Benson Shakes Early Pain

On his first carry of the game, Texas running back Cedric Benson hyperextended his left knee and had to leave the game. He was on the sideline for one snap and played the rest of the game without any problems.

“I guess I was a little too excited,” said Benson, who finished with 70 yards in 23 carries and finishes his career sixth on the NCAA Division I-A all-time rushing list with 5,540 yards. “I tried to make a cut before my body was set. I didn’t think I was hurt bad because things like that have happened before and I was OK. I didn’t hear anything pop and it didn’t feel too bad once I got up. I just had to wait until the pain disappeared.”

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Texas linebacker Derrick Johnson forced a fumble in the third quarter, his ninth of the season, establishing an NCAA Division I-A season record. Johnson finished his career with 11 forced fumbles.

-- Lonnie White

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Texas assistant head coach Dick Tomey celebrated the victory along with the players and his fellow coaches. Today, though, he rejoins the head coaching ranks by taking over at downtrodden San Jose State.

“I will wake up and get right to work,” he said while walking off the field amid joyous Longhorn players and screaming fans.

Tomey, 66, was head coach at Arizona from 1987 to 2000 and at Hawaii from 1977 to ‘86, and is the all-time victories leader at both schools. He spent last season as an assistant with the San Francisco 49ers but missed the college game.

He’ll have his work cut out at San Jose State, a program that has come close to extinction.

“I want to be a head coach again,” he said. “It won’t be like this, but I love a challenge.”

-- Steve Henson

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The Texas senior class did not beat Big 12 rival Oklahoma, losing five straight, or win a conference championship in its career.

However, it had its moments.

The group closed a chapter Saturday night in the victory over Michigan.

“This is my fifth year, and we’ve been a work in progress since Coach [Mack] Brown got here,” starting senior flanker Tony Jeffery said. “It’s just great to see all the progress that we’ve made since I first stepped on campus in 2000.

“We said that once we got into a BCS game we were going to take advantage of it. That’s what we did.... That’s why this senior class is amazing.”

Texas has lost only 11 games the last five seasons, but five to the Sooners. The Longhorns have won at least 10 games each of the last four seasons.

“We’ve seen the struggles for the last four and five years here,” Jeffery said. “We’ve seen the struggles of the things we didn’t get done, but this finally gets the monkey off our backs.”

-- Jason Reid

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The San Gabriel Valley chapter of the American Red Cross expected to raise about $30,000 to help the region devastated by the tsunami in South Asia last week through collection stations at the Rose Bowl on Saturday.

Angie Turner, chief executive of the local chapter, said the group had tallied $15,000 by halftime and expected to double that amount through collections taken at the eight stations around the stadium as the 93,468 fans left the game. She said typical donations were $1 to $5, with one fan depositing a check for $1,000.

“What was really amazing to me was all the little kids putting in their dollars and whatever they had left in their pocket,” Turner said. “Sometimes it isn’t about amounts, it’s about giving what little you have left.”

This marked the first time the Rose Bowl has allowed an outside agency to collect money at its game. The magnitude of the natural disaster, which claimed an estimated 150,000 lives through Saturday, prompted the exception, and the logistics were worked out within 48 hours.

-- J.A. Adande