The Preheat: Turning blemishes into battle scars is the key to Texas' title run

For the past few months, I’ve written that this season would require a recalibration of everything college football fans have grown accustomed to. Conference realignment, an expanded playoff, a new calendar—it’s all going to disorient fans. So, I warned, they shouldn’t panic or even lose heart when it feels like they’re supposed to. But since the SEC Championship loss to Georgia, I have refused to heed my own advice. My mindset and heart feel as though the season should be over.

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The loss has me stumbling around like I’m up in the middle of the night in my house, relying on muscle memory in the darkness. I feel the urge to write season recaps, lament what could have been, and start saying goodbye to the players who’ve played their last game in burnt orange and white. But I woke up in a different house. We all have.

The screwy calendar, which allows Texas to lose players from the current roster while adding players from teams the Longhorns played a month ago (like Arkansas LB Brad Spence), doesn’t help with this brain scramble. The bitterness from losing to the Bulldogs in the conference championship is holding me back from embracing what’s coming: a home playoff game in Austin against Clemson and then a potential title run.

I’m running out of time to get ready for it all. I need to quit feeling sorry for myself about Atlanta and get ready for Texas to make two more trips there—which is what the bracket would call for if the Longhorns make it through the playoff to the title game. The temperature of this playoff slate has been rising slowly, as if we’re waiting for an old oven that’s been on the fritz to finally heat up. But I’m tired of waiting. Let’s zap this thing in the microwave, and I’ll share what’s getting me ready for the journey ahead.

I’ve written about Resignation Saturday in the past. It’s the day when fans’ dreams from the summertime let out a final death rattle and expire. Texas fans were subjected to Resignation Saturday coming early for more than a decade—Taysom Hill, an awful road game at Cal, Fayetteville in 2021. It wasn’t fun. I should consider myself lucky that this time it occurred in the SEC Championship Game.

At least, that’s how I treated the Georgia loss—like it was the end of it all. And that proves, once again, how I hadn’t recalibrated my mindset for this season.

College football has always been unique in that it even had Resignation Saturdays. It’s the only sport where we’ve expected our champions to have been perfect. Often, the sport’s punitive nature eliminated a team that probably didn’t deserve to be knocked out of contention—like the 2008 Texas team whose dreams died at the palms of Michael Crabtree in Lubbock. But now? A loss to Northern Illinois in South Bend didn’t eliminate this season’s Notre Dame, for God’s sake.

We’ll see if that September stumble by the Irish was an indictment or a wake-up call. The truth is, college football has become like all the other sports we follow. Perfection isn’t required anymore, but resilience is paramount. Every other sport has moments in a contender’s journey when things look bleak, like the dreams from the summer are impossible. But in those sports, it’s just part of the path.

College football never allowed for that—until now. Like other sports, those moments can prove to be mortal wounds or battle scars.

Any championship hopeful or favorite that didn’t seal the deal has some slip-up along the way that exposed a mortal wound that couldn’t be sutured. The 2007 Patriots and their inability to deal with interior pressure. The 2011 Spurs and their lack of perimeter defending and rebounding. But I’m choosing to remember the teams that won in spite of their scars today.

The 2014 Patriots, who had their obituary written in pen after a 41–14 loss to the Chiefs on Monday Night Football, which saw Tom Brady benched for Jimmy Garoppolo. That same team won a Super Bowl off Malcolm Butler’s goal-line interception. Battle scar.

The 2014 Spurs fell down 2–1 to the No. 8 seed Dallas Mavericks, and it looked as if they were still haunted by the ghost of 2013, where they let the Larry O’Brien Trophy slip away to the Miami Heat. But Tim Duncan and company tightened up, won the series in seven games, and went on to play the most beautiful basketball ever played. Battle scar.

Did the loss in Atlanta expose something fatal about Texas? Can a championship team have special teams this poor? Are Quinn Ewers and company incapable of finishing an equally good team if they don’t do it within the game script’s context? Can Steve Sarkisian and Kyle Flood finally get their offensive line to clean up the penalties? Is the run defense leaky? Will the situational defense rise to the occasion?

Admittedly, even when I accept the fact that the SEC Championship wasn’t final, I have to confess it left me with more doubts than I’d previously had about this Longhorns team. But to still have doubts is a beautiful place to be. It’s a far cry from where we’d have been in previous seasons. Doubts occur when something is in process, not when an answer is final.

Alongside the doubt, Texas fans can still have faith in a team that has proven it can perform when its back is against the wall. They have a championship-level defense and a quarterback in Ewers who won’t ride the emotional roller coasters that fans refuse to hop off.

So, is Texas mortally wounded from Atlanta or simply scarred from battle?

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We’ll find out on Saturday. But that question has finally recalibrated me and raised the temperature on my excitement. I’m ready for playoff football.