All hail Vince Young

Texas Longhorns score ESPN's No. 1 pick for best college football team in past 20 years

University of Texas cheerleader football game

The 2005 Texas Longhorns were crowned the best college football team by ESPN.

Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

The 2005 football season will be forever etched in the burnt-orange hearts of Longhorn loyalists. As if any diehard Horns fan needed a reminder, that’s the season when quarterback Vince Young and his teammates captured the national football championship in a goose-bump-inducing matchup against the heavily favored University of Southern California Trojans.

Now, the Horns can hoist another trophy of sorts, as ESPN crowned the 2005 Longhorns as the top college football championship team of the past 20 years. In order to determine the best team in college football, ESPN analyzed 15,000 games over 20 years, assigned each team offensive and defensive ratings, and then used that data to calculate an overall score.

In declaring the winner, ESPN also heaps praise on Young as “the best player of the past 20 years.”

“Quarterback Vince Young, remarkably, didn’t win the Heisman Trophy that season,” ESPN notes, “but he produced one of the greatest individual seasons in recent college football history, culminating with one of the greatest individual game performances the sport has ever seen.”

USC was the favorite in the 2006 Rose Bowl, which would determine the national champion of the 2005 college football season. Young had other ideas, completing 30 of 40 passes for 267 yards, and rushing for 200 yards. Young also scored the game-winning play — an 8-yard touchdown on fourth down with 19 seconds left on the clock. (Final score: 41-38.)

“That play defined the BCS [Bowl Championship Series] era. And turned Young into a legend,” ESPN says.

ESPN does point out, though, that Young didn’t single-handedly lead the Horns to victory. Michael Huff won the Jim Thorpe Award, recognizing him as the top defensive back for the 2005 season, and went on to join Young as a top NFL draft pick. Meanwhile, offensive tackle Jonathan Scott and defensive end Rodrique Wright were unanimous All-American picks that season.

In lionizing the Young-helmed and Mack Brown-coached squad, ESPN concludes: “The ’05 Longhorns never lost. And saved their best for the biggest stage.”

By the way, the 2000 Oklahoma Sooners football team turned up at No. 13 in the ESPN ranking. There’s something fitting about the Sooners being in the unlucky 13th spot, isn’t there?

PIGSKIN PAST

Texas football season kicks off early with new interactive film archive

Photo by Pixabay via Pexels

A new online exhibit from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image explores more than a century of the sport's history in Texas.

Triple-digit temperatures may say it's still summer, but football season is only weeks away. Before Friday night lights return and college stadiums roar back to life, Texans can get an early kickoff with Game Film: Texas Football Culture in Motion, a new interactive online exhibit. The project by the Texas Archive of the Moving Image celebrates more than a century of the state's high school, college, and professional football history.

The free digital exhibit uses archival game film, home movies, television broadcasts, and local news coverage to explore how football is woven into the fabric of Texas life. Rather than presenting a collection of videos, the archive has curated an interactive experience that lets visitors discover the people, traditions, innovations, and defining moments behind the state's football culture.

Game Film encourages exploration through interactive features. Visitors can follow a timeline of football milestones spanning high school, college, and professional football, click through an interactive state map highlighting archival footage available from schools and programs across the state, or browse themed collections devoted to Friday night culture and fan traditions.

This project, unveiled July 31, was assembled by Katharine Austin, a longtime curator at the Texas Archive, as part of the Texas Film Commission's Texas Moving Image Archive Program.

The interactive timeline traces the sport from its earliest days through the modern era, spotlighting milestones including:

1894: the beginning of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry
1900: the first Red River Rivalry
1914: the formation of the Southwest Conference
1921: the UIL's first state football championship
1938: TCU quarterback Davey O'Brien becoming the first player from a Texas college to win the Heisman Trophy
1959: the founding of the Houston Oilers
1960: the Dallas Cowboys joining the NFL
1987: SMU's NCAA "death penalty"
1996: Drew Brees leading Westlake High School to its first state football championship
1999: Houston being awarded the NFL expansion franchise that became the Texans

Many later entries include original television reports and archival footage from the events themselves.

An interactive state map offers another way to explore the collection, highlighting schools, colleges, and professional teams represented in the archive.

One click reveals silent film of Austin High School's 20-7 victory over Sunset High in the 1942 UIL state championship, while another captures Timpson High School's homecoming celebration in East Texas, complete with parade floats, marching bands, and community festivities. Other sections spotlight Friday night traditions, Darrell Royal's wishbone offense, Bill Yeoman's Veer defense, behind-the-scenes stories from the Houston Oilers, and the invention of the quarterback flak jacket.

Game Film is the latest in a series of interactive exhibits from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, joining projects including Women on the Move, Journey to the Moon Through Texas, Meet Me in San Antonio, La Frontera Fluid, and Breaking News: Rescuing the First Draft of History. The archive's broader collection and the nonprofit both accept public donations of historic films, videotapes, photographs, and other moving-image materials, helping preserve Texas stories for future generations.

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