Young at heart of 2006 Big 12 race
By DAVE SITTLER World Sports Columnist
1/8/2006
Hundreds of college football coaches will arrive Sunday in Dallas for their annual convention. The Big 12 Conference coaches, however, should skip the four-day AFCA event in Big D and head directly to Houston.
Upon arrival, they should set up a prayer vigil outside Mount Horeb Missionary Baptist Church. Because inside that church resides a man who will help Vince Young make a decision about the Texas quarterback's future.
Young, who personally carried the Longhorns to the 2005 national title with last Wednesday's win over USC in the Rose Bowl, has until next Sunday to decide if he will enter the NFL Draft. Young has said he will seek the counsel of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Samuel H. Smith.
If Smith advises Young to return to UT for his senior season, the rest of the Big 12 doesn't have a prayer to win the 2006 league title. The championship race would be over before it started.
Young is simply that good. That special.
UT coach Mack Brown would probably join his Big 12 peers at that prayer meeting. Shoot, he'd probably want to lead the parade from Dallas to Houston.
If Young's in Austin next fall, he'll make Brown one of the few coaches to win back-to-back national championships. If he heads to the
NFL, the Longhorns won't even be a consensus favorite to win their second straight Big 12 title in the South Division.
Even without Young, the Longhorns will be good. The way Brown is recruiting these days, Texas is going to be a conference title contender every year he's there.
"Mack Brown is kicking everybody's butt again in recruiting, but it's different," one coach said recently. "He used to just take "name" players, guys that were high on (recruiting) lists and sometimes turned out to be soft players.
"But now he's getting real players. I don't see anybody on his recruiting list that potentially can't play in the NFL."
But if Young leaves, Brown will have zero experience at quarterback. He can ask Oklahoma how that situation worked out for the Sooners this season.
That would mean OU would be the preseason favorite to win the South Division of the Big 12 and play North Division favorite Nebraska in the Big 12 title game.
As we all saw with his breathtaking performance against the defending national champion Trojans, Young is as close to a one-man team as college football has perhaps ever produced.
He carried his offense, and saved his team's defense.
Yes, UT's defense came up with a huge fourth-down stop to put the ball back in Young's hands for the game-winning drive. But Young wouldn't have needed to uncork his last-minute heroics if UT's defense had slowed the Trojans just a couple more times in the second half.
Conventional wisdom is that Young has taken his last direct snap from center wearing burnt orange. Why risk injury and lose the millions he'd make as one of the top picks in the NFL draft?
Young has said he wants to take care of his family financially. He could take out an insurance policy if he returns to UT, but it wouldn't pay him anywhere near what he'll make playing for the Houston Texans, New Orleans Saints or one of several awful NFL teams that desperately need him to do for them what he did for the Longhorns.
Unlike the Big 12 coaches, media members hope Young plays for UT next season. We're a sucker for a great story, that's why we loved it when Matt Leinart returned to UCS this season instead of taking his Heisman Trophy and two national titles to the NFL.
A year from now, we'll be saying the same thing about Adrian Peterson. OU's All-American running back and runner-up to Leinart in the 2004 Heisman race, is expected to bolt for the NFL after his junior season with the Sooners.
Like the coaches, we're selfish. But while they want to win championships, we just want to see the best players stay in college so we can enjoy watching and writing about them as long as we possibly can.
Given his competitive nature, Bob Stoops would undoubtedly say his OU team can beat Texas next October in Dallas with or without Young. So will the other 11 coaches who will face the Longhorns during the 2006 regular season. But all 12 will know in their hearts that they'll have little chance if Young remains the big man on the Texas campus next fall.
Stoops will be in Dallas this week for the AFCA convention. So if his Big 12 peers head to that church in Houston, don't be surprised if Stoops is the grand marshal of that coaching parade and leads the group prayer.
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Dave Sittler 581-8312
[email protected].