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The First Loss of the Season


Gandalfish

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Hope springs eternal with each new college season. Every year we have dreams dancing in our head, "If we could only get to that Nth win" -- "If we could just win the conference" -- "If we could just make the playoff" -- "If we could win the national championship".

Some years these dreams are more realistic than others. More years than not, reality does come a knocking.

It's that time of year, our first loss of the season.

In the 132nd season of Texas football, it's only NOT happened 9 times. (2005, 1969, 1963, 1920, 1918, 1914, 1900, 1895 & 1893)

In six seasons, our first loss came the last game of the season! (2009, 1983, 1977, 1970, 1913 & 1894)

This pain is visceral, like a punch to the gut or a bad burrito. I felt it when we were down 23-0 at half time. I felt it again when we failed to hold them on 3rd and 10 backed up against their own end zone late in the third quarter.

The crowd was electric, deafening at that moment. The air just got sucked out of the stadium with the 21 yard completion.

It hit hard and with finality when Quinn Ewer's 4th down completion stopped 2 yards shy of the first down with 5 minutes left to go.

We lost. We got humiliated at home. One of the biggest losses by a #1 team, at home, in history.

I'm not going to tell you that loss shouldn't hurt. In fact, I'm celebrating the hurt. It hurts because we love the game. We love the spectacle, the poetry and the brutality. We love Texas Longhorn Football.

We share the pain of thousands of fans before us felt the 123 other times that first loss of the season tarnished our dreams.

 

So, if you like, share some of those painful memories of games you attended or just have stuck in your mind over the years.

Keep dreaming big.

Hook 'em Horns 🤘

 

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1980 SMU game.  Complete gut punch.  That season started with a nationally broadcast Monday night game in which Texas completely destroyed Arkansas.  ABC had moved that game up specifically because they wanted the Texas-Arkansas game to be the first nationally broadcast game of the new decade.  This was the game where freshman LB Jeff Leiding did his Superman imitation and almost killed an Arkansas kick off returner, and also almost killed himself in the process.  The only time I heard over 80,000 people gasp in unison over a hit.  Anyway, Texas dominates that game, wins the next 4 easily, including a pretty convincing win over OU before the bye week created by moving the Arkansas game.  So, we go into the SMU game rested and ready at 5-0, sitting at number 2 in the polls.  SMU was 3-2 and hadn't beaten Texas in something like 13 years, and was showing no signs of being able to do so this year.  The much vaunted "Pony Express" backfield of Craig James and Eric Dickerson hadn't shown much by midway through their sophmore season, so I and everybody else in DKR was expecting an easy win on our way to playing for at national championship, as all of our "hard" games were behind us.  All of this made the complete domination of Texas in this game all the more puzzling and infuriating.  It was the first time is over a decade that Texas didn't score a TD at home, and the 20-6 final score really doesn't show how thoroughly Texas was beaten down.  SMU didn't lose again until BYU beat them with a last second TD in the Holiday Bow, and Texas went on to finish the year at 7-5 with a loss in the Bluebonnet Bowl to UNC, which featured a senior LB name Lawrence Taylor.  There is no way to adequately express the suckage that was the 1980 season, and I believe it gave us Longhorn fans the first indication that there might be some kind of rot taking hold and that the wheels were coming off the machine that was Texas football.

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The Georgia loss, while utterly disappointing, was nowhere near as bad as 1997 UCLA or 2010 Iowa State, to name just a couple home games. 

But in my lifetime as a Horn, the absolute worst game I've attended anywhere in terms of (1) shitty performance that dashed all pre-game expectations, (2) opponent, (3) weather, and (4) complete ass-kicking, was 2000 OU.

Edited by South Austin
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12 minutes ago, South Austin said:

The Georgia loss, while utterly disappointing, was nowhere near as bad as 1997 UCLA or 2010 Iowa State, to name just a couple home games. 

But in my lifetime as a Horn, the absolute worst game I've attended anywhere in terms of (1) shitty performance that dashed all pre-game expectations, (2) opponent, (3) weather, and (4) complete ass-kicking, was 2000 OU.

Yeah, this was just a run of the mill loss to a very good opponent.

Shake it off and win the rest.

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Four Black Saturdays in the Cotton Bowl against OU under Brown's watch.  Treating the game like a picnic instead of a rivalry. Avg score of 62 - 16. Losing to those unbridled pieces of shit and having our players scraped off the floor of the Bowl before halftime, four times, will always be the benchmark for bad losses in Texas football history.

Nothing tops them. Again, it was against OU. 

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1 hour ago, CycleTex87 said:

Too soon, but Shock the Nation Miami Cotton Bowl worst loss I've ever attended personally.

Rout 66 for me.

And some of those OU beatdowns hurt a lot. So unnecessary. So typical of Mack Brown, who always wanted to make sure the Sooner kids had fun.

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1 hour ago, Gandalfish said:

In six seasons, our first loss came the last game of the season! (2009, 1983, 1977, 1970, 1913 & 1894)

The 1913 loss to Notre Dame on Clark Field still burns like it was yesterday. Seeing them dominate us 29-7 was so painful. That was really when Aggy began their road to dominance that has lasted til this day. 

 

1890s-front-cover-of-victorian-french-ma

 

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First loss of the season is way easier to take in the expanded playoff era. It should even make the rest of the season much more interesting.

But let it be the last.

OU game my freshman year, way back. I was irrationally upset for more than a week, although it was probably worse because it was still only my second month with one leg and half my body out of my childhood home.

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1 hour ago, CycleTex87 said:

Too soon, but Shock the Nation Miami Cotton Bowl worst loss I've ever attended personally.

I attended that Miami game.  Also 2000 OU, 1994 Rice (I mean WTF, rice?), 2 losses to Iowa state (a shutout loss and the get in the motherfucker game), and a shutout loss to KState.  Saturday night wouldn't even sniff the top 5 shitty losses I've attended. 

Maybe I need to just watch on TV going forward?

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47 minutes ago, Not a cat said:

I attended that Miami game.  Also 2000 OU, 1994 Rice (I mean WTF, rice?), 2 losses to Iowa state (a shutout loss and the get in the motherfucker game), and a shutout loss to KState.  Saturday night wouldn't even sniff the top 5 shitty losses I've attended. 

Maybe I need to just watch on TV going forward?

I forgot about that Rice game.  Thanks a lot. I was there also. And the Garrett Gilbert ISU game. 

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With the portal, NIL, and now all of the power teams other than FSU and Clemson in 2 conferences the days of the undefeated champion are mostly over. The Saban/Smart/LSU 2019 type teams of the last decade and a half wouldn't be going undefeated in this climate. You play too many good teams in conference now, especially the SEC. Then the conf title game isn't against some nobody from the weak other half of the conference anymore. It's the legit second place team. Too tough. Losses will happen but 1 or 2 won't kill your playoff chances. 

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Texas had a once in a lifetime opportunity to storm into the SEC in our inaugural season and knock Georgia off their pedestal, and assume the leadership role and the dominant position in the SEC and all of College Football. 

And, ...we laid a fucking egg. 

My repost from Saturday morning:

  On 10/18/2024 at 9:58 PM, BurgleBro said:

Surly in angst

Arguing runs amok

Must be Friday

I’m doing something I hate that others do… I ain’t reading all this bullshit.

image.jpeg.f9524d4e630414a70668348d457a05c6.jpeg

I expect Saturday night to be as special as any game in our proud history.

Biggest sports night in Austin, ever.

image.jpeg.831e505600663b9220dfe9d310d715a5.jpeg

The perfect setting.

Home in Austin, Texas, baby!

We have been through so much, for so long, and we have come so far.

Texas is a team and organization that has earned the respect of others, with the full commitment and support of so many.

Sark, and the young men who choose to honor us, as they represent us, will deliver, and we will take the place we were destined to be.

Hook ‘em!!!

2 hours ago, David Dennison said:

Yeah, this was just a run of the mill loss to a very good opponent.

Shake it off and win the rest.

For me, 1977 was the worst. My senior season, and Earl's, going against Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl. Texas was an overwhelming favorite, and got embarrassed. 

This may have been "a run of the lill loss" in some ways.

But it is the worst in so many ways.

Texas had a perfect, and unique, situation to accelerate and reinforce all the good things that have happened for the 1st time in a generation, and knock the SEC dick in the dirt in the process, and we fucked it up.

Now, we are simply one of the many floundering around trying to figure it all out, and worse, we have legitimized all the BS of the SEC! SEC! SEC!, that we, meaning you, will here about for eternity.

 

 

 

Edited by PTINS
typo
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37 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

With the portal, NIL, and now all of the power teams other than FSU and Clemson in 2 conferences the days of the undefeated champion are mostly over. The Saban/Smart/LSU 2019 type teams of the last decade and a half wouldn't be going undefeated in this climate. You play too many good teams in conference now, especially the SEC. Then the conf title game isn't against some nobody from the weak other half of the conference anymore. It's the legit second place team. Too tough. Losses will happen but 1 or 2 won't kill your playoff chances. 

4 of saban's 6 national champions had a loss. the only two that did not were the cut down covid season (with sark unleashing najee, devonta, and waddle) and the one where garret gilbert turned the ball over a hundred times.

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5 hours ago, RollingPresidential said:

UCLA 2010 was the most shocking loss I've been at, I think, because I was a junior and we had lost a single regular season game during my entire time in school to that point. It did not seem real. 

same but I was a freshman

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