Texas Longhorns Fans Should Embrace The Unknown

The Longhorns’ blowout victory over #24 West Virginia was the highpoint of the 2014 season. Mandatory Credit: Brendan Maloney-USA TODAY Sports

Like most Texas Longhorns fans, I have found myself being nostalgic for “the good old days” lately. Seasons like last year’s 6-7 disaster will do that to you. It’s easy to look back on the days of Williams, Young, McCoy and the rest and long for a return to the times of Top Ten rankings, Heisman candidates, and national title hopes. Especially if, like me, you were too young to have enjoyed the first Golden Age under Darrell Royal.

However it’s easy to forget the downside to those years. Like looking at the schedule and circling the 2-3 games a year that you weren’t sure we would win easily. The weeks you knew that you could make alternate plans because playing Kansas in DKR was an automatic 40 point blowout. The games where, if the Horns did find themselves in a dogfight in the fourth quarter it made you sick, not excited, because we should have won by 40. A close call like UCF in 2007 wasn’t exhilarating, it was nerve wracking and you didn’t celebrate the win, you feared how far we’d fall in the next poll.

In today’s new world, there are no automatic wins. You look at the schedule and see a battle every week. You realize that Longhorn hopes will swing on every game, and perhaps on every series. Nothing will come easy.

I think that it makes the season more fun.

I didn’t pay any attention to recruiting during the Mack Brown years. It didn’t seem to matter much until the end. Mack was the master recruiter and he got the guys he wanted. He didn’t so much recruit as he did peruse the available talent and order the ones he wanted. You knew, with few exceptions, what the Texas recruiting class would look like. Most of them were locked up before their senior years even started. Recruiting under Mack was boring for a casual fan like me.

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That has changed. I followed the buildup to National Signing Day more closely this year than ever before. I find it fascinating watching Charlie Strong work and work and work until the very end. It’s interesting to see the type of players he is looking for. He will leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of the right guys, rankings be damned. I’ve learned to love the art of recruiting because there is now drama in the process. The unknown makes it fun.

Then those young guys get to campus and you know that every roster spot will be fiercely contested from the start. There are no more set-in-stone two deep rosters. If a walk-on like Dylan Haines can become a starter, then the sky is the limit for the highly touted athletes who will arrive this year. The unknown of seeing how quickly guys like Malik Jefferson, Kris Boyd and Holton Hill will develop and contribute is thrilling.

The unknown is one of the best things about a program-wide rebuild. The losses, which are inevitable, aren’t fun. Watching your team sleepwalk through a buttkicking in a third tier bowl isn’t fun. The process, if you relax a little, can be. We Longhorn fans we can no longer set our base expectations at 9 wins. We can’t take anything for granted anymore. If you choose to have a family day instead of watching the Kansas game, you do so at your own risk. Just as the players can’t take a week off, we as fans can’t take one off either.

The 2015 season opener, now just 48 days away, is speeding toward us. Fall camp will start soon and I can’t wait to scan the internet for any little tidbits of information that might leak out. I have no idea what 2015 has in store for the Longhorns. On a bad day, I look at the schedule, the questions on offense, the holes in the roster, and I think that equaling last season’s six wins and a bowl will be a difficult task. On good days, I think of all of that talent and the faith I have in Charlie Strong and his staff and I think that this year could be the start of something great.

The truth may lie somewhere in-between. No one knows for sure. The reality of the 2015 Longhorns will unfold, week by week, game by game, drive by drive. The great thing about sports versus movies and TV is that they are totally unscripted. We have no choice but to wait and watch and ride the roller coaster.

It promises to be a heck of a ride. Take my advice, just go with it. Enjoy it, no matter how frustrating it may be at times. There will be losses, and some of them may be bad. Those are the growing pains of a young program learning to win again.

There will also be surprises. Who would have thought that the 2014 Longhorns would give Baylor all they could handle and pretty well destroy Bryce Petty’s Heisman hopes? Or that they would pick themselves up off the map and nearly beat OU? Who saw the total destruction of a ranked West Virginia team coming?

Better days are coming, of this I’m sure. Until they get here, I’m going to try to savor every minute of the climb back up, both good and bad. The unknown is fun. Jump in Longhorn fans.

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