After the Debacle: The Texas Longhorns 2011 Season Preview, Pt. 1

Someone once wrote that “Hope springs eternal.” Well deep in the heart of burnt orange country – Austin, Texas – hope springs approximately every Fall, has done so, well, eternally. This year however, even the most diehard of Texas Longhorn fans can hardly be blamed for a little extra anxiety with the onset of the 2011 college football season. Indeed, Head Coach Mack Brown’s squad comes into his 14^th season on the Forty Acres, wearing the unpleasant and unfamiliar taint of a losing season, an unprecedented disaster of a 5-7 (2-6 league) slate one year ago. For the record, four of the losses were mostly appalling – UCLA, Iowa State, Baylor at home, Kansas State on the road – while the other three were (with all due hesitation) acceptable (read:losses to better teams) – Oklahoma State and Texas A&M in Austin, and Oklahoma in Dallas – if thoroughly misery-inducing. For 2011, any repeat of last season is, well, too painful to contemplate. Appalling times four and acceptable times three, however strong the opposition, simply cannot, must not happen again. If so, heads will roll again, and this time the carnage would begin at the top… That’s pure speculation though, and for the record, I think you can expect a solid return to form for the 2011 edition of the Texas Longhorns, for several reasons. Stay tuned to find out why.

In upcoming installments, we get to the heart of the upcoming University of Texas 2011 season, beginning with a look at the coaching changes in “A New Mindset – and It Starts at the Top”, to a breakdown of this year’s offensive and defensive units.