Michael Fletcher is a senior writer with ESPN’s enterprise and investigative team. Before that, he wrote for ESPN’s The Undefeated, focusing on politics, criminal justice and social issues. He spent 21 years at The Washington Post, where his beats included the national economy, the White House and race relations.
Retired NFL star Michael Oher, whose supposed adoption out of grinding poverty by a wealthy, white family was immortalized in the 2009 movie “The Blind Side,” petitioned a Tennessee court Monday with allegations that a central element of the story was a lie concocted by the family to enrich itself at his expense.
The 14-page petition, filed in Shelby County, Tennessee, probate court, alleges that Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, who took Oher into their home as a high school student, never adopted him. Instead, less than three months after Oher turned 18 in 2004, the petition says, the couple tricked him into signing a document making them his conservators, which gave them legal authority to make business deals in his name.
The petition further alleges that the Tuohys used their power as conservators to strike a deal that paid them and their two birth children millions of dollars in royalties from an Oscar-winning film that earned more than $300 million, while Oher got nothing for a story “that would not have existed without him.” In the years since, the Tuohys have continued calling the 37-year-old Oher their adopted son and have used that assertion to promote their foundation as well as Leigh Anne Tuohy’s work as an author and motivational speaker.
“The lie of Michael’s adoption is one upon which Co-Conservators Leigh Anne Tuohy and Sean Tuohy have enriched themselves at the expense of their Ward, the undersigned Michael Oher,” the legal filing says. “Michael Oher discovered this lie to his chagrin and embarrassment in February of 2023, when he learned that the Conservatorship to which he consented on the basis that doing so would make him a member of the Tuohy family, in fact provided him no familial relationship with the Tuohys.”
The Tuohy family did not immediately return phone calls Monday to numbers listed for them.
Oher’s petition asks the court to end the Tuohys’ conservatorship and to issue an injunction barring them from using his name and likeness. It also seeks a full accounting of the money the Tuohys earned using Oher’s name, and to have the couple pay him his fair share of profits, as well as unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
“Since at least August of 2004, Conservators have allowed Michael, specifically, and the public, generally, to believe that Conservators adopted Michael and have used that untruth to gain financial advantages for themselves and the foundations which they own or which they exercise control,” the petition says. “All monies made in said manner should in all conscience and equity be disgorged and paid over to the said ward, Michael Oher.”
Oher was a rising high school senior when he signed the conservatorship papers, and he has written that the Tuohys told him that there was essentially no difference between adoption and conservatorship. “They explained to me that it means pretty much the exact same thing as ‘adoptive parents,’ but that the laws were just written in a way that took my age into account,” Oher wrote in his 2011 best-selling memoir “I Beat the Odds.”
But there are some important legal distinctions. If Oher had been adopted by the Tuohys, he would have been a legal member of their family, and he would have retained power to handle his own financial affairs. Under the conservatorship, Oher surrendered that authority to the Tuohys, even though he was a legal adult with no known physical or psychological disabilities.
The petition alleges that the Tuohys began negotiating a movie deal about their relationship with Oher shortly after the 2006 release of the book “The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game,” which chronicled the story.
According to the legal filing, the movie paid the Tuohys and their two birth children each $225,000, plus 2.5% of the film’s “defined net proceeds.” The movie became a critically acclaimed blockbuster, reportedly grossing more than $300 million at the box office, and tens of millions of dollars more in home video sales. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and Sandra Bullock won a Best Actress trophy for her portrayal of Leigh Anne Tuohy. While the deal allowed the Tuohys to profit from the film, the petition alleges, a separate 2007 contract purportedly signed by Oher appears to “give away” to 20th Century Fox Studios the life rights to his story “without any payment whatsoever.” The filing says Oher has no recollection of signing that contract, and even if he did, no one explained its implications to him.
The deal lists all four Tuohy family members as having the same representative at Creative Artists Agency, the petition says. But Oher’s agent, who would receive movie contract and payment notices, is listed as Debra Branan, a close family friend of the Tuohys and the same lawyer who filed the 2004 conservatorship petition, the petition alleges. Branan did not return a call to her law office on Monday.
In the past, the Tuohys have denied making much money from the movie, saying they received a flat fee for the story and did not reap any of the movie’s profits. And what they did earn, they added, was shared with Oher.
“We divided it five ways,” the Tuohys wrote in their 2010 book, “In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving.”
Oher’s court petition says he never received any money from the movie, even though he long suspected that others were profiting, according to his attorney, J. Gerard Stranch IV. Whenever Oher asked questions, he did not get straight answers, his attorney said.
And since the film’s success coincided with the start of his lucrative NFL career in 2009, Oher did not take the time to fully investigate the deal until after he retired in 2016, Stranch said. Oher eventually hired a lawyer who helped him uncover the details surrounding the movie deal and his legal connection to the people he believed were his adoptive parents. His lawyer unearthed the conservatorship document in February, and Oher came to the painful realization that the Tuohys had not adopted him.
“Mike didn’t grow up with a stable family life,” Stranch said. “When the Tuohy family told Mike they loved him and wanted to adopt him, it filled a void that had been with him his entire life. Discovering that he wasn’t actually adopted devastated Mike and wounded him deeply.”
The petition marks a sharp break in what had been an inspiring, if unsettlingly stereotypical, feel-good story. As the movie portrayed the story, the Tuohys adopted Oher, a poor, virtually homeless and academically challenged Black teenager. They made Oher part of a functional family for the first time. They helped him catch up in school, taught him the basics of football and how to harness his athleticism, putting him on the road to sports stardom.
The truth, however, was more complicated.
Oher certainly led a hard-knock life growing up. But he also had the smarts, the pluck and plenty of help from the Tuohys and others to rise above his circumstances.
Oher was one of 12 children born to his mother, who struggled with drug addiction. Before his 11th birthday, Oher was placed into foster care, where he bounced around numerous homes, and at times lived on the streets. Although he was a capable student, he attended 11 schools in nine years, and repeated both the first and second grades, leaving him behind academically.
His fortunes changed after a friend’s father, impressed with Oher’s inner drive and focus, introduced him to the principal of a private Christian school in a prosperous Memphis neighborhood. Oher began attending the school in 10th grade, even as his home life remained chaotic. He was a sports prodigy, excelling in track and field, basketball and football, a game he had studied for years.
He began playing football for his new school in 11th grade, quickly establishing himself as one of the nation’s top offensive linemen, and college scholarship offers poured in from big-time football programs across the country.
Because of his unstable housing situation, Oher frequently stayed over at the homes of his classmates, including the Tuohys, whose children attended the school. The petition says that the Tuohys forged a closer relationship with him once Oher’s athletic prowess drew wide attention. They invited him to spend more nights at their spacious Memphis home and took him shopping. Eventually, they asked Oher to move in. They encouraged him to address them as “mom” and “dad,” and said they planned to adopt him, the filing says.
Oher was delighted with all that at the time, his lawyer said, and he fully trusted the Tuohys.
Oher went on to play college football at the University of Mississippi, the Tuohys’ alma mater. He was a two-time All-American and a first-round pick of the Baltimore Ravens in 2009.
After the success of “The Blind Side,” however, suspicion slowly eclipsed Oher’s trust of the Tuohys, his lawyer said.
“Mike’s relationship with the Tuohy family started to decline when he discovered that he was portrayed in the movie as unintelligent,” Stranch said. “Their relationship continued to deteriorate as he learned that he was the only member of the family not receiving royalty checks from the movie, and it was permanently fractured when he realized he wasn’t adopted and a part of the family.”
For years, Oher has chafed at how “The Blind Side” depicted him, saying it hurt his football career and clouded how people view him. He has said that based on the film, some NFL decision-makers assumed he was mentally slow or lacked leadership skills.
“People look at me, and they take things away from me because of a movie,” Oher told ESPN in 2015. “They don’t really see the skills and the kind of player I am.”
For their part, the Tuohys agreed that Oher always had what it took to succeed. “If there is a fundamental misapprehension about Michael, it’s that he needed saving,” the Tuohys wrote in their book. “We discovered that underneath his shyness, his foot shuffling, and his head ducking, he had a tremendous will to determine the course of his own life.”
For years, Oher has said, he was content to live with the myth created by the movie, reasoning that its inspirational message outweighed the pain inflicted by what he saw as its inaccurate portrayal of his life. But that has changed.
“There has been so much created from The Blind Side that I am grateful for, which is why you might find it as a shock that the experience surrounding the story has also been a large source of some of my deepest hurt and pain over the past 14 years,” Oher wrote in his book “When Your Back’s Against the Wall,” released last week.
“Beyond the details of the deal, the politics, and the money behind the book and movie, it was the principle of the choices some people made that cut me the deepest.”
BALTIMORE — The Orioles are ready to adjust their wall in left field again.
The team moved the wall at Camden Yards back and made it significantly taller before the 2022 season. General manager Mike Elias said Friday the team “overcorrected” and will try to find a “happier medium” before the 2025 season.
The team sent out a rendering of changes showing the wall moved farther in — particularly in left-center field near the bullpens — and reduced in height.
LOS ANGELES — Dodgers right-hander Brusdar Graterol will miss the first half of next season after having surgery to repair the labrum in his right shoulder.
The surgery was performed Thursday by Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the Dodgers announced Friday.
Graterol is expected to return in the second half of the 2025 season.
Graterol pitched in seven games during the regular season and three games in the World Series against the New York Yankees, which the Dodgers won in five games. He allowed three hits over 2⅓ scoreless innings in those World Series appearances.
The 26-year-old was slowed this season by shoulder inflammation and a hamstring injury.
Graterol, a hard-throwing Venezuelan, spent his first season in the majors with Minnesota in 2019, and the Twins traded him to the Dodgers before the 2020 season. For his career, he has a 2.78 ERA and 11 saves in 188 games.
At SEC media days in July, Steve Sarkisian inadvertently described a good portion of college football in a single line. “I feel like when you go to Arkansas,” the Texas Longhorns coach said, “I almost at times feel like they hate Texas more than they like themselves. That’s a real rivalry.”
Later that week, Arkansas Razorbacks coach Sam Pittman confirmed Sarkisian’s take. “We hadn’t played Texas for years,” he said, “and when we played them a couple of years back, it was the most excited our fan base has been in a while. So I would say he’s probably right.”
Houston Nutt can testify. Nutt grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. He idolized legendary Arkansas coach Frank Broyles and watched him battle Darrell Royal and the Longhorns before playing for the Razorbacks himself.
“When Texas came to play Arkansas, it was this huge, huge thing,” he told ESPN in 2019. “I remember being taught at the age of 6 outside War Memorial Stadium [in Little Rock] how to do the Hook ‘Em Horns Down sign.”
Nutt beat the Horns as the Hogs’ coach, a 27-6 win in the 2000 Cotton Bowl, Arkansas’ first bowl win since 1985. He turned around, and threw the Horns Down to the Arkansas fans.
“It was a sea of red, and they were mostly doing the Hook ‘Em Horns Down,” Nutt said. “What did I do? I can’t help it. I’m right there with ’em.”
Conference realignment has broken countless rivalries through the years. There are no Oklahoma-Oklahoma State games on the schedule; Missouri and Kansas haven’t played since 2011; Cal has traded playing UCLA for playing NC State; Oregon-Oregon State and Washington-Washington State have been moved from the traditional bottom of the schedule to the top; Pitt and West Virginia play only sporadically, as do Oklahoma and Nebraska. But in the “thank God for small favors” department, this latest round of realignment at least reignited a few rivalries to replace the further ones we lost. Longtime Big 8 and Big 12 rivals Oklahoma and Missouri played this past Saturday for the first time in 13 years (and celebrated the occasion with a particularly wacky finish), and on Nov. 30 not only will we get our first Texas vs. Texas A&M game since 2011 but it also might have enormous College Football Playoff stakes.
While we wait for Aggies-Horns, however, we get a rivalry game that, for quite a while, outshined Texas-A&M and defined Southwest Conference football. On Saturday, Texas and Arkansas will play for just the fourth time in 20 years and will play as conference rivals for the first time in 33. Most rivalries fit into certain parameters — the dueling heavyweights that split the wins over time, the heavyweight against the aspirant that measures itself by how well it’s faring against the big dog, etc. — but over the course of a few decades, Arkansas-Texas fit into multiple categories. Arkansas was the aggrieved and aspirant underdog for much of the series, but for much of the 1960s, when Royal and Broyles were at the top of their respective games, this was the biggest game in college football. Whichever flavor it takes on at a given time, this game remains spicy.
Texas is 8-1 and listed as a favorite by more than two touchdowns Saturday, while Arkansas is 5-4, having handed Tennessee its only loss of the season but suffered two blowout losses in its past four games. The Razorbacks are volatile underdogs; the Longhorns are SEC title favorites; and, for at least a little while Saturday, Razorback Stadium will be an absolute cauldron. To prepare ourselves, let’s look back at 10 of the most noteworthy games in this revived rivalry’s history.
No. 3 Texas 20, No. 14 Arkansas 0 (1946)
“Steers Trounce Tough Porkers For 5th Victory” was the headline in the Austin American. At 3-0-1, Arkansas was off to its best start in 13 years, and for the first time these teams met as mutually ranked foes. But Texas, also unbeaten and the winner of three of the past four Southwest Conference (SWC) crowns, handled both the moment and the muggy conditions better. Future pro and college football Hall of Famer Bobby Layne threw a pair of touchdown passes — one to Hub Bechtol for 50 yards, one to Jim Canady for 47 — and the Longhorns had scored all their points by halftime. This was a pretty common result: Aside from a mid-1930s run in which Texas lost its way as a program and Arkansas won five of six games between them, UT dominated the early stages of this rivalry, winning 29 of the first 35 battles. It’s been a lot closer since then.
This was the high-water mark for the “Steers,” by the way, as they would fall via road upset to both Rice and TCU, handing Arkansas only its second SWC title. The Razorbacks would head to Dallas, where they endured a 0-0 tie with LSU in the Cotton Bowl.
No. 3 Texas 13, No. 12 Arkansas 12 (1959)
After falling apart under Edwin Price in the mid-1950s, Texas righted the ship by hiring Royal, a former Oklahoma Sooner, to lead the program in 1957. In 1959 the Longhorns embarked on a run of nine top-10 finishes and two national titles in 14 years. Royal won his first two games against Arkansas by a combined 41-6, but second-year head coach Broyles also had things up and running by 1959. The Razorbacks would enjoy eight top-10 finishes in 11 years from 1959 to 1969; in this tight loss, they served notice as to what was coming.
As with much of 1950s college football, this game was decided by disasters. Both teams lost four fumbles; Arkansas recovered a loose ball to set up its first touchdown, but with Texas trailing 12-7 in the third quarter, another future Hall of Famer, Lance Alworth, muffed a punt, which set up a winning touchdown pass from Bart Shirley to Jack Collins. Between 1959 and 1969, eight of 11 Steers-Porkers games would be decided by five or fewer points.
No. 8 Arkansas 14, No. 1 Texas 13 (1964)
Texas won its first national title under Royal in 1963; the Longhorns shined in big games that season, beating No. 1 Oklahoma and No. 2 Navy by a combined 56-13, but they managed only a 17-13 win over Arkansas in Fayetteville. They advanced their winning streak to 15 games early in 1964, but Broyles was building a title-worthy squad of his own by then.
For the third time in four years, this was a matchup of top-10 teams. The most famous members of the 1964 Razorbacks were future Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and future college and NFL title winner Jimmy Johnson, but future Arkansas coach Ken Hatfield made the difference in this one. His 81-yard punt return gave Arkansas a 7-0 halftime lead, and after Texas tied the score in the fourth quarter, Fred Marshall found Bobby Crockett for a 34-yard touchdown to put Arkansas ahead once more. With about a minute left, Ernie Koy scored on a 1-yard plunge; Royal, entirely uninterested in a tie, elected to go for two points and the win, but a pass attempt came up short. Texas’ winning streak was over, and Arkansas would go on to finish 11-0 and score a share of its first national title.
No. 3 Arkansas 27, No. 1 Texas 24 (1965)
By October 1965, Arkansas had extended its winning streak to 16 games, winning its first four games of 1965 by a combined 114-33. But Texas had leapfrogged the Razorbacks to get back to No. 1, thanks in part to a 19-0 win over Oklahoma. That put the chip firmly back on Arkansas’ shoulder.
With the extra dose of motivation — plus, perhaps, some divine intervention: Fayetteville’s First Baptist Church famously posted, “Football is only a game, eternal things are spiritual. Nevertheless, beat Texas” that week — Arkansas raced to an early lead thanks to a pair of Phil Harris fumbles. Martine Bercher recovered the first one in the end zone, then Tommy Trantham took another one 77 yards for a score.
Arkansas went up 20-0 after a Jon Brittenum-to-Bobby Crockett touchdown, but Texas charged back. It was 20-11 by halftime, and David Conway’s 34-yard field goal made it 24-20 Longhorns with just five minutes left. Brittenum scored from a yard out with 1:32 remaining, though, and Arkansas had its second of three straight wins in the series.
The Hogs would run their overall winning streak to 22 before falling to LSU 14-7 in the Cotton Bowl.
No. 1 Texas 15, No. 2 Arkansas 14 (1969)
Don’t you love it when a plan comes together? Texas usually played Oklahoma and Arkansas back-to-back in early October, but Roone Arledge, the innovative head of ABC Sports, had an idea in the offseason. Texas had finished 1968 as the hottest team in the country, winning its last nine games and averaging 37 points per game with offensive coordinator Emory Bellard’s innovative wishbone scheme. Arkansas, meanwhile, finished 10-1 with only a 39-29 loss at Texas. The Longhorns and Razorbacks finished third and sixth, respectively, in the AP poll and headed into 1969, college football’s centennial season, as obvious national title contenders.
According to Terry Frei’s “Horns, Hogs, and Nixon’s Coming,” ABC publicist (and future ESPN analyst) Beano Cook pored over the schedules and determined that Arkansas, Texas and Penn State all had good chances of going unbeaten. “My recommendation involved Penn State and Arkansas finishing the regular season with perfect records and then playing for the national title,” Cook told Frei. “I said we should move Texas-Arkansas to December 6, because I thought Texas might be undefeated then, too.” Arledge told the coaches that former Oklahoma coach and politician Bud Wilkinson could make sure that new President Richard Nixon was likely to attend the game as well. It was going to be a spectacle unlike anything college football had seen.
Sure enough, the Longhorns and Razorbacks both reached December unbeaten (as did Penn State), and Nixon was there in the stands for a game that somehow lived up to all expectations.
With Texas’ offense discombobulated early — the Horns turned the ball over on their first two drives — Arkansas scored on a short Bill Burnett run and, early in the third quarter, a 29-yard catch by star receiver Chuck Dicus. Texas quarterback James Street scored on the first play of the fourth quarter, then scored on a 2-point conversion as well. (Royal decided before the game that he once again wanted to avoid a tie at all costs.)
With the score 14-8, Arkansas drove the length of the field and was on the verge of putting the game away until Danny Lester picked off a Bill Montgomery pass in the end zone. Then came “Right 53 Veer Pass”: On a fourth-and-3 near midfield, Street threw a bomb to Randy Peschel for 44 yards.
Two plays later, Texas went ahead with a short Jim Bertelsen touchdown. Arkansas drove near field goal range in the final seconds, but Tom Campbell picked off Montgomery to ice the game, and Nixon declared Texas the national champion in the locker room after the game. (This rather annoyed Penn State’s Joe Paterno, whose team was also unbeaten.)
College football’s explosion as a television product can be ascribed to countless things, but ABC’s innovative approach to broadcasting, followed by a couple of all-time classics — this and 1971 Oklahoma-Nebraska, to name two — in short succession certainly didn’t hurt.
No. 1 Texas 42, No. 4 Arkansas 7 (1970)
The sequel often fails to live up to the billing. Almost exactly a year after the 1969 classic, Texas was riding a 29-game winning streak, while 9-1 Arkansas was ranked fourth in the AP poll and looking for revenge on national television. It didn’t quite work out.
Texas rushed for 464 yards — Bertelsen and Steve Worster combined for 315 on their own, with five of the Longhorns’ six touchdowns — and picked off Montgomery three times. After a goal-line stand by the Longhorns’ defense prevented Arkansas from tying the score early on, the floodgates opened.
The tide had again turned in the rivalry. Arkansas would finally get some measure of revenge the next year with a win in Little Rock, but after winning four of seven over the Horns between 1960-66, the Hogs won only once between 1966-79.
No. 8 Texas 28, No. 3 Arkansas 21 (1978)
A generation ended when both Royal and Broyles retired after matching 5-5-1 seasons in 1976. They both ended up hiring their younger replacements — 38-year old Fred Akers at UT, 40-year old Lou Holtz at Arkansas — as their schools’ respective athletic directors.
Both led immediate rebounds. Holtz won 30 games, Akers won 29, and both schools finished in the AP top 12 each year from 1977 to 1979. In 1978, Akers’ Longhorns played a unique role, too: spoiler. They welcomed unbeaten Arkansas to Austin and ended the Hogs’ 11-game winning streak. Two Randy McEachern touchdown passes in the final minute of the first half turned a tie into a 20-7 Texas lead, and when Arkansas charged back to take the lead, Johnny “Lam” Jones caught McEachern’s third TD pass, and Johnnie Johnson picked off one pass and broke up another on a fourth down to seal the win. This was the first of four straight upsets in the series, with the lower-ranked team winning every year from 1978 to 1981. My favorite rivalries are the ones that make no sense.
Arkansas 42, No. 1 Texas 11 (1981)
And now for maybe the most shocking result in the history of the rivalry. Akers’ Longhorns entered the 1981 game No. 1 in the country, having just blown out Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma 34-14 to move to 4-0. Arkansas, meanwhile, had fallen out of the AP rankings two weeks earlier after a road loss to an awful TCU team that would finish 2-7-2. Surely a blowout was in store, right?
This was indeed a blowout, but not the one anyone expected. Two fumbles and a safety from an airmailed punt snap gave Arkansas a quick 15-0 lead, and the Longhorns never got closer. The Hogs led 25-3 at halftime and 39-3 after three quarters; Texas actually outgained the home team 421-323, but seven turnovers sabotaged all efforts. A turnaround in the series? Not so much. The last two Akers-Holtz battles ended up a combined 64-10 in favor of the team in burnt orange. But this one was an awfully big thumb in the eye, and it would prevent the Horns from winning a national title — they ended up second in the polls behind Clemson.
Arkansas 14, Texas 13 (1991)
“Ain’t no rematch. Best thing of all, ain’t gonna be no rematch.” That’s Arkansas head coach Jack Crowe, celebrating a Hogs win in the final SWC matchup between the two rivals. He had just weathered one of the silliest games in the series to secure permanent (well, permanent-ish) bragging rights. Arkansas led 14-0 at halftime after touchdowns from Ron Dickerson Jr. and Kerwin Price, but a 14-yard Phil Brown touchdown made it 14-7 heading into the fourth quarter, and a 55-yard burst from Brown tied the score. Or at least, it should have: The Longhorns missed the PAT, then missed a 39-yard field goal attempt with 3:45 left.
The teams weren’t particularly memorable, even if the game was. Crowe’s Razorbacks went 6-6 in their last season in the SWC, while David McWilliams’ fifth and final Texas team went 5-6. The teams had weathered ups and downs, splitting the previous six meetings and producing zero top-10 finishes from 1984 to 1991 as the SWC wobbled through controversies and discontent. In 1990, the SEC announced it was adding Arkansas as part of an expansion to 10 teams; the plan had originally included adding not only the Hogs but also Texas and Texas A&M, but the state legislature intervened, and only Arkansas was on its way out the door. So was Crowe: Broyles fired him (and then tried to get away with announcing he’d resigned) after Arkansas began its SEC tenure with a 10-3 loss to The Citadel.
No. 7 Texas 22, Arkansas 20 (2004)
Since 1991, this has basically been a series of pent-up aggression: Whichever rival takes an early lead when they meet just keeps wailing away for a while. Arkansas won two bowl meetings (the 2000 Cotton Bowl and the 2014 Texas Bowl) by a combined 58-13, Texas won a home game in Austin 52-10 in 2008, and Arkansas won a home game in Fayetteville, Steve Sarkisian’s second game in charge at Texas, by a score of 40-21 in 2021.
A 2003-04 home-and-home series produced some drama, though. Arkansas upset No. 6 Texas by a 38-28 margin in 2003, using an early 21-0 run to build some space, getting 217 combined rushing yards from Cedric Cobbs and quarterback Matt Jones and scoring every time it needed to down the stretch.
But with a young quarterback by the name of Vince Young taking over for UT in 2004, the Longhorns got some revenge. Texas built a quick 9-0 advantage with a safety from a bombed punt snap and a 49-yard TD from Young to David Thomas. And from there, it was the Cedric Benson show: The star running back produced 201 yards from scrimmage and scored via both ground and air. Texas held a 22-17 lead into the fourth quarter, and after forcing an Arkansas field goal with 9:58 left, the Longhorns’ defense forced three consecutive turnovers to ice the win. Arkansas would stumble to a disappointing 5-6 record, while Mack Brown’s Longhorns would finish 11-1 before winning the national title a year later.
The most recent Hogs-Horns game might turn out to have been pretty useful. “I don’t know what Darrell Royal did to Arkansas back in the day,” Sarkisian joked with reporters this week, “but they absolutely hate our guts. And I think we learned that the first time around when we went there.”
Texas knows what it’s walking into, at least. They know to expect a Horns Down or two, though we’ll have to wait and see if Sam Pittman gets in on the act.