Colt McCoy reveals how Vince Young lit a fire under him in 2006 National Championship

On New Year’s Day in 2006, Vince Young went from a great Texas quarterback to a legendary Texas quarterback, beating USC in the Rose Bowl for a national championship. The next season, another Longhorns legend, Colt McCoy, took over at quarterback.

As McCoy explained on Green Light with Chris Long, that national championship lit a fire under him while at Texas.

“I, basically at that time, was just a hamburger eater,” McCoy said. “I’m traveling on the trips, I’m eating free hamburgers, we’re having In-N-Out in the Rose Bowl stadium the day before the game. Like, it’s my freshman year and at the time, if you were a redshirt, you couldn’t take a snap. One snap, you blow your whole redshirt year. You play.”

Because of this, McCoy knew he wasn’t going to play. Instead, he was adjusting to the game at the college level.

“And so, I was technically like the backup, but trying to stay redshirted. So, there was a couple other quarterbacks on the roster. That game was still like the best college football game, maybe the best game I’ve ever seen live in person. So, I’m holding the clipboard. I’m marking down plays. You know, I’m running the scout team during the week and USC’s got Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart and all these superstars, and I’m thinking to myself, I just graduated from high school. There’s 400 people in my hometown. There’s more people in my dorm room. My dorm room itself has its own zip code. Right? It’s way more people than my hometown.

“Everything is just knew to me and it doesn’t me that, oh we’re 13-0, we’re going to the Rose Bowl, a national championship, this must be normal. So, I’m sitting there, holding a clipboard, watching the game, it gets down to the last minute, Vince makes this — Vince plays amazing. One of the best performances of all-time, and we score. We got crazy, we win, and I had this epiphany, like I can’t play this. I could never do the things that my eyes just watch Vince Young do.”

As McCoy explained, Young knew he’d be passing the torch to him after the game. It came down to whether or not McCoy was ready for that torch.

“I’ve got to go home and totally reevaluate my situation because I’ll tell you the night before the game, we go to the ESPN Studios or the Disney Studios or whatever that’s right there close to the Rose Bowl and we have a team dinner. That’s where our dinner is and I remember Vince at the time, he lost the Heisman to Reggie Bush, but he was the best player in the world, college football-wise. So, he’s kind of up in his own booth, he’s got media every day, he comes up and puts his arm around me — we had a great relationship — and was like, ‘Hey, man. As soon as this game’s over I’m going to the league. It’s your show next year, man. You can do it.’ And I’m sitting there like, ‘Okay.’ I sleep on it that night,” McCoy said.

“We go to the game, best performance I’ve ever seen, we spend the night, everybody’s celebrating, and everybody stays up all night. Whatever. It’s fun. We won the national championship.”

It was this that motivated Colt McCoy because he was concerned that he wasn’t going to be ready for the start of the 2006 season.

“Get back on the plane to go home and I’m thinking like, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ I mean, this is great and all but if I put myself out there in that situation, I ain’t ready. And so, the night before that game is what really made me — like I worked hard. I needed to put on some weight. I grew a couple inches. Like, I hit a growth spurt. Everything worked out great for me, but I still spent from that night after the game to the very next year, all I could think about was I can’t let anybody else down,” McCoy said.

“Like, I have so much work to do. So, I think it was amazing to be a part of one of the best games I’ve ever seen or witnessed, but it really also kind of lit a fire under me that I’ve got to go get ready to do this.”

Colt McCoy went on to become one of the best quarterbacks in Texas history. However, despite four seasons as a starter, he never managed to win his own national championship. He did get a shot against Alabama but was injured and the Longhorns came up short in large part due to that injury.