarrassing it was. He couldn’t stand the idea of Texas’ flagship university getting embarrassed by a bunch of west coasters. Now he is the proud parent of two Texas graduates and one current student but I don’t think he will ever get over that game. He never became a Texas fan but he always watched Texas on Saturdays after SMU got the death penalty. Crazy shit.

This is epic.

This post should be required reading for every current UT student. Or, going even further, it should be required reading for every student who attended UT after the VY era and never really followed the team beforehand.

I was a sophomore that year, and to date, that was the only UT game I ever left early (and I was at the two OU blowouts in ’00 and ’03). It was 8,000 degrees that day, and after we finally got a field goal, I headed back over to Prather wondering if the ’96 Big 12 Title would be the closest I would ever see to the Horns finishing in the Top 10.

By the way, you didn’t miss anything by burning your season tickets. If I remember right, the home schedule inlcluded ugly losses to Tech and Colorado and a rainy win over Kansas.

The year didn’t get any better, either. Football, basketball, and baseball all had losing seasons. I have to say, though, that the ’97-98 experience made the next 10 years that much more satisfying…

Everyone’s recounting where they were like it was the Kennedy assassination is hilarious.

I was a senior in high school, and not a Horn fan. Never cared about college football. I walked in to my friend’s house and he had the game on. I saw same graphic on the screen that said 45-0 or something. I remember thinking: “Hm. Wonder what that is. Yards this half or something?” Alas, it was not.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1014026/index.htm

Stayed for every home game that year. KU game was cold as he’ll too. Mack has us all spoiled.

I had bet my coworker (a UCLA alumni) $100 on that game, I talked shit to him all week. We watch the game at his place, a party for the game you might say.

At halftime ABC/ESPN/CBS switch to another game. I gave him the money and left.

I haven’t bet on a Texas game since then, because I realized I could not be objective about the Longhorns.

I’ve lost much money over the last 14 years.

I went outside at halftime and mowed the yard. I dicked around further, finally going back inside just in time to see the final seconds tick off the clock.

We had dinner plans that night with another couple, the first time we were getting together. My wife and the other woman had a mutual friend. Turns out the woman was from SoCal, and everyone in her family was a big, fat, season ticket-clutching UCLA Bruin booster. And hey, she saw the game too!

My wife had to drive home that night.

This is a great post for so many reasons, but an important one is that there are tons of fans who only got into Texas football during the Mack Brown era and don’t know a thing about how dark it was before dawn. At the Rice game, a bunch of recent grads were bemoaning the first half and I asked them, “do you know who Skip Hicks is?” I got blank stares in response.

I told them we were going to beat Rice and everything was going to be OK.

This becomes a bit more tolerable when it happens once a season. (Sometimes twice!)

Great thread: it’s funny how the big losses stick with you.

Scipio, I like the detail about the tickets and the shaving mirror; it’s got a Travis Bickle quality to it.

The last article tag is priceless. May it only be used on opponents from now on.

The Mackovic teams were a manic roller coaster ride, with more exciting offensive highs than what we’d experienced with Akers and bottoms so low that Rice remained competitive through it all and you never took any game for granted, except maybe Oklahoma. That one chalked rivalry win every season coasting on the laurels of the first Big 12 championship upset of almighty Nebraska may have been the reason Mackovic lasted as long as he did.

But the UCLA rout only emphasized that the brand of football we played at in Texas and the midwest paled in comparison with the west coast football being played out in California. The Pac 10 conference was a cocky bunch in those days.

I sat on the West side upper deck (the only upper deck at the time) and stayed until the end. We sang the “Eyes” and then walked to Scholtz’s, where my buddy’s dad and uncle sat on a curb— drinking, smoking, and staring into space. Those guys had been supporting Texas football for decades, and they were visibly stunned and suffering. We all were taking it pretty hard, but they looked wounded on some deeper level.

In those days, one of my pre-game rituals was setting the VCR (remember what a pain in the ass that was?). When I got home, I just ejected the tape and threw it in the trash. I had recorded over the Rutgers game, but I wasn’t going to use that particular tape any more. It was tainted.

I also remember the 1998 game at the Rose Bowl. It was Mack’s 2nd (?3rd) game, and UCLA had a top-5 ranking. I remember us having GAME DAY TRYOUTS to find defensive ends and cornerbacks who could play. We had some tiny 170-pound converted wide receivers at corner, trying to cover UCLA’s 6’5" future NFL wideouts. Watching that, I started to realize just how vast the talent gap was between UT and the best teams in college football.

Anyone who thinks Mack is a poor X’s and O’s guy should keep in mind what an outclassed and demoralized team he took on here just a few months after the 66-3 debacle… and despite a 1998 schedule with road games at 3 of the preseason top-5 (UCLA, KSU, Nebraska), Texas won 9 games and a New Year’s Day bowl.

Good story but I’d like to see it “Mack Adams”-ified.

I was dating a recent UCLA grad at the time and had been talking mad shit for weeks. She would just smile and chuckle at my absurdity. Should have married her, but thats another story.
As the game progressed and I cried into the couch, she would say , “You are my bitch for a month.”

I was at that game too, as a rosy-cheeked 11-year-old, knowing that Texas could do no wrong. My innocence may have been lost that day, but I have been waiting for 13 years for revenge. I’m praying for an absolute mudhole stomping, despite the fact that the guys on this UCLA team weren’t even in double digits yet. Plus, I live in LA now, and if I have to hear my UCLA-grad coworkers talking any kind of shit, even about a “moral victory,” there will be violence.

Many posters on this thread have stated a very key point. Success should never ever be taken for granted, It troubles me when I read and hear Texas fans act like success at UT is some type of birthrite. I have seen the events that led to the fall of SWC, the decay of the Cotton Bowl to a lower tier status, and the implosion of the Texas program (consider that the 90’s gave us the loss to Rice on national television, Rout 66, and Miami’s prision rap of UT in the Cotton Bowl.).

The difference between those losses and the brutual ass-whippings Mack took from Stoopes in the early 2000’s was that I felt things were in motion to fix the problems. I am not saying that Texas fans should happily accept the current state of the Texas offense, but that I believe things will work out because I have seen where this program has come from in just 14 years.

Little did I know when my sons and I walked out of the stadium that afternoon that the sixty plus point beatdowns by OU a few years later could actually be a worse feeling.

Left at halftime. Went to County Line and called the KLBJ call-in show. Ranted on the air while my buddies ate.

Had season tickets for the first time in 1993, the second year of the Mackovic era, and remember clearly that when we tied ranked Syracuse 21-21 in the opener, everyone knew “WE WERE ON OUR WAY BACK!” I fully bought into the Mackovic plan, and chalked up the next two seasons of alternating joy and heartbreak as the growing pains of a program on the come. I mean, hey, we won the final SWC title and went undefeated in conference! I wrote 1996 down to the new growing pains of playign the upgraded competition in the fearsome Big XII North. Then, when we won the Big 12 by basically outplaying and outcoaching the #3 team in the country, that the return was now complete.

That Saturday, sitting with my in-laws (UH grads who had never been to a really big football game), I realized that I’d been had. We were nothing close to “back” unless “back” meant “almost as good as Baylor.”

I had decided to leave The University before they kicked me out, and moved to Gainseville, FL with a bunch of my friends. I really only heard about the games secondhand and through my month late Horns Illustrated. I couldn’t believe that score when I heard it. The contrast to UF post MNC year was stark.

I was a Longhorn in the 90s growing up with friends and relatives that rooted for Florida schools. I had my navy blue Horns hat (great mention of the lack of colors Scipio) and lived through Rice and Baylor while attending.

I ended up going back to witness the 2000s OU beatdown’s first hand as an “old man” student. Graduated in 04 to miss out on the MNC while on campus.

All of that said to emphasize Davey O’Brien’s point that as bad as things may seem with the offense, they have been MUCH, MUCH worse.

I’ll never forget watching the 90 Cotton Bowl as a 9th grader in an empty house and cussing at the top of my lungs with nearly every play.

“Marty Cherry entered the game for Walton and was hit so hard on one of UCLA’s seven sacks that he quit football for modeling.”

Solid gold…accurate or not as to when he actually quit!

I had been forced to spend a short weekend in Fredericksburg with the new (second) wife, and was really pissed to miss the game. I finally taked her into heading back and got the radio on during haltime, but they were just doing commercials. When they finally gave the score, I ran off Highway 290 and fucked up my right front tire. If any of you have ever driven 290 between Fredericksburg and Stonewall, it’s not easy to run off the highway into a ditch…from the inside lane.

Great post. As a guy who graduated in 1990, I’ve seen some bad UT football, but that game was the nadir.

It’s also the only home game since 1995 that I have not attended. I was at my wife’s family reunion at a farm near Stephenville. I remember listening to that first UT drive as we drove up there, thinking things were going pretty well, then we lost the radio signal. Got to the farm, quickly found the room where all the men were watching the game and was surprised to see so many looks of concern. We were down two scores already. I gave up on the game at halftime.

I remember listening to the Mizzou and Baylor games later that season on the radio – no TV coverage! – as UT lost late despite Ricky being nearly unstoppable. I remember sitting in the rain at the KU game, thinking it was the last time I’d see Ricky play in Austin. We all chanted “one more year” as he left the stadium, but I don’t think any of us believed he’d be back playing for some new guy in 1998.

Fortunately, good things eventually came from that season.

Thanks for posting this. Nice to get a little perspective as I bitch about the offense’s performance during a win in Lubbock.

That Penn State game was god damn bullshit too, and a good indicator of the coming pain. I remember hearing from some family member “The good coach made adjustments at the half.” Uhg.

Man that was a dark time.

Mackovic was Mike Leach before there was Mike Leach, except Mackovic’s offenses were never as good as advertised. He ran what he thought should work, never mind what the defense actually did, he called plays against what he thought the defense should be doing. The 1997 season tipified Mackovic, he could have gone 6-5 by just running Ricky up the middle every play, but no, it had to be done Mackovic’s way. He had to be the offensive guru.

First game ever attended as a student my Freshman year.

While watching the ESPN pregame show all I could remember is Peyton Manning saying “UCLA will not start 0-3. They will either beat us or beat Texas.”

Well I think they did in fact lose to Tennessee and made sure 0-3 was not in the cards when they stomped the mother or all mudholes in us that Sunny 198 degree day.

My first season tickets were 1976 – $48, and a lot of money then for a 14 year old. That season had the 30-0 home Houston loss, which was just ….. the end of the world. But for pure misery, Rout 66 was it. We stayed until the field goal so we could make sure we had the scoring streak alive, and then left. We had had been drinking all morning, and had an evening of more drinking planned. I think we went home, sent the baby sitters away, and just watched Cops or something and didn’t talk.

We took friends to the KU game to end that year, and paid $10 each for 50 yard line seats on the first row of the upper deck. I was seriously pissed off that we paid that much money to sit in the cold with 30,000 of my best Longhorn friends.

I too was at the game and also left early for the first time in my life. The sad realization that we were not good and would have to start over again hit. At that point the last truly good team I had seen was the ’83 team. It was 14 years and counting. Talk about depressing.

The next year I went out to the Rose Bowl and when we kept playing hard in the 4th despite being outmanned and down big, I thought that I hadn’t seen that kind of fight out of a Texas team in 15 years. That’s when I knew that Mack might have a chance to make us good again.

Despite our offensive issues, we have come a hell of a long way in the last 13 years. Thanks for reminding us.

At the game with my wife, dad and stepmother – starting the third year as season ticket holders. After watching Texas mired in mediocrity from 89-92 while an undergrad, we really felt like we were moving back to respectability. Until that day.

I left early – the only time I can recall ever doing so. I figured that if the coaches and players could quit, then it was time for us to leave.

Recall that the Ags still had a pretty decent team – and a strong following at home in Houston. Sports radio – and my coworkers – were absolutely insufferable the following week. Kenny Hand was particularly smarmy.

The upside is that I was able to see the Rose Bowl game against USC. I consider it to be the bookend experince of Texas football – arguably the program’s best and worst moments – and in an odd way it probably explains why I still live and die with this team.

I sat through 30-0 in 1976 and 50-7 and 66-15. But I left Rout 66 at halftime. That university I grew up with and stayed to sing the Eyes for doesn’t exist. Those are NFL games now, replete with the same canned music being played in every professional sports venue from minor league hockey to the NBA. When it gets that bad now, I get gone.

Texas was a 10-point favorite. Some guy with a computer model on Sporting News radio predicted an upset. He did not, however, predict that catastrophe. I watched the second half at The Posse. I have hazy memories of UCLA’s tight end lumbering unfettered through wide expanses of green whenever I could bring myself to look at a television.

I think Marty Cherry’s break as a model was being repeatedly shown next to Mackovic on the sideline. I guess this overshadowed his running the team dice game at the Sugar Bowl.

I also remember it being much hotter. A real scorcher, with the sun beaming off the emptying stands. Just the sense of shock. Helplessness. Ugh.

I turned 40 that day in that God forbidden swamp of a stadium, which then still resembled something of a dungeon beneath the stands and reaked of Bat guano. I’d closed down Sixth Street the night before in a lame effort to convince coeds that I was a mere ten pounds removed from my fighting weight and was sweating beer out of every pore. I’d watched Stanford melt down under similar circumstances the year before and was cocksure that the Bruins would last no more than a quarter or so before raising white flags. The exodus at half time was unrivaled by anything I’ve ever seen this side of College Station. I was one of twenty-five Longhorn fans remaining in the stadium to sing The Eyes at the end. Okay, that may be a little hyperbolic given that you couldn’t tell a Texas fan from the enemy in those days, other than for our vacant, concentration camp stares. Nearly fifteen years and additional pounds later, I’d sit through it all again, along with the Rice debacle a week or two later, if I had known it would lead to Mack Brown. Thanks for the memories…

i was bartending at the Papppadeaux on Northwest Hwy at the old Restaurant Row in Dallas. and the head chef, an ’86 alum, kept coming out and cursing at the screen and then turning to me and yelling, “What the fuck?!”

this was a 350 seat house on a 20-30 minute wait every saturday. when we kicked the field goal in the 3rd quarter, i turned off the television in the bar, my patrons cheered, and the chef came out thinking we were close.

he then yelled, again, in front of a packed, waiting house, “Turn that horseshit back on. We are gonna watch and we are gonna sing the Eyes of Texas, goddamnit!!!”

i did, and we did. Ive never been prouder… well, except when VY was showered in confetti.

Over Macho Grande?

No, Scipio, I don’t think I’ll ever be over Macho Grande…

I had bet my coworker (a UCLA alumni)

alumnus

Yep, it’s always good to remember where we’ve been. Makes where we are now all the sweeter.
I too was there, stubbornly sat through the entire thing, while my then-girlfriend asked over and over, “Why don’t we just leave? We’re getting our asses kicked.” I’d been out of school 3 years and didn’t get to make too many games. I guess it was some form of penance. All that was missing was the sackcloth.
Our seats were around the 20, but with the mass exodus at halftime, we moved to seats on the 45, about 15 rows up, so as to have a better vantage point to view the sodomy, I guess. And yes, it was hot, hotter than a blast furnace, and all that empty aluminum just jacked the temperature even more. I remember literally feeling nauseous, and it was as much from what was going on on the field as it was the searing heat and alcohol consumption.
I’ve sat through some of the most embarrassing, infuriating, shocking losses our program has endured…66-15 to UH, 50-7 to Baylor, 46-3 to Miami, 63-14 to OU, and, of course, Route 66. A bunch of other posters have nailed it — if you’re a fan of more recent vintage, you probably can’t fully appreciate just how sweet this current run of excellence is, coming from where this program came from in the late 80s-much of the 90s. Texas was an afterthought in college football; we were no better than Baylor. We seldom lured any marquee, difference-making talent to campus. We were regularly ripe for upsets by the likes of Rice, TCU (when they really sucked) and other weakling programs we should’ve been wiping our asses with. We didn’t matter one whit on the national scene. And 1997 was the absolute bottom.
Mack Brown, thank you.

I was living in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, cooking at a high end Italian place in Laconia. It was Race weekend. I mentioned my love of the Horns to the Bar tender and asked him to keep an eye on the game for me and tell me the score occasionally. We got into the weeds right away and I vaguely remember looking up at him at one point and he immediately went back up stairs to the bar. Three hours later, as I cleaned my station and things settled down, he handed me a shot of Jamison and gave me the bad news. It felt like somebody kicked me in the nuts.

I packed my car with everything I had a week later and drove to DC for an internship. I didn’t watch a single game that season.

Hysterical (at least to me) fun fact. I just learned that my cheerleader friend was the third backflip person after we hit the field goal.

I stayed until the end. I’d gotten two tickets, gratis, to the best seats I ever had at Memorial.

UT was rolling, and right as the ball was in the air, on its way to the first interception of the day, I said “this is how they blew it,” a facetious reference to a current rap single. Oops. No more incantations from me. Nossir.

The UCLA fans behind me went from chanting “UCLA!” with full irony, to gasping at their team’s success. There was zero trash talking. They couldn’t believe it either.

UCLA, coming into that game, had lost to Tennessee and WSU. A couple of nobodies, I thought. After UCLA left the stadium, I thought “well, they STILL haven’t played anybody.” WSU faced Michigan in the Rose Bowl and Tennessee faced Nebraska, each opponent later split the national title that year, and I realized then that I knew nothing about football.

Looking back, it seemed silly that UCLA recruited linebackers to be defensive linemen. That’s how little I understood the game. Not sure I’m any smarter now, but I don’t laugh at speed anymore.

Why does this game mean so much!?!?

Because they must suffer the intolerable agony of defeat, they must hurt as we have hurt, and they must bleed as we have bled. If Gilbert and this offense have just one colossal ass kicking, mud hole stomping, monkey ass beat down in them, let it come.

So help me God, I hope it’s 110 degrees, I hope it’s humid as hell and I hope that 13 years later the pain of this loss tears at their hearts as horribly as it did they day it happened.

I was a freshman in 1997.

I remember roasting on the east side like a pig on a spit. A chick came down from Baylor that I new from home to be my date. She could not understand why me and my fifty or so pledge brothers were sitting in a section by ourselves. Nearly every student had left the game by the second half. Eyes to eyes meant alot to us.

I moved from Austin to Houston this year in the offseason. Due to work, I did not plan to make a game this year for the first time in a very long time.

A friend emailed me the box score on Tuesday. I got so pissed off that I had booked a hotel room before my rage had subsided. I hope we beat the dog shit out of them pussies on Saturday.

I was in the 8th grade. Fourth year of season tickets with my dad. What a fucking shit season. Went to every home game, though, and even traveled to Columbia to have see my extended family enjoy the thrill of victory over Texas.

Coincidentally, I also had to suffer through a terrible Spurs season that year. But that sports season of pain yielded Mack Brown and Tim Duncan, so in the end it was worth it all.

I invited a good client who had been on the swim team at UCLA and his very pregnant wife to join us for the game. Due to the score, the heat and his wife’s condition it was the first UT game I had ever left before seeing the final seocnds tick off the clock and singing the “Eyes”. On the way home my client mentioned that he might have experienced his last UT game via an invitation from me-he was and still is correct.

I was there. Stayed ’til the bitter end and all the way through the Eyes. Maybe just force of habit from when I was in Longhorn Band.

As I looked at the three or four other people still left in the upper deck, I was shocked to ask myself, “I wonder if we can get Fred Akers back?”

My buddy didn’t show up and I watched the game alone on the sparsely populated East side upper deck.

Left for Crown at half time and guzzled three pitchers watching some English dudes play darts wishing I could throw one in Mackovic’s eyeball.

Was at the game and Scip is right, the score could have been much worse. A Sooner friend has always been amazed that I harbour no grudge against UCLA. I couldn’t muster one because that score was a lot more about us being that bad and quitting than about the Bruins running it up. Only way UCLA scores fewer points than 66 that day was if their defenders starting intentionally dropping passes the UT back-up QB’s kept throwing right to them.

Heard from a semi-inside source that UCLA came to Austin terrified that Texas would beat them to death running Ricky inside against an undersized Bruin line. So what did Mackovic do? Tried to show everyone what a genius he was by passing despite Brown being out with an injury. Add in the slowest and worst defense Texas ever put on the field and things got ugly quickly.

This is a cautionary tale and we are incredibly lucky that the program is currently as strong as it is.

Thanks, Mack.

I was there. Painful as hell. In the second quarter the place emptied as if someone had dropped a stink bomb in the stands.

Anybody else remember Skip Hicks motioning out to WR and Brandon Nava going out to cover him? That was classic. Snap, three step drop, lob to wide open Hicks racing down the sideline. The sad thing is, I think it happened twice that day.

my buddy was singing the barnum and bailey song to me all day. it sucks throwing in the towel on an entire season.

That’s some sad shit. Great post though.

Remember where Skip Hicks went to high school?

What is Burkburnett High School, Alex? Please keep the tote bag and send me a miniature replica of your trophy. Still trying to convince the kids that I had game. Failing..
The 97 UCLA game gave my brothers and me a searing case of red-ass, but at least it helped rid us of the cultured wine drinking enthusiast. What a tool.

Thanks for pissing me off. I was at this one, and stayed to the end also. Partly to live up to the role of being a good fan, but also to permanently etch the image in my brain. I was also at the 91 Cotton Bowl, the UH Shannon Kelly game, the Rice monsoon, and drew 50yd line seats for the Bosworth/Keith Jackson beatdown at the state fair.

Enjoy the salad days we’re living in now fellas. They are not a longhorn birthright.

Also as a result of the rout 66 I modified my position on staying to the end. If the team quits on the field, I’m leaving.

“We had to destroy the villiage in order to save it.”

I was in a golf tournament in San Diego with 3 friends who went to U.of Arizona. After the round we got in the car & heard the score & recap on Bruin radio. The Bruin announcers were in as much disbelief as were we. Fast forward a couple of years. Mackovic is coach at U of Az & I’m telling my buddies how slow & neglected their defense is about to become. We’re playing in a fundraiser tournament for U.of Az athletics at the Biltmore. After the round I’m exiting the locker room & as I open the door with my Longhorn hat atop my head Mackovic is entering. He stops dead in his tracks, staring at the logo. “Nope, you’re not there…just bad deja vu”. He never responded but his eyes looked like the famous concussion still had him fucked up.

“Marty Cherry. Marty? Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time… a long time.”

I was there on that fateful afternoon and stayed until the bitter end.

Thanks for a great post Scip, as always.

The Chronicle’s Mike Finger filed this article on the game and its consequences.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/college/texas/7215604.html

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