Texas Beats Wyoming 31-10: Three Thoughts on the Game

Posted on September 16, 2023

The Texas Longhorns defeated the Wyoming Cowboys, 31-10, in a non-conference game in Austin, Texas. Here are three thoughts on the game.

Did Anyone Watch the Texas Tech Game?

That went running through my head in the first half of Saturday’s game between Texas and Wyoming. Did anyone at Texas watch the game film from the game Wyoming played against Texas Tech two weeks ago?

Because if one had, or if one simply watched that game as I did two weeks ago, then you know why Wyoming was able to hang in there with Texas for three quarters.

As a reminder, Wyoming beat Texas Tech in double overtime. It left some wondering if they had overestimated how good Tech was. The reality is that Wyoming is a very good football team and the Cowboys showed it again on Saturday night.

The fact that Wyoming had to do it without their starting quarterback (Evan Svoboda started in his place) just showed the Cowboys have a deeper team than one might realize.

Someone asked me before the game if Texas should be on upset alert. I said no, but don’t be surprised if it’s close early. It was close for three quarters. That didn’t surprise me. Not based on what I saw two weeks ago.

Texas Finally Looks Like Texas

A hangover from the Longhorns’ incredible win over Alabama last week was inevitable. So some of Saturday was Wyoming. Some of it was Texas needing three quarters to realize it was time to kick it in.

The game was tied 10-10 going into the fourth quarter and the Longhorns scored the next 21 points — a Quinn Ewers touchdown pass to Xavier Worthy, an Ewers touchdown run and a Jerrin Thompson interception return for a touchdown. That took half a quarter and Texas was up, 31-10.

Your big players have to come up with big plays, in game like Alabama and in games like Wyoming.

It took three quarters, but they finally came through.

Now, it gets real next week against Baylor. And, yes, Baylor has not looked great in the first three weeks. But this is not the time to be completely locked in. And Texas was not on Saturday.

You didn’t need a television to understand that. Speaking of …

Bye, Bye, LHN

Before the game, Texas hyped the fact that Saturday’s game was the last one on the Longhorn Network.

I’m sure the financial relationship benefited Texas. LHN built a pipeline of great talent for ESPN and other networks, most notably Sam Ponder at ESPN and Jane Slater at the NFL Network.

But for fans? The network was generally a complete headache.

The joke in Texas, which is where I live, is that if you live in Texas you can’t get the Longhorn Network. The reality is that the network’s cable agreements are so weak that the network never had the linear reach that ESPN or Texas was hoping for.

For instance, I don’t get LHN and I have YouTube TV. Before that I had DIRECTV and I didn’t have it. My dad — who lives two hours away — has a second-tier cable provider and he gets it.

Texas has a list of its cable partners and, finally, DIRECTV is part of it, along with AT&T U-Verse (which owns DIRECTV). But it’s too little, too late for the Longhorns, who head to the SEC next year and will have its ‘money games’ broadcast on the SEC Network — and have its media rights treated like every other SEC team, from Alabama to Vanderbilt.

So, on Saturday night, I had to follow Texas-Wyoming on Gamecast and write my thoughts off of that. But, to underscore the comical end of LHN, Slater — who went to Texas — put it best on Twitter.