Football Preview: No. 1 Texas Takes On Missouri

The Longhorns' reward for beating No. 1 Oklahoma last week was their own leap to the head of the class. Texas now finds itself atop the regular-season college football polls for the first time since 1984. (Remember that UT's 2005 national championship team was ranked behind USC until after the title game.)

With that No. 1 ranking comes the requisite attention: Quarterback Colt McCoy was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the ESPN College Game Day crew will be in town this weekend, and Coach Mack Brown is fielding calls from Bill Cosby.

But the Longhorns must shake off the attention and focus on the next task at hand, or their reign at the top may be short-lived.

The Missouri Tigers come to town on Saturday for a nationally televised matchup (7 pm on ABC). The Tigers had a shot at becoming the No. 1 team in the land following Texas' win over OU, but were upset at home by Oklahoma State and have dropped to No. 11.

Missouri is led by senior quarterback Chase Daniel, a Texas native who's already thrown for 16 touchdowns and more than 2,000 yards through the first six games. But his Heisman Trophy candidacy took a bit of a hit after he threw three interceptions in the Oklahoma State loss.

Daniel is the key to the Tigers' offense, but their most dangerous player is All-American wide receiver and kick returner Jeremy Maclin. After a breakout freshman year, Maclin has already accounted for seven touchdowns (one rushing, five receiving, one kickoff return).

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By Jeff Beckham in Other on October 17, 2008 11:33 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

jayevee

The BCS rankings are the official flagship consensus selector now for NCAA football, whether we like it or not. It is not the only one, however (AP is another); consensus selectors have been in use since the 1920s - before TV was commercially available.

Rereading the original post, though, the author did say "polls" only; while the BCS does incorporate two polls, it also includes a mathematical factor. So to be technical, no, Texas was never at the top of the polls in 2005. But it's also worth mentioning that they were at the top of the BCS in week 10 (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/... [this is the correct link; the previous link was the previous week].

mbtrolley

I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/rankingsindex?seasonYear=2005&weekNumber=9&seasonType=2

robist

I'm pretty sure that stat refers to the AP Poll and the Coaches poll (USA Today?) and not the the made-for-TV BCS rankings.

jayevee

...and here's the proof (I knew I clipped/saved it because it was such a beautiful sight even though I knew it wasn't going to last long):

http://lastgleaming.com/images/bcsrank.jpg