Pressure Isn’t Big to Texas

If the Texas football team is getting nervous, it isn’t showing.

If the Longhorns are intimidated by USC’s 34-game winning streak, they aren’t admitting it. And if they are crumbling under the pressure of increased exposure as they prepare for the Rose Bowl, they’re doing a pretty good job of keeping it under wraps.

That should come as no surprise. Texas has been here before.

True, the Longhorns haven’t played in a game with national-title implications since a 10-9 loss to Georgia in the 1983 Cotton Bowl, but the buildup to this year’s national-title showdown with USC isn’t much different from what Texas goes through most of the season.

That’s because in Texas, football is a big deal and of all the football in Texas, Longhorn football is king. Austin is the fourth largest city in Texas, but it sits somewhere in the middle of a triangle formed by the three largest cities in the state: Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. The Longhorns draw fans from all four.

There are up to 300 media members who cover the team on a regular basis. Five television stations from each major city have reporters assigned to the Longhorns, as do radio stations. The major papers from each city assign a handful of reporters and the smaller papers often have more than one person assigned.

So it’s no wonder that the players and coaches seemed unfazed Friday when they faced the media for the first time since landing a spot in the national championship game.

“I’m just having a good time relaxing,” said quarterback Vince Young, surrounded by about a dozen reporters. “It’s helping us out a whole lot just being loose.”

And if Young’s behavior wasn’t enough of an indication, the relaxed mood became evident when Young needed to end his news conference.

Offensive linemen Justin Blalock and Lyle Sendlein arrived on scene dressed as secret service agents, complete with dark sunglasses, suit jackets and radio earpieces, shouted “Code Red, Code Red,” simulated whispering into microphones on their wrist watches and whisked Young through the crowd of reporters.

One reporter laughed it off and asked another question, but was met with a gentle push to the chest by Blalock, who barked, “No more questions, sir,” then cleared a path and he and Sendlein escorted Young away.

“All of the hype around the game is totally unimportant unless you enjoy it,” Texas Coach Mack Brown said. “So don’t fight it, don’t get nervous about it, enjoy it.”

The hype can be dangerous too. Late last week, news leaked that two football players were being investigated by San Antonio police for robbery and assault. It became big headlines when local papers and television stations scrambled to scoop one another.

San Antonio attorney Ken Oden has said that the altercation is over $5 and called it a “trash-talking incident.” He doesn’t expect charges to be filed and neither do athletic department officials, but the reaction showed just how lightly Texas players have to tread and the type of scrutiny they receive.

Texas, however, remains relaxed and has retained the confident swagger that helped the team to a 12-0 record this season and a 19-game winning streak -- second to USC’s 34 in Division I.

USC is favored, but that hasn’t had an impact on the confidence of the Longhorns. The only streaks that matter, they say, are those that started in September because all of the other victories came with different teams.

“We’re not going to go in and say, ‘Guys, I don’t know how we’re going to do it but I think we can just last with these guys until the fourth quarter and hopefully we can kick a field goal at the end of the game to win,’ ” said defensive lineman Rod Wright, who last week said Texas wanted to dominate USC.

The Longhorns have the advantage of having played in last season’s Rose Bowl, which they say will help them feel as if they are not going to a foreign city. They beat Michigan, 38-37, even though there were critics who said Texas was under-qualified and that California should have been playing instead.

Earlier this month, they trounced Colorado, 70-3, for their first Big 12 tile since 1996.

“We’ve won a lot of games in a row too, and we’ve been in big games,” tight end David Thomas said.

But they are careful to balance buoyancy with respect. They cannot be intimidated, Blalock said before he posed as a secret service agent, but they cannot become overconfident.

“It’s tough to win week in and week out and 34 is just ridiculous,” he said. “I’ll give credit where credit is due, but you don’t get caught up in it because Texas isn’t one of [the 34].”

Earlier this year, Texas defeated Ohio State in a much-ballyhooed game pitting two teams ranked in the top five. The Longhorns will draw on that experience -- playing at Ohio State in front of more than 105,000 fans and in the national spotlight -- as the Rose Bowl approaches.

“The Ohio State game was all that was talked about from [last] spring,” Brown said. “It was all the national attention because it’s so unique to have two teams that were that good playing against each other in the early season.

“The buildup for the Ohio State game and playing on the road at Ohio State will really help us in preparation.

“The fact that our team gets so much attention nationally year-round will really help us for this game.”

Still, safety Michael Huff said, no matter how prepared they think they are, everything else has been child’s play compared to what’s ahead.

“There’s nothing that’s going to prepare us for this game,” Huff said. “Everybody is going to be talking about it from now until the end. It’s just a great game with so much buildup. It’s going to be crazy.”