By Chris Hall:
From my experience, there are at least three keys to winning on Thanksgiving. Hopefully for the Longhorns and their lingering bowl hopes, they’ll execute in each area against Texas Tech.
1. Thrive in the Bye Week
This bye week, in particular, was always so difficult for me. Unless your team is injured and needs time to heal, coaching staffs want everything to be the same. The team gets in a rhythm week to week and you don’t want anything to mess that up, especially if you’re winning.
Each individual player, and the team collectively, has to find a way to stay engaged throughout the extra week of practice.
Football is mainly a mental sport. This is where coaching and team leadership can make or break your squad. The staff and upperclassmen have to find a way to keep everyone honed in on one goal. If they fail to do that, the team can show up flat to one of the biggest games of the year.
2. Manage the Emotion
It’s hard to explain how much emotion can be involved in playing on Thanksgiving... For most of my years at Texas, all except ’08 and ’09, we would have a special team meeting that was unlike any we’d have the rest of the year... Anyone, from any position, from any class or rank within the program, could stand up and share what they were thankful for to the rest of the staff and team.
There’s so much emotion to that time of the year already, it didn’t help to have an outpouring of it the day before we played (healthy as it was for everyone involved). We needed every drop of emotion we had for the game itself.
Part of the struggle at Thanksgiving is managing all of that emotion well, and winning.
3. Expect A Dogfight (Rivalry Game)
Thanksgiving means rivalry games. For Texas, that always meant beating the Texas A&M Aggies.
Unfortunately, college football has changed for the people of Texas in more ways than one. The state’s best rivalry is no longer a thing Texans are allowed to enjoy with their families over Thanksgiving dinner. That’s a shame.
Regardless of whether the Aggies are involved, playing an in-state team on a special day makes for a dogfight the Longhorns better be ready for... Hopefully for the entire program, and Longhorn Nation at large, Texas can celebrate a Happy Thanksgiving with its 5th win of the year.
[Full IT article]
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Yeah, well, it ain't OUR fault. They left.