GUNS ON THE RED RIVER

It's been a harried, busy day in Vegas, so let's just frame the upcoming day in the proper light with one note: it is an oddity in modern college football that Mack Brown and Bob Stoops get to line up and play the part of Itchy and Scratchy again eight years after Roy Williams superman'd Chris Simms and Texas into defeat. Consider how much has changed, and then consider the rare treat in a game of ever-increasing turnover of having two coaches who have not only taken turns beating each other, but have done so in a rich variety of excruciating ways. No other ongoing, vibrant rivalry has two coaches so willing to take turns incinerating each other, sometimes via a blowout, sometimes with a freakish play like the one above, and sometimes in shootouts like last year's track meet. The 11:00 am kick is a travesty, but the spite inherent in the rivalry only gets richer when you consider the game of cat and mouse played by two of the best coaches of their generation. And by cat and mouse game, we do not mean hide and seek, but something more like this.