For want of a nail a shoe was lost

For want of a shoe a horse/steer was lost

For want of a horse/steer a message was lost

For want of a message a battle was lost

For want of an army a kingdom was lost

All for the loss of a horse/steer shoe nail

Little things mean a lot. Our Longhorns seemed to have come light years towards doing the little things correctly. Tackling angles, getting off of blocks, foot placement, playing through the whistle, effort until the very end …...and then the most simple Pop Warner level disciplines get ransacked; Jumping offsides, illegal motion, illegal formation, holding in the edge, bad snaps, delay of game, wasted time outs from potential delays of game, falling down in the hole, raping the fair catch........????

I fully expected to see Mr. Bean on the sidelines with a headset on. I thought I saw Dick Cheney firing Old Smokey. I'm sure Barney Fife was sent in as an offensive play maker for the missing Daje. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Off go the toes! The Texas offense had more penalty yardage against them than Oklahoma had offense. At one point I was thankful that our delay of game kept us from going offsides! Boom! Boom! Boom! Longhorn spokesperson, Sarah Palin, said after the game that, "She could see Norman from her front porch!" BOOM!

OK, I made that last one up....but the game was even more bizarre than that! I have never seen a team be so utterly dominant on both sides of the ball and yet be so far behind in the score. Absurd. It was so frustrating that my faulty internet connection came to rescue me midway through the third quarter when our Longhorns looked like they were about to be blown out. I thought that the black screen in front of me was God's way of protecting my neighbors. Visions of all those past blow-outs were dancing in my head like drunken Boris Yeltsins. I was seeing red. I wanted to go into Slim Pickens Dr. Strangelove mode and ride into Norman in style.

Still....the words of Charlie Strong kept ringing in my ears; "Tough, tough, tough....", and so I took a deep breath, sucked it up, and went to work to get my computer back to Dallas before Lee Harvey and Jack ran onto the field.

While I was in darkened cyberfunk, enjoying my deep-fat-fried red wine, two miracles had taken place; my computer was started and the Okies were stopped! Somehow the Longhorns had scored! They were about to score again! I was out of my chair by then screaming at my screen, "You son of a guns! You aren't laying down! You aren't quitting! You aren't soft!" And they made me as proud as I've ever been of a team in my life.

We lost a game in Dallas, but we gained something far better; We have our team back....and they are TOUGH AS NAILS. Sloppy, idiotic, stumbling, bumbling, inept as they are at times, but no doubt about it; THEY ARE TOUGH AS NAILS! (I just hope that they don't get lost on the drive back to Austin – Bevo needs shoes).

PS, Dan Quayle is our new press agent. Norm Crosby will assist.