11/24/01

Mack Brown comments on winning the Big 12 South Championship

Mack Brown's comments on winning the Big 12 South Championship

• Texas player comments on winning the Big 12 South Championship

On if he watched the Oklahoma/Oklahoma State game …
"I didn't touch the remote for the entire second half because I could see that it was a football game. Oklahoma State played really well and you have to give so much credit to the young quarterback that hurt his thumb. Their defensive plan was so good. Bill Clay has been around this game a long time. He is a guy that I worked with at Southern Miss and he was my brother's offensive coordinator at UAB last year. It was a great win for Oklahoma State. Obviously, we are excited about it because it proves to our guys that when people questioned whether their season was over after the Oklahoma game, that it wasn't. They realized that what they needed to do was take care of their business and there might be some good things that happen at the end. Our team could've taken the Missouri game or the Baylor game for granted, but they didn't. They took care of their business every week. They didn't worry about the BCS and now they've got themselves in position for a championship game for the second time in three years. We are really, really excited. I am proud of our team and of the way they played yesterday at College Station. What an awful thing it would have been if we had not taken care of business yesterday in College Station and this would have happened today. So, give credit to our team for being mature, playing hard and putting themselves in position to have a rematch with Colorado."

On how he feels right now …
"I am excited about going back to work. I have talked to the entire staff. I had some players calling and screaming with 20 seconds left. With my personality, I said would you please hang up and focus for 20 seconds so we can go ahead and make sure that we win the ball game. Our two sons and my wife were screaming and shouting like they were on the sidelines, so we may have had some unsportsmanlike conduct penalties at one point. It is exciting for us and something that this team has fought to get themselves back in position to do and I am just really happy that it happened. If you are asked if you get surprised when you see something that happens in college football today, I don't think that you get surprised anymore. Colorado has played really well as of late, but they jumped all over Nebraska. We will put our recruiting on hold. All of the coaches could go out on Monday for the first time and be in schools and the homes, but obviously this game is more important than our recruiting and the players out there will understand that our recruiting will be better by winning the championship game. Our players will all be back tomorrow. We had talked about the possibility of this happening. We will go back to work on Monday and will treat it like an open date since we didn't practice Saturday or Sunday. We already have a plan in place for Colorado, so it is not like playing a team that we haven't played for the last couple of years. We will go back and revisit their games, our plan and what we need to do to adjust to it."

On the significance of the first meeting against Colorado …
"There won't be much significance at all. Anything can happen in college football. About the time that you do think that you understand it, you don't. Beating Colorado like we did at home, we pretty much dominated the game after there were some turnovers. This isn't the same Colorado team that we played at midseason. We are not playing them at our place. Any team that can get 62 points against Nebraska gets your attention. I think that it is obvious that Colorado is a great football team. They are running the ball as good as anybody in the country right now. What a great challenge it will be for our defense, who has played as good as anyone in the country. That will be a great matchup. We didn't play as well on offense yesterday as we wanted to. We didn't run the ball as well. Our pads weren't as low. So, we decided since Cedric (Benson) didn't get his 1,000 yards yesterday, that we might should play another game and try to see if we could help him with that. We will need to play better on offense in this game and what a great challenge it will be to try to stop Colorado from running the ball as well as they ran it yesterday against Nebraska."

On if Texas is back in the National Championship picture …
"The thing that is obvious about the BCS and what is happening right now is that the only way that you can stay in the mix of anything is if we beat Colorado. What our kids and coaches have focused on each week is winning the game at hand. I do know that we won't be in the BCS if we don't win the game. We have to go back to work and beat Colorado and then look at things after that game."

"You always want to win your conference championship. It is one of your first goals each year. This is our second opportunity to win a conference championship in four years here and are we excited. The BCS is not an issue today and a bowl game is not an issue today. This is what you fight to get into, but when you get there, you've got to win. After that, you try to look up and figure out where you are."

"If our guys weren't convinced before yesterday's Nebraska game, we will convince them that this Colorado team is different. That won't be any question. Give Gary Barnett credit. He took his kids to Texas Stadium this summer and said that is where we want to end up, and as of yesterday, nobody thought that Colorado and Texas would end up in this ball game. So, give both teams credit. It is two teams that have been down this year and have gotten themselves back up, gone back to work and are playing as well as anyone in the country at the end of the year."

On not taking any opponents lightly during the latter part of the schedule this year …
"One of the things that we have talked about with this team is respect. You need to respect yourself and your teammates, but you also need to respect your opponent. That is something that we haven't done as well as we needed to in our first three years here. We would look at a team and say that they are not very good, but we learned that you are going to see a different team every Saturday. Every Saturday has to be a real important game for us and a really exciting game for us. Our guys will play hard this Saturday because they understand what is at stake."

On the difficulty of beating the same team twice in one season …
"Oklahoma beat the same team twice last year when they beat Kansas State. We didn't handle it as well when we came up against Nebraska two years ago. To win the conference championship in this league, you have to beat the same team twice a lot of the time. That is something that is just there. To be the champion you have to do it, so we are excited about it. There is no question that it is harder, because they will have a lot of motivation coming in. But we are also going to have a lot of motivation coming in to try to be the champions of the Big 12."

On the approach to this game week …
"This is a championship game week. You understand that this is like playing your biggest rival and that makes it fun. What we have to do to win the championship every year is play a huge rival like Texas A&M and then play this game the next week. We need to get used to that. There are a lot of things that are different now in the Big 12 that they were around here for a long time with the Southwest Conference. One of them is being able to play big game after big game and especially at the end of the year."

On the satisfaction of winning the Big 12 South Division title …
"Anytime you win your division championship around here, it is really satisfying. There is no question about that. Everyone else in the league would have liked to be in a position to tie, but after today, Oklahoma State and our performance yesterday helped to finalize it and put us as the champions. That makes it feel really good that we are the champions of the Big 12 South. The tower is already lit tonight. We have been here before, but we haven't taken the other step yet. This is the week for us to take the other step and win the championship."

"Our players are the reason why we are here. Different things have happened throughout the year and this was just the latest one. The reason we are playing in this game is our assistant coaches and our players have worked really hard to take advantage of every opportunity that they have had since the Oklahoma game. They never got their head down and still believed. They kept themselves in a position to win if the opportunity came up."