Ohio State vs. Texas Preview
I, like many college football fans, am really wound up about this Ohio State-Texas game. It has the potential to be a real classic with hard-hitting defensive style. Even though I’m a Texan I will be rooting for OSU. I’ve been skeptical that Ohio State could beat Texas, but the quotes coming out of Columbus and Austin make me think otherwise.
At a team meeting prior to Monday’s practice, Texas quarterback Vince Young told his teammates to treat its Saturday-night opponent, Ohio State, as “just another team we’ve got to get out of our way right now to reach our goals,” according to the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
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the normally taciturn Jim Tressel said this week, “if you had to pick two [teams] you’d want to see play, if it was the last game you’d ever want to see in your life, it might be these two.”
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Texas coach Mack Brown doesn’t seem to share Tressel’s and Castiglione’s enthusiasm for such matchups. In a conference call with reporters earlier this week, Brown intimated the ‘Horns, who scheduled the Ohio State series roughly a decade ago when the program was struggling financially and competitively, might not have made the same choice under the present circumstances. “At places like ours, we’re going to fill up our stadium regardless of who we’re playing,” said Brown, “so we’d actually make more money playing another game at home, getting our guys ready for our conference schedule. So I don’t see this continuing [beyond next year's game in Austin].”
Is Texas a little nervous? Tressel certainly doesn’t sound nervous. I’ll take this as a good sign.