Ohio State vs Texas: more than a game

Jan. 8—Friday’s Cotton Bowl featuring Texas and Ohio State carries well over 100 years of history between the programs. In my opinion, the winner of this semifinal matchup in the College Football Playoff will go on to beat either Penn State or Notre Dame handily in the championship game. Either way, whoever claims victory in Arlington will take me back to the days as a young college football fan who fell in love with the sport and built a career off it.

I watched college football from a very young age but don’t recall many moments until I was around 10 when two of the greatest games changed my life. One was the Boise State vs Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl in 2007 which is still the most memorable college game I’ve ever seen. The lateral. The statue of liberty. You can’t beat that.

The other game is the last time UT won a national championship — the 2006 Rose Bowl versus USC. I can’t remember what I learned in a high school history class or what I ate last Thursday, but I will always remember Vince Young effortlessly scoring the game-winning touchdown and the image of him pointing to the sky as the confetti rained down. Young cemented himself into college football history forever and brought the Longhorns back to the top team in the country.

Texas has failed to capture that magic since the proclaimed “Game of the Century.” Don’t get me wrong, there’s been fun times over the years in Austin. I believed Colt McCoy would be the next great NFL quarterback after everything he did for the Longhorns; I believed Sam Ehlinger when he said “we’re back” after the 2018 Sugar Bowl win over Georgia. Unfortunately, in almost two decades since their last title, the Longhorns’ “powerhouse” status slowly seemed to fade away, until now.

The renaissance of a program in 2024 consistently had Texas as one of the top teams in the country and it…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ohio-state-vs-texas-more-201200142.html

Author : Weatherford Democrat, Texas

Publish date : 2025-01-08 20:12:00

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