A Texas-sized chip on their shoulders should make the Longhorns No. 1

A tree stump could pick Florida No. 1 -- we get it.

Everybody loves Raymond and the Gators. So why Texas?

Think of it as deja Bevo.

The clincher is a story told by a nice young man wearing Harry Potter glasses while standing in the hallway outside Texas’ weight room/military industrial complex.

Hard to believe it was Colt McCoy, the team’s superstar fifth-year senior quarterback, but he had a student ID card to prove it.

McCoy was a redshirt freshman standing next to quarterback Vince Young on the Rose Bowl sidelines in January 2006 when, in the climactic plot twist to one of college football’s all-time page-turners, Texas stopped USC on fourth and two with two minutes left in the Bowl Championship Series title game.

The Longhorns trailed, 38-33.

“I was in the huddle and the coaches were telling him the play before he runs out,” McCoy recalled. “I’m there with the clipboard, writing down the plays. Vince said, ‘Hey, here we go; it’s time to roll.’ ”

McCoy said Young then looked him square in the eye and said: “You’ll be in this position some day. Do what I do.”

Young drove the Longhorns 56 yards in 10 plays, scoring the game-winning touchdown on a fourth-down run with seconds remaining.

Texas won, 41-38.

Four years later, the BCS title game returns to the Rose Bowl.

Four years later, Texas enters the season No. 2 in the Associated Press and USA Today coaches’ rankings behind a prohibitive favorite to repeat as BCS champion. Florida received 58 first-place votes in the AP poll. Texas got two.

In 2005, USC was an overwhelming preseason No. 1 after winning the national title in 2004. That year, USC had 60 first-place votes in the AP. Texas had four.

Four years later, a Texas quarterback coming off a spectacular bowl performance enters the season with something to prove.

After 2004, it was Young who shook off criticisms about his passing with an indelible Rose Bowl performance against Michigan.

Four years later, McCoy returns after leading a last-minute drive to beat Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl -- and after losing the Heisman Trophy to the quarterback from archrival Oklahoma, a team the Longhorns beat.

Texas Coach Mack Brown sat in his office chair and all but owned up to this alignment of stars.

“We tried to tell our team that,” Brown said. “The stage is set for us going back to the Rose Bowl. Everything is in place like it was in ’04 going into ’05. You just got to be good enough.

“There are a lot of seniors on this team. And expectations are high. The standard is set very high here. This team should not be compared to that team yet because they haven’t earned the right, but I think the circumstances are scarily similar.”

If you believe in dynasties and the odds and Florida quarterback Tim Tebow’s insatiable quest for perfection, go with the Gators.

If you believe in symmetry, karma, cycles, Texas is your team.

Florida will discover that repeating is hard. Every league game will be a fistfight that spills out of Southeastern Conference saloon doors.

The year after Florida won it all in 2006, the Gators went 9-4 with a loss to Michigan in the Capital One Bowl.

Louisiana State finished 9-3 the season after it won the BCS title in 2003 and 8-5 last year after winning the title in 2007.

The 10-3 season following Texas’ national title in 2005 was one of the most difficult of Brown’s career. With accomplishment comes satisfaction and, to some, a sense of entitlement -- especially when you’re dealing with young adults.

Conversely, no team in America is more motivated than Texas.

Texas last year got the short end of almost every stick it drew.

Texas watched Missouri and Oklahoma, two schools it defeated, play in the Big 12 championship game.

Texas lost a three-way tiebreaker to determine the Big 12 South champion after the Longhorns, Oklahoma and Texas Tech all finished with one loss.

Texas was undermined, not by the BCS but by the Big 12’s own rules. Had the Big 12 used SEC tiebreaking procedures, the Longhorns would have prevailed as winner of the head-to-head against Oklahoma, played Missouri for the Big 12 title and probably played Florida for the national title.

What’s more, the Big 12 decided in the off-season not to alter its tiebreaking procedures. Why not? Well, it might have suggested the conference crowned the wrong champion last year.

If you want to get talented college football players charged up, tell them they got robbed.

For a brief period last off-season, in Texas’ team meeting room at the Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletics Center, the school officially listed its Big 12 championships as 1996, 2005 and 2008*.

The asterisk of ’08 has since been removed -- but the point was made.

Brown only needs to harness this pent-up energy.

“We’ve said the BCS is not going to change,” he said. “They’ve said that publicly. We said the tiebreaker is not going to change. The system is what it is. The only thing we could have done last year within the system was to beat Texas Tech and it would have taken care of itself. What we can do is win all our games. So let’s go back and put it on us, quit talking about what should have happened.”

McCoy, who is from tiny Tuscola, Texas, may be one of the most unselfish players to ever lock horns.

He has put up pinball numbers -- but is not obsessed with anything except winning. McCoy has won more games, 32, than any quarterback in Texas history, besting Young’s mark of 30.

Last year, McCoy set an NCAA single-season record with a 76.7% completion rate. He passed for 3,859 yards with 34 touchdowns and only eight interceptions.

In his spare time, he led Texas with 561 yards rushing.

Last year, though, was painful -- and not just because of the tiebreaker. Texas lost a heartbreaker to Texas Tech only moments after Texas safety Blake Gideon failed to secure a game-clinching interception.

“We beat Missouri and Oklahoma and they got to play for the Big 12 title,” McCoy said. “That’s a tough pill to swallow. There is motivation in that. The motivation in saying, ‘Hey, if we win every game and take care of our business, there’s no way they can keep us out.’ ”

Personal goals don’t keep McCoy awake at night. “Without my teammates,” he says, “I don’t win anything.”

Yet McCoy was one of only three players, along with Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford and Florida’s Tebow, invited to New York for last year’s Heisman Trophy ceremonies. He stands as the only one without a trophy.

Looking back, the Longhorns’ road to the 2005 championship was actually more difficult.

Texas that year had to beat Ohio State in Columbus. This year, the nonconference away game is Wyoming.

Every season, though, has its own set of potential trip wires.

Texas isn’t a perfect team -- no team is.

McCoy can’t lead the team in rushing again. He’ll need to pick his spots, as Vince Young learned to do.

Brown used to assess before games -- and sometimes during them -- whether Texas needed Young’s legs to win.

“Don’t run in this game unless we get in trouble,” Brown would tell him.

There’s no denying the circle-back similarities to the Texas team of 2005.

Sub in McCoy for Young.

“Different guy, same effect,” Brown said. “ . . . He is for this team what Vince Young was for the 2005.”

You’ll be in the position someday. . . . Do what I do.

McCoy has not forgotten the words Young spoke to him that night in the Rose Bowl.

McCoy absorbed every second of Texas’ perfect season.

“He was in every huddle,” Brown said. “He was at every meeting. He watched Vince at Ohio State, Vince against Oklahoma, Vince against USC. He watched it all.

“His dream was to be the quarterback at Texas and win all the games. And that’s what he still wants to do.”

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chris.dufresne@latimes.com

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