Editor's Note: We recently received this unsolicited Texas State of the Union post in an e-mail from an anonymous address. It was signed "Publius Longwindicus." Although we can't be certain, we have our suspicions as to the author's identity. Because we're scrambling as usual to hastily craft real SOTUs it's such a masterpiece of prose, we decided to publish it. Enjoy!
2013 Texas Longhorns State of the Union: After you R.I.S.E., you have to S.T.A.N.D.
And so it begins, the beginning of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's season of college football for the annual year of two-thousand and thirteen. And it is in the beginning of a season of collegiate football that we, those faithful "fanatics" of college sports fanship, are forced to ponder that a football season, like all good things, at last must come to its end in a grand finale of fun and sportsmanship and post-game snackpacks that is like no other.
And it is on that glorious Dreamwagon that our story begins, much like the story of the 2013 NCAA college football season of dreams will begin shortly before a brilliant Austin sunset on an autumn Saturday night on Joe Jamail Field at the Texas Memorial Darrell K. Royal Stadium presented by Taco Bell in Austin, Texas. Last year, it was "R.I.S.E." -- Relentless, Intensity, Sacrifice/Swagger, and Emotion -- that carried the day as the team's annual motivating theme. But this year the young men on the team will be following a different path to the glory of the gridiron. Earlier this week, the players that together form the Texas Longhorn football family met in the hallowed halls of the Moncrief-Neuhaus Complex to choose a new theme for this 2013 season of Longhorn football: "S.T.A.N.D." It is in those five letters of the alphabet that form the acronym for the theme that will carry this team through this 2013 football season of college competition: Scoring, Temerity, Athletic, Noseguards, and Destiny/Decleaters.
It is an appropriate theme that captures the spirit of the day. For after you "R.I.S.E.," you have to "S.T.A.N.D." Unless you "S.I.T." (Severity, Intelligence/Interesting, Touchdowns) or "F.A.L.L. D.O.W.N." (Ferocity/Football, Amazing, Leadership, Leg strength, Determined, Oblong, Wham!, Nigerian). Those were also options considered by the players on the team. And though they were good choices, in the end these Longhorns chose to "S.T.A.N.D."
As head coach of these Texas football Longhorns Mack Brown once quipped when asked by a member of the local media in attendance, "I think that when you look at what other teams are doing around the country, it's really something we try to think about and address with the kids." And as we look back on that wisdom we see an important lesson Coach Brown long ago learned from former Longhorn head coach Darrell K. Royal. And so it begins.
It is that process of learning to grow that brings out the best that makes up college football in these days of iPods and high-top sneakers. And in this, which is at the same time the beginning of it and the finality of it all, we see that it is on that Dreamwagon where the best of seats are sometimes marked "S.T.A.N.D.ing room only."