Texas Football: Is It Better To Lose?

With a post-season berth out of the question, Satuday’s game against Baylor has become the Texas Longhorns’ bowl game, but would it be better if they lost?

Texas football will wrap up one of the most disappointing seasons in recent memory Saturday afternoon against Baylor.  With a 4-7 record and no hope of a bowl game, Saturday’s grudge match against the Bears is being touted by some as Texas’ bowl game.  The general consensus is that a win Saturday in Waco would be a huge momentum booster heading into 2016.  I’m not so sure.

Don’t get me wrong.  As a fan, I always want the Longhorns to win and beating Art Briles and his Bears would be a nice way to end a horrid season, I’m just not convinced that would be a good thing for the Longhorns.

More from Texas Football

• Texas Football: Quinn Ewers joins 7-Eleven Cleat Crew for charity event
• Texas Football: 4-Star A&M OT commit officially visiting for KU game
• How to watch Texas football vs. Baylor: TV, stream, game time
• Texas Football: Predicting each remaining 5-Star commit for Horns this fall
• Texas Football: Top 5 defenders during nonconference play

First and foremost, I’m not sure that beating Baylor will actually mean anything.  The Bears are down to their third string quarterback, and he started the season as a wide receiver, so Baylor is far from clicking on all cylinders right now.  Besides that, Baylor just watched Oklahoma walk off into the sunset with the Big 12 Championship and probable playoff spot Baylor thought would be theirs. All that’s left for Baylor to play for is bowl positioning and I’m not sure how important that is to a team that had much higher aspirations a few weeks ago.

You could say that it is a rivalry game, and there seems to be a concerted push toward Baylor taking Texas A&M’s place as the Longhorns number two rival.  There is a little animosity there, to be sure, but can anyone really ramp up the hate for a team as bad as Texas has been this year?  Again, I’m not convinced that Texas being Texas is enough to elicit an inspired performance out of Baylor on Saturday.

Texas Longhorns

Then there is how such a win would be framed going into next season.  I fear the type of “signature win” talk that followed the Oklahoma upset.  The smart money says that a win over 9-2 Baylor would sent Texas into the off-season with confidence.  However, if that win comes against an injry riddled and uninspired opponent, does that really say anything about Texas at all?

I say no.  Beating Baylor at full strength and with something to play for would be an accomplishment.  Beating Baylor now would be a good thing, but could it instill the same false sense of confidence that the OU game did?  The same thing that ultimately tripped up Texas in Ames and redefined the Longhorns season?

I don’t think Texas needs a confidence boost to end the year.  In fact, I would prefer them to chew on the bitter taste of a disaster season instead.  Maybe it will serve to motivate the players to improve in the off-season.  Then again, we also thought that the poor end to last season would motivate this team.

It all remains to be seen at this point.  The only thing we know for sure is that Saturday is the last chance to watch a Texas Longhorns football game until September.  You can take that for what it’s worth.