I felt like that too on Thursday night. Not because Texas lost, but because we missed the opportunity to see an even better game. (Mark J. Rebilas-US PRESSWIRE)

Well that wasn’t how things were supposed to go. Thursday night had all the buildup to be a fantastic national title game. According to an ESPN poll, 49 out of 50 states chose Alabama to win the game, the exception being Texas. Go figure. But even with the vast majority of the country picking Alabama to win, I still thought it was going to be a close game.

Technically, it was. But not in the way anyone thought it would be.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the story. Colt McCoy gets injured five offensive plays into the game. Turns out to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder or neck, and his arm loses all strength. Garrett Gilbert comes in and after a rocky first half, shows why he was Gatorade’s Male National High School Athlete of the Year in 2009.

Down just three points with three minutes left in the game and 93 yards away from the end zone, Gilbert does feel the blitz coming from his blind side, takes a big hit and fumbles the ball. ‘Bama recovers it and a couple plays later, put the game out of reach with a touchdown.

As you know, I’m not a big Longhorns fan. I’m more of a casual observer. But I can’t help but feel like we were all cheated out of something with that game. And by we, I mean we sports fans. As exciting as the game was, seeing a true freshman quarterback playing his only meaningful minutes of the season and nearly lead his team on a come-from-behind win over the number one team in the country, in the national championship game no less, I still feel cheated.

We didn’t get to see one of the best college quarterbacks that I’ve seen in my time watching sports in his final game. The game that was supposed to cap his run as the winningest quarterback in Division 1 college football history. And for the fans in Austin and the students at Texas, they were unable to give Colt McCoy, and to a lesser extent Jordan Shipley and the other seniors who have grown over the last four, five, six years, a proper sendoff.

Even in the third quarter, when McCoy came out of the locker room and onto the sidelines to finish the game in a headset instead of a helmet, there was no standing ovation or chants of Colt’s name. It was a small buzz of confusion.

Well, he’s still wearing his uniform, is he coming back in?

No, he’s got his jersey rolled up and his shoulder pads undone.

He doesn’t even have his helmet.

What’s wrong with him?

Of all the injustices people complained about this season – the BCS system, the time that did or didn’t expire from the clock at the end of the Big 12 Championship game, the insane number of undefeated teams who weren’t in the BCS National title game, the lack of tough non-conference opponents the national title contenders scheduled – the biggest injustice of all is that we didn’t have a chance to see Colt McCoy end his college career on his own terms.

Imagine the game that you saw on Thursday night. Now imagine one of the most successful quarterbacks in college football history was playing instead of a true freshman. Sounds pretty good, eh?

That’s what we lost on Thursday night when Colt McCoy left the field.

Image of downtown Austin courtesy of NatureLoverPhotos / http://natureloverphotos.shutterfly.com

It’s the start of 2010 and I’m back after my second major hiatus from the blog. The first one I took early in the fall after getting lazy and losing interest. No major events, just laziness. This most recent break can be attributed to grad school applications, studying for the GRE and, of course, the holidays.

But now, I’m back with a new emphasis on discipline, and just in time for the BCS National Title game, featuring Austin’s-own Texas Longhorns. I talked some BCS National Title Game on Monday night on the Austin Citysphere podcast, so make sure to check that out if you didn’t catch it live on Blog Talk Radio. It was my first time appearing as a guest on someone’s podcast, so it was a different experience. All in all, I think it went well for my first time.

On the title game-front, I’ll be sure to have some sort of preview of the championship game posted here by Thursday, looking at some aspect of the game I’m interested in. But before that, I’ve got a few random administrative bits to talk about.

The first is that there are going to be some format changes around here. For the last few weeks, I’ve been posting the Morning Hangover first thing in the day, featuring links to different articles about players and teams in Austin, and then trying to write posts containing original content later in the day.

We’re going to scrap that feature for the time being. As easy as it is for me to get posts up in that format, I’m sure it’s boring enough for you, the reader. And I feel lazy because I’m not actually writing anything.

Over the next two and a half to three months, I’m going to be extremely busy at my Clark Kent job. With that, the freedom for me to write whenever I want will be gone. And I’ll be limited to working on, at most, one post per day. Instead of using my time first thing in the morning to put together the Morning Hangover, I’m going to spend that time actually writing, much like I’m doing right now. So for now, expect less-frequent posts, 2-5 per week, but more meaty content (whatever that actually means). And hopefully, stuff that you enjoy reading.

The next bit of news is big for me. I am joining the team at the San Antonio Spurs blog 48 Minutes of Hell, which is affiliated with ESPN’s TrueHoop Blog. I will lead the 48MoH coverage of the Austin Toros and contribute some Spurs-related pieces at my leisure. This is very exciting for me, as I’ve been a reader of 48MoH for some time now and the NBA is the league / sport I am most passionate about. With the amount of readership the guys at 48MoH have and the quality of content they put out, it’s really a big win for me.

So while there won’t be a lot of Toros coverage on ATX Sports, I’ll be sure to link here to the stuff I write for 48MoH. But, if you don’t feel like waiting that long, you can just follow me on Twitter and get it straight from the source.

So with all that out of the way, we move into 2010. If I remember correctly, this is the longest I’ve made it updating a blog on a (sometimes) regular basis. Seven months and some change isn’t exactly setting the world on fire, but I’ve had some decent success thus far.

I’m excited to see where it takes me this year. Is there anything you can do to help out? Well I’m glad you asked. As I mentioned before, you can follow me on Twitter and laugh at any jokes I attempt to make in 140 characters or less. In addition, you can subscribe to the ATX Sports RSS feed. It’s completely free to subscribe and the more subscribers this site has, the more legitimate it looks. The last thing you can do? Tell your friends. Spread the word about this site as much as possible. The more people who talk about it, the better the chances it has to last and maintain my attention.

Other than that, enjoy the site and have a great 2010.

Near-face palm. (Brian Bahr/Getty Images)

The Morning Hangover gets you caught up on sports stories that pertain to the Austin area, every weekday morning. And it don’t stop.

John Maher of the Austin American-Statesman – “If the BCS awarded a championship for making money from football, the University of Texas would win in a walk. ‘We used to be No. 2 behind Ohio State. Now we’ve jumped out to a pretty good lead,’ said Ed Goble, UT’s associate athletic director for business. According to data the schools filed with the federal government, the top five money makers in college football also included Southeastern Conference powers Florida, Georgia and Alabama, which will face Texas on Jan. 7 in the BCS national title game. The data showed that while the country was in the midst of a lingering and deep recession, revenues generated by the Longhorns football program increased by 20 percent in 2008, rising by $14.6 million to a whopping $87.6 million. That’s by far the most money ever generated by a college football program and almost $20 million more than Ohio State — now relegated to second place — pulled in. ‘I don’t really like comparisons,’ said Ben Jay, senior associate athletic director at Ohio State. ‘We’re trying to do different things (than Texas).’ ”

Tyler Mayforth of the San Marcos Daily Record – “An optimist can look at Texas State’s 99-94 double-overtime victory Tuesday afternoon against Huston-Tillotson and find a batch of positives. A realist can examine the same four-point win by the Bobcats and see they have a long way to go until they resemble a competitive Division I basketball team. Sure, Texas State won by four points but it shouldn’t have been that close against a team from the NAIA. The Bobcats beat the Lady Rams in 2008 by 35 points and held the lead from the 19-minute mark of the first half. It was a different story Tuesday afternoon, as Texas State came out flat from that start. ‘Our kids played tight,’ Bobcats head coach Suzanne Fox said. ‘They feel the pressure. Again, how many games have we won in the last week and a half? None. They lost that swagger and that’s the thing. Winning gives them confidence. Today we got tight and made bad choices and it snowballed on us.’ ”

Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News – “If it’s any consolation to Mack Brown and Colt McCoy, who came within one second of knocking Craig Curry off the top of Texas’ gaffe pile, they’re not the only college football types who had trouble telling time this season. Les Miles also lost track of it at the end of a loss against Ole Miss. Only the LSU coach didn’t get a second chance like Texas did in the Big 12 title game, enabling a last-second field goal to beat Nebraska. Given those egregious examples as well as others this season, it made me want to ask: What would the Pirate do? ‘It’s not an exact science,’ Mike Leach said by telephone Tuesday. ‘And it’s not easy. You’ve got split seconds to make monumental decisions.’ Of course, some coaches can do a lot in just a few seconds. Texas Tech’s eccentric coach can be accused of many sins – excessive point differentials comes to mind – but waiting too long to score isn’t one of them. On Saturday out at JerryWorld, Texas had the ball at its 40 with 1:44 left. Seven seconds later, the Longhorns had advanced to the Nebraska 26. And on three plays over the next 96 seconds, Texas lost 3 yards and nearly a last-second shot at the win. Yes, Hunter Lawrence kicked the game-winner after a second was restored to the clock, and rightfully so, enabling Texas to avert its biggest disaster since Curry’s muffed punt in the ‘84 Cotton Bowl cost the Longhorns a national title. But it shouldn’t have come so close Saturday. It happened because Brown couldn’t get a timeout and McCoy was a little too casual stopping the clock. As it turns out, McCoy thought there were 15 seconds left before the third-down play, not seven. And he said Tuesday that he had no idea the clock doesn’t stop until an incomplete pass strikes an object. Had he known, he said, he wouldn’t have sailed the ball out of bounds, where it finally hit a railing with one second left.”

Who will be your Heisman Trophy winner? (AP Photo/Amy Gutierrez)

The Morning Hangover gets you caught up on sports stories that pertain to the Austin area, every weekday morning. Because you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.

Mark Rosner of the Austin American-Statesman – “Junior Dogus Balbay set a career mark with 11 assists Monday, but the biggest development for the Longhorns might have been the proficiency of two freshmen. Avery Bradley scored 17 points, and Jordan Hamilton added 13, as second ranked Texas defeated Long Beach State 107-74 in front of 6,082 in the Erwin Center. Balbay produced his assists without committing a turnover. His previous best was 9 assists against Oklahoma last season. Long Beach (4-4) plays fast-paced basketball, a welcome change for the Longhorns after facing a series of opponents who are more methodical on offense. ‘That is kind of my style,’ said Balbay, a native of Istanbul, Turkey. ‘In Turkey, my (national) team was always running.’ Texas (7-0) shot a season-best 59 percent. Coach Rick Barnes said Monday might help prepare the Longhorns for games later this month against North Carolina and Michigan State, both of which make use of the fast break.”

Buck Harvey of the San Antonio Express News – “I voted for Colt McCoy, and the decision wasn’t easy. It came down to McCoy or Stanford’s Toby Gerhart. For third on my Heisman ballot. Alabama’s Mark Ingram was second, given the weight of the SEC title game. And first went to someone who helped McCoy last Saturday and will help him again in a month. Nebraska’s Ndamukong Suh has the power to influence people, all right. Suh likely won’t win the Heisman, given that he rarely opts for a stiff-arm pose in the end zone. Players such as these aren’t Heisman worthy; Suh is only the most disruptive lineman anyone has seen in years. Such a force can’t be, as Heisman instructions direct, the ‘most outstanding college football player.’ Suh will have to settle for being on top of current NFL draft boards. Still, Suh earned enough votes to be invited to New York for the Heisman presentation. And there he will tower over someone, just as he towered over him in Cowboys Stadium. ‘Yeah, we’re best friends,’ McCoy kidded after the Big 12 title game. McCoy should see Suh as a friend. Suh chased McCoy on that final pass play, as Suh did all the previous ones, too. And maybe Suh’s presence encouraged McCoy to release the football when he did. If McCoy had taken another step, wouldn’t the last second have ticked off the clock?”