COLUMBIA, Mo. -- It really doesn't matter who's standing at the podium these days. Whether it's UCLA's Bob Toledo, Oklahoma State's Bob Simmons or Missouri's Larry Smith, all three know just what to say.
"This was the biggest win I've ever had here at [fill in the blank]."
The line of schools that have turned their seasons around by facing Texas is getting pretty long. If this keeps up, that line will be all the way around the corner.
Which is where you'll find Texas head coach John Mackovic, who watched his team -- and possibly his coaching career in Austin -- unravel at Faurot Field after the Tigers outmanned, outgunned and flat outplayed the soon-to-be-former Big 12 champs.
"We beat the Big 12 champions from a year ago," Smith crowed much the way Toledo and Simmons did earlier this season. "They may not be the same team they were a year ago, but we beat 'em."
All of Missouri's offensive stalwarts were surprised and shocked by the new-found, unpredictable play-calling style of coordinator Jerry Berndt. Facing a UT defense that allows 276.8 rushing yards per game, the Tigers elected to take to the air.
Out were the pitches and dives to tailback Brock Olivo, who still managed to gain 85 yards on 16 carries, and in were more slants, drags, zips and zags than quarterback Corby Jones had ever seen before. Jones, known more for his running ability than for his arm, completed 12 of 21 for a career-best 220 yards and no interceptions.
But much like the Longhorns, Jones was betrayed by some dropped balls and penalties. With Missouri leading 7-3, Jones hit fullback Ron Janes down the left sideline for an apparent touchdown. But an offensive holding call brought it back. Mizzou settled for a 37-yard field goal.
On the next possession, Jones fired a bullet to Torey Coleman off play-action for 30 yards. Up next were two running plays that went nowhere fast. Then Jones watched as Coleman butterfingered a potential first-down catch. A punt ensued, and another opportunity was wasted.
"I think at times we outcoached them. They were scrambling a little bit to find something to combat us passing so much," Jones said. "We caught them in some bad coverage, but it was just great play calling by [offensive coordinator coach] Berndt."
With the clock winding down in the first half, Jones was pinned back on third-and-21, but he found a way out of that hole too. UT cornerback Tony Holmes was called for pass interference on MU receiver Ricky Ross as Jones lofted one up near the goal line. Automatic first down, and the Tigers scored on Olivo's dive from a yard out.
"When coach Berndt is calling plays like that and we're executing, I think we can score a lot of points," Jones said.
As the second half unfolded, the gloves came off. After lulling the UT defense to sleep with a third quarter of field-position ping-pong, Mizzou fullback Ernest Blackwell busted up the middle, shook two tackles and romped 67 yards for a touchdown to open the fourth quarter.
After forcing Texas to punt, Jones pitched the ball to tailback Devin West, who threw downfield to a wide-open Kent Layman for a gain of 46. Three plays later, MU had forged a 30-16 lead.
Even though the play looked like clockwork, West said that the sun was blinding him, but he heaved the ball downfield anyway. Luckily, Layman was able to run underneath the pass and haul in the big gainer, West said.
"We said all week that if it gets down to the third or fourth quarter and it's open, we'll use it," Smith said of the play that has been in the playbook all season.
"It just goes to show that football is not an exact science. It just gets down to 11 guys playing with heart."
Texas' travel squad of 66 players looked as if their hearts were ripped out and stomped on as they moped off the field. But at least none of the Texas contingent got injured as 48,451 Mizzou fans stormed the field and brought down both goal posts.
"We can tear 100 of 'em down," Smith said. "As long as there are victories like that, I don't care."
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- For one half of Texas' 37-29 loss at Missouri Saturday, there's wasn't anyone present at MU's Faurot Field who could curb the running exploits of UT halfback Ricky Williams.
But that was before the Longhorn coaching staff got hold of him.
UT coaches rewarded Williams' 117-yard first half effort-- which included an 80-yard scoring jaunt -- by handing him the ball only 10 times after intermission, choosing instead to rely on the teams' still-stagnant passing game.
The result was a sputtering Texas offense, a Missouri victory, two demolished goal posts, and one befuddled running back.
"I'm wondering a bit why we didn't keep it on the ground more," Williams said in the postgame post-mortem. "They didn't seem to be able to stop it."
Conventional wisdom dictates that you've got to dance with the one who brought you, but when it came down to the final waltz in Columbia, Texas head coach John Mackovic somehow elected to seek out another tango partner.
The Longhorns, despite lacking a proven receiving corps, threw the ball an astonishing 40 times overall, 25 of those coming in the second half.
Quarterback James Brown suffered through one of his most scatter-armed collegiate performances ever, connecting on only 15 of those attempts for 149 yards.
Williams paced the offense with 235 net yards rushing on 23 carries and two touchdowns, but was effectively disarmed after halftime by Mackovic's questionable play calling.
"We hoped to get some spark from those runs that Ricky had," Mackovic said. "But every time we tried to mix it up, nothing happened. You have to get some blend of run and pass to make it work, and it just didn't happen."
What did happen was that Williams didn't even touch the ball on three Texas possessions in the second half.
One of those dubious marches, which included three Brown misfires, came with UT down by a point, seven minutes into the third quarter. After six Ricky-less plays, the Horns had to settle for a 45-yard Phil Dawson field goal attempt that caromed no-good off the left upright.
Even when Williams was able to get his mitts on the ball after the half, the pass was still able to short-circuit Longhorn drives.
Down by a touchdown early in the fourth quarter, the Horns again turned pass-happy. Williams eased for runs of 15 and 9 yards on the opening few plays of that possession before Mackovic inexplicably took to the air.
Three more grounded ducks from Brown, and Mark Schultis trotted on to punt.
Even the UT offensive linemen, who put up a respectable day clearing holes for Williams, were stumped.
"That's what I don't understand," center Ryan Fiebiger said. "It seemed like [the run] was working. We were pounding it down their throats, and that's what's so frustrating. I think we should have run the ball more and not passed so much."
Fiebiger said he and his linemates were so concerned that they took their case to Texas line coach Mike Deal. The response?
"When a pass is called, pass block. When a run is called, run block," Fiebiger said, adding, "That's good advice, I guess."
Bewilderment over the Texas play calling extended past the visiting sidelines and into the stadium press box.
Wrote Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Sunday, in a harsh indictment of Mackovic: "Texas -- in a game plan apparently designed by a convention of all the village idiots in Austin -- declined to abuse Missouri on the ground. Texas tailback Ricky Williams averaged 10.2 yards per carry en route to 241 [gross] yards, but was tackled by his own coaches. Had Williams been given the ball 35 times instead of 23, he may have ended with 1,000 yards ... on the day."
And it isn't as if Williams didn't take advantage of his handful of second half attempts. Four of the junior's 10 carries after the break went for 10 yards or more, including gallops of 47 and 24 yards. Yet another run was an untouched touchdown sprint from 2 yards out.
But as it stands, Williams' name will enter the Texas record books in an ignominious fashion as the only back in school history to top 200 yards in a loss. It was also just the second time ever that the Horns dropped a game in which Williams surpassed the century mark.
The big statistical day, however, did move Williams past Chris Gilbert into second place on UT's all-time rushing charts. The Doak Walker award candidate also became the first Texas back ever to record consecutive 200-yard rushing games, as well as the first to chalk up three such outings in a single season.
Williams' big day in Missouri, however, all went for naught.
"I don't feel wasted, I feel tired," Williams said. "When you work that hard and play that hard, you expect to win. When you get all those yards, you expect to win."
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- As the final, hollow notes of "The Eyes of Texas" were played in the background, the first of two goal posts fell to the Faurot Field playing surface, and somehow it all seemed appropriate.
For after Texas had handed the suddenly not-so-lowly Missouri Tigers a 37-29 victory on Saturday, it wasn't just the posts that came crashing down. Any hopes that the Longhorns had of salvaging respect, not to mention repeating as Big 12 champions, were similarly laid to rest.
They can call the UCLA debacle a fluke. They can say that Oklahoma State was underrated. But after being manhandled by a team that was previously 25-54-3 in the 1990s, the Horns can no longer claim to be among college football's upper class.
"It's frustrating," said senior center Ryan Fiebiger, who will likely be deprived of a fourth conference championship ring, barring a minor miracle. "We had turnovers, dropped balls, everything. It was a team effort."
Indeed, Texas struggled in every facet of the game on Saturday, even though the final score didn't necessarily reveal the depth of the Horns' troubles.
Offensively, a 235-yard rushing effort by Ricky Williams was wasted because of Texas' insistence on using a passing game that misfired on 25 attempts and resulted in only 149 yards. On defense, the Horns' secondary was torched for 220 yards by Mizzou quarterback Corby Jones, who led an air attack that was previously ranked 103rd in the nation.
And on this day, even the seemingly infallible Phil Dawson had a miserable outing. Dawson, who owns nearly every Texas kicking record in the books, hooked a pair of field goals and an extra point and had another PAT blocked. But even though the eight points from those kicks would have theoretically been enough to force overtime, the Horns knew Dawson wasn't the only one to blame.
"We clearly had some opportunities early to get control of the game, but we didn't do that," said Texas head coach John Mackovic. "We let those slip away and it came back to haunt us."
Yet up until the late stages of the contest, it appeared as though the Horns might have had the chance to overcome those early failures. The 17-16 advantage that Missouri had taken late in the first half still stood with only 15 minutes to play, but the Tigers reached pay dirt on their first two possessions of the fourth quarter to pull away.
Ernest Blackwell had the most deadly blow, a 65-yard scoring scamper on the first play of the final period. Then Missouri, who still hadn't shown any capability of stopping Williams, forced three straight incompletions by Texas quarterback James Brown. The Tigers then reeled off an 80-yard touchdown march, capped by a one-yard run by Devin West to go up 30-16.
Texas was able to cut the lead to 30-22 on a five-yard toss from Brown to tight end Derek Lewis on the next possession, but Missouri answered with a game-clinching scoring drive completed by a 13-yard scoring keeper by Jones.
"They had a lot of momentum," said Texas linebacker Dusty Renfro. "One good thing happened after another for them, kind of like a snowball effect."
That snowball kept rolling even after Jones took a knee to end the game, as virtually the entire student section of Faurot Field stormed past security guards and tore down both goal posts. Students then carried both structures up an embankment, out of the stadium, and two miles away into downtown Columbia.
And the fans weren't the only ones who were excited. Missouri players and coaches dubbed the game as their "biggest win" of this era, as the Tigers bounced back from last season's 40-10 drubbing in Austin.
"I think that everybody made up their minds that it wasn't going to be coach [Larry] Smith to motivate us," said West. "It was up to us. We all sucked it up, practiced hard, and played well. We wanted this game real bad."
That's how 1997 has been for Texas, a team that once had bulls-eyes on its uniforms all season after corralling the inaugural Big 12 title last season. And the only thing that carries over from that championship is the exultation of teams that have been able to bring the Horns back to earth.
"We're the Big 12 champions," said free safety Donald McCowen. "People aren't just trying to beat us, they're trying to drive us into the ground."
But on Saturday, the Horns drove themselves into the ground every bit as much as the Tigers did. On five occasions, Texas had possession of the football in Missouri territory and failed to score a touchdown. A pair of missed field goals by Dawson, who had suffered from a leg injury, didn't help, but Brown admitted that the failure of the offense to move the ball was what truly did Texas in.
"We didn't make the plays, just didn't make the plays," Brown said. "I guess that's what it all boils down to."
Now, the Horns are looking at the daunting task of winning three of their last five games to earn bowl-game consideration. That means that Texas will have to beat either Colorado, Texas Tech or Texas A&M to have a shot at a postseason.
So with that ahead of them, do the Horns feel any pressure?
"I think we did before the game," Williams said, "but not anymore."