Texas Football: 5 biggest regular season storylines
1. Two Red River Showdown battles
Over the course of that six-game winning streak for Texas football this season, the biggest win was definitely over the Oklahoma Sooners in the first edition of the Red River Showdown. Beating Oklahoma was something that eluded the Horns during the 2016 and 2017 campaigns. Ehlinger also out-performed the eventual Heisman Trophy winner this year, Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray, in Red River on Oct. 6.
What made this season so special for Red River was the rematch in the Big 12 Championship Game. For the first time in more than a full century, the Horns and Sooners got to face each other twice in the same year. This was the best thing that could’ve happened to the conference in the newly instilled Big 12 Championship Game.
The hope for the Big 12, as a whole, by bringing back the conference title game last year was to get the blue bloods to face off on the national stage. That’s exactly what the Big 12 got with Oklahoma directly in Playoff contention and a re-emerging blue blood program in the Horns trying to take them down for the second time in the same season.
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It seems like the power is shifting in the Big 12, at least behind the Sooners, for good with the Horns trending up under Herman. The balance of power behind the Sooners mainly swung between Oklahoma State and the TCU Horned Frogs over the past eight years. If Texas football is truly “back”, then the Red River teams are going to run the Big 12 again.