Part 2 of 3 Parts

Spring Football Notes . .

QB Chris Simms completed 11 of 15 passes for 174 yards and a touchdown to
highlight UT's annual Orange-White game before a crowd school officials
estimated at 31,000
Coach Mack Brown had the first team offenses and defenses square off against
each other for the first time in the Orange-White game.
The only touchdown the first-team defense gave up was a 53-yard Simms pass to
WR Roy Williams, who had a step on CB Quentin Jammer.
Simms also led the offense to a field goal.
QB Major Applewhite, operating behind an offensive line patched with
walk-ons, led the second team to one touchdown against the second-team
defense, on a fade route to WR Sloan Thomas in the end zone.
My vote for most improved offensive player this spring is split three ways
because Simms, sophomore TE Brock Edwards and senior tackle Mike Williams are
all much improved over last year. On defense, I think it's a two-way tie
between DT Marcus Tubbs and CB/safety Nathan Vasher.
I think the Longhorns will have the best group of WRs, TEs and DBs in the Big
12. They will have the best passing QB in the Big 12, too, if Simms continues
to improve. They also will have one of the two or three best pass-blocking
lines in the league if they stay healthy.

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Maroon-Hued Journalists Abound

I should have commented on this earlier, but better late than never.
Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas News wrote a love-in column about Texas A&M
coach R. C. Slocum right after national signing day, and both Slocum and
Sherrington used the opportunity to throw a few rocks at Texas coach Mack
Brown and the Longhorns
I'm going to quote a couple of excerpts from the column, with my comments
about them. Here's the first one:
"Such is R.C. Slocum's life these days. Never had a losing season at Texas
A&M. Won more games than any coach in school history. Run a clean program his
dozen years as head coach."
Clean program? No question it's cleaner than it used to be, but Sherrington
must have a really short memory. Remember those no-show jobs?
Then Sherrington and Slocum got into recruiting, and both took some shots at
Brown and UT. Here's what they said in the column:
"Of course, rankings come with caveats, too, Slocum reminded. After four
years of enrolling the country's top recruiting classes, he asked, 'shouldn't
a school have the most talented team in the country? Shouldn't expectations
go way up?' "
" 'Wouldn't that be accurate?' Slocum asked."
"In other words, you're up, Mr. Brown."
First of all, Brown hasn't had "four years of enrolling the country's top
recruiting classes." He's had three of them, and the third class hasn't even
enrolled yet. The other two were freshmen and sophomores last year and they
are the heart and soul of the team.
Brown's first signees at Texas weren't in the class of the others, which
certainly were highly ranked classes.
His first great class will be starting its third year this season and it is
ready to boost the Longhorns back into national prominence.
The Aggies, on the other hand, went 11-3 in 1998, 8-4 in 1999 and 7-4 in
2000. Sounds like a downward spiral to me. I wonder if Aggies' expectations
are "way up?"
Second, the last time I looked, Texas and Texas A&M had played three times
since Brown arrived to find Slocum firmly entrenched at A&M with his program
already well established.
Enheriting a 4-7 team, Brown has produced three consecutive nine-win seasons
and, while I know it sounds far-fetched after reading the remarks of
Sherrington and Slocum, he has a 2-1 edge over Slocum and his Aggies.
The lone Aggie victory over Brown was in 1999 at A&M by a razor-thin 20-16
margin when UT QB Major Applewhite, the Big 12 Co-Offensive Player of the
Year, was too sick to play.
I know you play with what you have and I am not saying that Aggie victory
shouldn't count, but what I am saying is that any outsider reading the column
would think the Aggies must be hammering us every year.
While I'm on the subject of biased reporting, I thought it was interesting
that the Houston Chronicle published a three-column bylined story on the
Texas A&M spring game, which drew 6,000 fans. The paper did not staff the UT
spring game and did not run one line on an event that was attended by 31,000
fans.
The UT Sports Information Department distributed a lengthy story on the
spring game and many papers used all or part of it, but the Chronicle simply
ignored the entire event.
The Chronicle has one sports columnist, devout Aggie John Lopez, who doesn't
even try to get his facts straight when writing, about Texas.
Remember his column on how UT basketball guard Darren Kelly wanted to go to
A&M, but didn't have the grades.
Kelly was a full qualifier out of high school and, in fact, started his
college career at a Division I school before switching to a JC.
When he missed a semester at Texas for academic problems, it was because many
of his hours at the small JC he attended did not transfer and he was short on
hours toward his degree. It wan't because he was failing any courses.
But Lopez was more interested in making excuses for the dismal Aggie
basketball team than he was in getting the facts straight.
If you get as irritated as I do with columnists who continue to glorify the
Aggies and ignore or put down the Longhorns, let the sports editors and/or
their bosses know about it.

An Early Look at the Schedule

Trying to predict football games in April that are several months away is a
dangerous business, so I'm going to just look at the schedule and talk about
the likely odds on all the games.
The Longhorns probably will be at least 15-point favorites over five of their
foes. They are the home games against New Mexico State and Kansas and the
road games against Houston, Oklahoma State and Baylor.
Texas also will be favored, probably by  at least 10 points, in the home g
ames against North Carolina and Texas Tech and the game at Missouri.
That leaves the Oct. 6 date in Dallas against defending national champion
Oklahoma, the Oct. 20 home game against Colorado and the Nov. 23 visit to A&M
as the ones that would appear to be the most dangerous.
I think Colorado will be a dangerous team if RB Marcus Houston stays healthy,
and A&M is always dangerous in College Station.
But there is no question that the Sooners are the most dangerous looking foe
on the schedule.
I won't predict Texas will win every game, but I will predict if the
Longhorns average 100 yards rushing against OU, Colorado and A&M, we'll all
be smiling heading into the post season.

Conradt Gives Up AD Title

Jody Conradt, UT women's basketball coach since 1976 and women's athletic
director since 1992, is going back to coaching full time and giving up the AD
post
"I have appreciated the opportunity to serve the university, but my heart and
my passion are about coaching women's athletics," she said.
Conradt, 59, said she thinks her basketball program is making "significant
progress" toward returning to the national spotlight and said she wants to
devote full time to that job.
Chris Plonsky, 43, a senior associate athletic director in the men's
department, will serve as women's athletic director on an interim basis and
will get a new title: senior associate athletic director for men's and
women's athletics.
Patricia Ohlendorf, UT vice president for institutional relations and legal
affairs, oversees both athletic departments. She said she will chair a small
committee that will study the men's and women's athletic departments to
determine their future course.
The study probably will take about two  months to complete, and all signs
point to a recommendation to combine the two departments.
Only five Division I universities have separate athletic departments for men
and women. The others are Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
In recent years, the two departments have combined to operate together in
several areas at Texas, such as sports medicine, strength and conditioning,
fund-raising and development, marketing, ticket operations and media
relations.
Sources close to the situation at UT say combining the two departments and
having one director to oversee both would save more than $1 million a year.
The sources also say UT President Larry Faulkner, who will make the ultimate
call, favors combining the two departments.
In this day of increasing expenses and tight budgets, it would make a lot of
sense to join the other 11 schools in the Big 12 and the vast majority of the
other Division I schools in combining the two departments under one athletic
director.
It would eliminate a lot of duplication and save a lot of money.

Jamboree on TV in Austin

The Longhorns Spring Football Jamboree, highlighted by the Orange-White game,
will be telecast by time Warner Cable Monday and Tuesday on Austin Cable
Channel 62.
Fox  Sports and Time Warner Cable are teaming up to bring Austin cable
viewers the tape-delay broadcast of the March 31 jamboree and scrimmage.
It will be telecast Monday (April 9) at 9 p.m. and Tuesday (April 10) at 7
p.m.

Umpire Boycott Silly

The three Austin-area umpires who are boycotting non-conference baseball
games at Texas' Disch-Falk Field because of what they term insulting personal
attacks by Longhorns assistant coaches are being silly.
David Wiley, Tim Henderson and Wade Ford say they won't call Texas'
non-conference games the rest of the season because they are unhappy with the
way they have been treated by UT assistants Frank Anderson and Tommy Harmon.
"Tim, Wade and I have just decided it might be better for all parties
involved if we worked elsewhere this year because the professional climate
has deteriorated all year, such that we felt it would be better for us to
extract ourselves from that situation," Wiley said.
Henderson and Wade were assigned before the season to work some Big 12 games
at Disch-Falk and said they will honor that commitment.
The reason the boycott is silly is that umpires have the ultimate weapon in
disputes with coaches. They can eject them, and that would be a far more
reasonable approach than what Wiley, Henderson and Ford have chosen to do.
A few ejections will make any coach see the light, even if he is in the
right, because umpires have dictatorial power over coaches.
It's also strange that Wiley is talking about it to reporters. The Big 12 has
a strict gag rule on all Big 12 coaches, and Wiley knows he can say anything
he wants to without fear of contradiction from the other parties involved.

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