Jeff McDonald
Daily Texan Staff
WACO -- Somewhere, at some previous time and place, James Brown and his Longhorn teammates had definitely been here before.
As the UT quarterback prepared to take the snap on fourth-down-and-one Saturday at Baylor, the scenario recalled last December's game against Nebraska for all the Big 12 marbles when Brown stared down a similiar situation in St. Louis, then rolled left and over the mighty Cornhuskers.
But after a 1997 season filled with disappointment and disgust, that Nebraska contest might as well have occurred in some alternate universe far, far away.
This time, the ball went to all-world tailback Ricky Williams, who was promptly submerged in the backfield beneath a sea of Baylor green and gold, taking all remaining hope of a successful Longhorn campaign down with him. The lowly Bears, now 2-6, would go on to win 23-21, making it another catastrophic Saturday in a year full of them for the Horns.
And in what many are already calling one of the all-time worst collapses in collegiate sports history, last year's Big 12 champions are now 3-5, mired in the dungeon of the conference's South division, and all but mathematically eliminated from postseason bowl contention.
"It feels pretty weird putting on my Big 12 championship T-shirt now," UT kicker Phil Dawson said. "It seems so long ago. We always said that that was last year and would have no bearing on this year. I guess we proved that."
The failed fourth down attempt Saturday was a fitting symbol of Texas' troubles in '97. The Horns, who rose to national prominence over the past two years by doing practically everything right, have deteriorated this year because of a seeming ability to do almost everything wrong.
Williams chalked up 226 yards, his school-record fourth straight 200-yard day, but was wasted in another defeat. The junior also fumbled midway through the second quarter with the Longhorns up by four and driving, a miscue that might have changed the entire outcome of the game.
Brown, a shadow of his former swashbuckling, Husker-killing self, threw two costly interceptions -- his eighth and ninth of the year -- that resulted in six BU points.
And even when the Texas defense, ranked 96th in the nation coming into the contest, did come up big Saturday, it was in vain.
The Horns indeed pulled off some magic when they stalled out a Baylor drive near midfield with less than nine minutes to play, but an unidentified Texas coach approached an official on the playing field after third down. The action drew a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty and allowed BU to keep its march alive for three more minutes.
"We've just had bad breaks," Texas linebacker Dusty Renfro said. "That's it, bad breaks all season long."
The bad break epidemic seems to have spread to Dawson, widely regarded as the best placekicker in America.
With less than two minutes to play Saturday, Dawson lined up 54-yards away from the uprights with the wind at his back, eyeing a chance to boot another game-winner. The kick had plenty of distance, but sliced wide right, literally by one foot.
Two years ago, squaring up in the face of a 20 mile-per-hour headwind, Dawson nailed a 50-yarder to give Texas an improbable upset win over Virginia, a victory that seemed to catapult UT back into national notoriety.
That kick saved a floundering 1995 season for the Horns, and helped propel them to back-to-back conference titles in '95 and '96. Dawson's ill-fated miss in Waco had the opposite effect.
"I'm the guy who usually makes those kicks -- the guys on the team call me the 'Money Man'," said Dawson, who has made 10 kicks from 50-plus yards for Texas.
"I couldn't hit a ball any better than I hit that one," he added. "It's just one of those things."
The loss to Baylor means the Longhorns will again have to reasses their goals, which had already been reduced from a national championship to a Big 12 title to a South division crown in a matter of weeks.
The prospects of making a bowl appearance also seems overly optimistic. UT would need to run the table over the rest of the year to attain the minimum six wins neccessary to qualify for a berth.
Even if that minor miracle were to occur, it is unlikely any bowl committee would invite a team as maligned as Texas has been.
"We're really not in any type of bowl picture," UT head coach John Mackovic said. "Maybe something will happen down the road, but we just have to focus on what we can do with these last few games."
For Dawson, the trick from here on out is going to be to recapture the positive spark that he and his teammates felt throughout the preseason.
"If you had told me before the season that we'd be 3-5, I would've bet my house against you," Dawson said. "Now it's just a matter of going out there and trying to have fun, because this is not fun.'
And now, with three games left before this dismal campaign mercifully comes to a close, the once-proud Longhorns are fighting only to get some of that pride back -- and little else.
"We wanted another Big 12 championship, but that's out the window," Renfro said. "But there's always something to play for, and now it's just for dignity and pride."
WACO -- At any given point during the past three years, it would have been sacrilegious to even think about questioning the decision making or the athletic prowess of Texas quarterback James Brown.
But the cold, harsh reality is that for the third straight week, a poor performance by the senior -- and primarily back-to-back interceptions that resulted in seven backbreaking Baylor points -- cost the Longhorns a victory.
And with just three games remaining in what has turned into the 1997 John Mackovic Farewell Tour, it begs the question: How many more interceptions and bad decisions before backup Richard Walton begins preparing for next year?
"The defense gave us a different look every time we stepped on the field," said Texas receiver Kwame Cavil, who led the team with a grand total of three receptions for 35 yards. "You can't fault the man, because he was just trying to make a play. Sometimes those plays just don't come out the way you want them to. That's how life is."
After completing seven of 12 passes for 120 yards in the first half, Brown opened up Texas' first drive of the second half with a knuckle ball pass that was easily intercepted by Baylor defensive end Glenn Coy. The Bears had to only march 41 yards on UT's don't-bend-just-break defense to take a commanding 23-14 lead.
On the next possession, UT halfback Ricky Williams, who took over some passing duties in the first quarter with a 27-yard halfback pass touchdown strike to Jamel Thompson, took the reigns himself. Williams carried the ball five times for 44 yards down to the Baylor 36.
Mackovic then ordered Brown to take to the air. Blanketed by coverage, Brown rolled out for a 12-yard gain, but a holding penalty brought it back. Then facing third-and-10, Brown was intercepted by BU's Matt Anderson, who returned it 25 yards, to kill the critical drive.
Baylor was forced to punt, but the Longhorns stalled again, and the second play of the fourth quarter may have been the clincher for the Bears. Facing fourth-and-1, Mackovic called for a draw to Williams despite needing an inch that could have been easily picked up by a quarterback sneak.
The Bears, who were playing with eight men on the line of scrimmage and were keying solely on the nation's leading rusher, stuffed Williams and the Longhorns.
"We only had to make an inch," Mackovic said. "I guess you ought to be able to gain an inch."
Williams said after the game that the quarterback sneak is not even in Texas' game plan. The play that virtually every team in America has somewhere in their playbooks was taken out of UT's two years ago when Brown was almost injured when running it in one game, Williams said.
"We hadn't ever run the quarterback sneak, so I didn't think we would do it there," Williams said.
BU coach Dave Roberts' self-proclaimed "worst team in America" nearly converted the momentum into more points before a sack of quarterback Jeff Watson pushed the Bears out of field goal range.
"It's not my job to call plays," Brown said, knowing that Mackovic proclaimed that you don't question the play caller. "We ran the play that had been working for us."
Texas still had a chance as the fourth quarter wore on, but again Mackovic took the ball out of Williams' hands and put it in Brown's. With 6:02 to play, Williams had easily crossed the 200-yard barrier for the fourth-straight week, but Mackovic called for two straight passes that fell incomplete.
The first was intended for Cavil. The second headed for Bryan White. Only then, facing third-and-10, did Williams get the call, and he could only manage six yards against a Baylor defense that entered the game ranked as the 110th rushing unit in the nation.
Despite Brown's deficiencies, the Longhorns are still counting on him this week against Texas Tech, a team that still has hopes of taking the Big 12 South while the Longhorns can only hope to play the spoiler's role.
"He is the senior and he is the man" Cavil said. "We're going to live with James and we're going to die with James. He's still the greatest quarterback that I've ever played with, so I'll be glad for him to come back."
WACO -- With 1:28 remaining and Baylor leading 23-21 on Saturday at Floyd Casey Stadium, Texas kicker Phil Dawson took the field and prepared to attempt a 54-yard field goal.
At that moment, it was clear that the kick would determine whether or not an entire team would suffer the humiliation of losing to one of the most inept squads in college football.
But Dawson's kick sailed just outside of the right upright, and Baylor wasn't embarrassed by the lowly Longhorns after all.
Texas' disappointing season reached new depths with the loss to the previously 1-6 Bears, as the Horns fell into a tie for last place in the conference that they won only eleven months ago.
The defeat all but eliminates embattled coach John Mackovic's squad from bowl consideration, and Texas will have to win its final three games just to avoid the school's first losing season in six years.
"We've farted on ourselves all season long," Dawson said. "A lot of things have gone wrong, but we still have three games left to play."
For now, though, the Horns (3-5, 1-4 Big 12) will have to deal with the fact that they lost to a team whose own coach, Dave Roberts, labeled it "the worst team in America." The Bears entered the contest with one of the lowest-rated offenses in the country, but they still managed to rack up over 400 yards on the day with astonishing ease.
And while the Baylor defense was unable to corral Ricky Williams, who rushed for over 200 yards for the fourth consecutive game, the Bears (2-6, 1-4 Big 12) were able to come up with a pair of huge interceptions and a key fourth-down stand, which proved to be enough to serve the Horns with their third-straight defeat.
"Everyone's unhappy and very disappointed," Mackovic said. "We felt comfortable that we had a good chance to win this game."
And after Williams erupted for an 87-yard touchdown dash midway through the fourth quarter to cut the Bears' lead to two points, it appeared as though the Horns would indeed be able to escape with a victory.
Baylor quarterback Jeff Watson drove the Bears 56 yards to the Texas 24-yard line on the next possession, but was sacked on a critical third down at the 30.
Since BU had a stiff 25-mile per hour wind in its face, Roberts elected to punt, and Texas took control of the ball with 6:02 to play.
"I thought we were right back in the game if the defense could hold them, and they did," said Williams, whose 18th and 19th touchdowns of 1997 tied Earl Campbell's UT single-season record. "I thought then we could march right down the field and take up all the time and kick a field goal or score a touchdown at the end."
For a while, at least, that theory held true.
Williams, who finished with 226 yards rushing on the day, carried the ball six times as the Horns drove, but the drive stalled at the Baylor 43 after two incompletions by quarterback James Brown. Williams got the ball again on third-and-10, bruising forward for six yards to set up Dawson's field goal attempt.
Dawson, who holds nearly every Texas kicking record in the books, missed the kick by a narrow margin, but said afterwards that it wasn't a matter of mishitting the ball. Rather, he explained that he misjudged the direction of the wind, which blew the ball to the right at the last moment.
"The tough thing about it is I hit it exactly where I was aiming," Dawson said. "I couldn't hit a ball better than I hit that one."
But if it had not been for events that transpired earlier in the afternoon, Dawson's long attempt wouldn't have been necessary.
The Horns held an early lead as a result of both a scoring run and throw by Williams, with the latter coming on a 27-yard halfback pass to Jamel Thompson.
But the Texas defense was picked apart in the moments preceding halftime, allowing Baylor to drive 92 yards in just over one minute for a field goal that cut the Horns' advantage to 14-13.
"We had them pinned at their own five, and then they ended up getting a field goal," said Texas safety Donald McCowen. "That turned out to be crucial."
Then, Brown was intercepted on Texas' first two possessions of the second half.
The first pick, by defensive end Glenn Coy, resulted in a two-yard Baylor touchdown pass from Watson to Bradley Domel; the second, by defensive back Matt Anderson, stopped a possible UT scoring drive.
Yet the Horns were able to hold Baylor on the next possession, and took over at their own 20 late in the third quarter.
Three plays later, Texas was presented with a fourth-and-inches on the 29, and Mackovic decided to give the ball to Williams on a deep handoff.
Williams was stuffed, and another opportunity was lost.
"It was a cutback play," Williams said. "If I would have seen a crease, I would have hit it, but I didn't see anything."
And so it was. Williams didn't see a crease, Dawson didn't see the wind, and Texas won't be seeing the postseason.