2007 Texas Longhorns Football Team
The 2007 Texas Longhorn football team (variously "Texas" or "UT" or the "Horns") represented the University of Texas at Austin in the 2007 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The team was coached by Mack Brown, who received the 2005 Paul "Bear" Bryant Coach of the Year award. The Longhorns play their home games in Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR).
The Longhorns entered the 2007 season ranked third on all-time college football lists in both total wins and winning percentage. A pre-season ranking by ESPN writer Mark Schlabach had the Longhorns ranked eighth, while College Football News ranked Texas third. The Longhorns came into the season ranked fourth in both the Coaches Poll and AP Poll. During the preceding summer five players had been disciplined for legal infractions, another suspended for NCAA rule violations, and a coach had undergone surgery for cancer. Additional players were suspended during the season.
The Longhorns played games against two opponents they had never faced previously: Arkansas State University and the University of Central Florida (UCF). The Longhorns narrowly achieved a victory in their home opener with Arkansas State, and in their first road game of the season, Texas was the inaugural opponent for the UCF Knights in their new stadium. In preseason speculation, games against Texas Christian University (TCU) and Oklahoma (OU) were considered among the top 20 games to watch during the 2007–2008 college football season.
The Longhorns lost conference games to the Kansas State Wildcats, the Oklahoma Sooners, and the Texas A&M Aggies. In two close games, they avoided upset attempts by lower-ranked Nebraska and Oklahoma State, the latter game involving a 21-point fourth quarter comeback by the Horns. Texas concluded its season by winning the 2007 Holiday Bowl against the Arizona State Sun Devils—another first-time opponent for Texas—bringing their season record to 10–3.
The Horns finished the season ranked tenth in the AP poll and in the USA Today coaches poll. After the season, five UT players entered professional football through the 2008 NFL Draft and four others agreed to sign free-agent contracts with NFL teams.
Read more about 2007 Texas Longhorns Football Team: Before The 2007 Season, Schedule, After The Season
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“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“... in the minds of search committees there is the lingering question: Can she manage the football coach?”
—Donna E. Shalala (b. 1941)
“Relying on any one disciplinary approach—time-out, negotiation, tough love, the star system—puts the parenting team at risk. Why? Because children adapt to any method very quickly; today’s effective technique becomes tomorrow’s worn dance.”
—Ron Taffel (20th century)