The top-ranked Texas Longhorns face the underdog Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. And for a game in October, it is going to be unseasonably hot.
Temps are expected to hit 96 degrees in North Texas — that’s just a degree away from setting a record.
And it’s bananas for this time of year. For those of us who believe scientists, it also seems like further evidence that this whole climate change thing is getting real, despite what our oil-guzzling state leaders would have you believe.
Anyway, enough nerd talk about “weather” and “global ecological collapse.” The headline here is that Texas is back on top, having regained its spot as the #1 team in the country after the previous holder Georgia fell to lowly Vanderbilt last week.
The annual meeting between Texas and Oklahoma, dubbed the Red River Rivalry, is one of the premier grudge matches in college football. It’s the 120th game played between the two schools and while Texas leads overall, Oklahoma has won four of the last five games.
“There might not be another college football contest that does a better job of wrapping its gloves around everything we love about the sport than when Texas and Oklahoma square off on the second weekend of October,” one senior writer at ESPN, Ryan McGee, said about the game.
But this year has added implications for both teams, which both are in the race for a spot in the new 12-team expanded playoffs. Oklahoma, currently 18th in the country, would love to spoil heavily favored Texas’ possible march to a national title.
Texas, however, is going to be tough to beat. Quarterback Quinn Ewers is expected to get back on the field after missing a couple of games with an oblique injury. That’s a welcome return, even though the Longhorns haven’t missed a beat with much-heralded backup Arch Manning performing well in relief.
Meanwhile, Oklahoma will be starting quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr. — marking the first time in history the Sooners have started a true freshman against Texas.
It’s also the biggest day for the nearby State Fair of Texas, which expects to see crowds double on Saturday to 200,000 attendees.
Christi Erpillo, of Fernie’s Funnel Cakes, told NBC DFW that Saturday will be the best day of sales for fair vendors: “That’s why we’re all trying to come up with something creative to make sure that somebody stops at your booth.”
