I get irritated with the folks at my church sometimes when they talk of mission fields. I always laugh when they say people around the world need help. People need help right here. It may not be as sexy or inspiring to talk to about, but people right around the corner need help.

For the lack of a better term, the Texas Longhorns have become a mission field. They have voluntarily become that because the mission field is actually an income stream sorely needed by the university.

How you ask?

Texas and many other great academic institutions around the country like Michigan, UCLA, Virginia, Cal–Berkeley, USC, Texas A&M, Georgetown, North Carolina and Wisconsin have all decided to make their revenue producing sports their mission fields. They recruit these players to their universities because they understand the business of college sports and what it brings to the university setting.

They invite players to their campus and offer them an all expense paid stay when many times they are not academically, emotionally or socially prepared to deal with the college experience. Many of these players on their own academic merit have no business at his or her respective university, if being in college at all, but it’s about pleasing the ever demanding alumni and raising revenue through winning.

Only one school in the country will not have these issues creep up from time to time and that is Stanford. It has made a conscious decision to “suck” at the revenue producing sports. It can jump up every once in a while and field a competitive football team and maybe more often a basketball team because it doesn’t need the numbers but it won’t be able to do it consistently. Why? The Stanford Cardinal decided long ago that they would not lessen their academic standards to allow athletes into school. Everyone else has chosen to go for the money, the campus experience and the pride tied with football.

So as with any mission field, you get a mixed bag of results in hits and misses.

The hits of course are the things that I love. The kid shows up on campus and may have no business there but during the course of school the bell rings, the stop light turns green and the light comes on. The kid who probably had no business at the university gets his degree. Many times he is the first in a whole family to go to college. He probably marries a girl with a college degree and their kids are going to go to college. In that case, you have changed the course of a family. You have changed a generation and a last name. Even if a kid doesn’t graduate, he is much better off having been on a college campus for four or five years than if he had gone into the work force directly from high school.

If you are going to have the hits, you are going to have some misses. Misses are the kids that find their feet running into mischief and get into trouble. There are different kinds of trouble.

We would all be crazy to lump all of it into one bucket. The decision making process that goes, “I have had a few beers but I think I’m cool driving the short way home,” is totally different from the thought process that says, “Ya’ll ready. I got my gun. Let’s go do this.” One is poor decision making and one is poor character.

So what does a school do once it has decided this road for its athletic department?

Digging into the background even more and tightening the reigns on the recruiting process would be a start. The fear is that coaches that find themselves on the negative end of some press coverage usually make their recruiting standards even stricter and they take themselves out of the running for many of the premier athletes.

For football coaches, reigning in recruiting is only part of the answer because you have to deal with the 120 kids that are on campus right now. There are curfew options and team-wide sanction options.

They could move the players back on campus but that could cause uproar in on-campus housing.

At the end of the day, the coaching staff, the university and its support staff can do only so much to try and catch bad apples before they get in, because they are going to get in. At that point it becomes a management situation.

No matter who you pull for, problems are going to happen. You have to take the good with the bad because the schools have decided that winning and the football experience for the student body and the alumni are paramount. They have decided that the risk is worth allowing students into school that many times have no business being there. They have hitched their wagon to football, to the pageantry of the experience. As a genuine college football fan I am happy as I can be.

Something has to be done. The mission field is having problems all over the country with crime, drugs and inflated egos brought on by the media and the fans. The product is bringing in cash at an alarming rate so we know that change is not on the horizon. The revenue sports are too important to the vitality of the university.

As long as that is the case, you will have some hits and you will have some misses. Texas has surely had more hits than misses but the Texas staff has missed on a number of kids lately. Here’s to getting back on track. The mission field awaits.

Back when I played football, I lined up at the wide receiver position. I ran the wrong route one time and it prevented the tight end from catching a touchdown pass in a very important drive for my offense going into halftime. After receiving an ample chewing from my quarterback and my receiver coach, it was the tight end that said, “I thought they were in man–to–man too, earlier in the game.” He gave me a few keys to watch for in how the defense was disguising the coverage. We scored on the same play in the second half and we pulled off the upset.

It was that valuable conversation of no more than 30 seconds that helped us score later in the game. He didn’t talk to me because I blew a touchdown catch for him. He came and talked to me because the team needed me to do my part and he was going to help me get there. It was the locker room at halftime that changed the course of that game.

Henry David Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

Texas was desperate when it took the field Saturday against TCU. The Horned Frogs were playing a level of defense that had every Longhorn fan hoping that Texas would not turn the ball over because the Texas defense was having relative success but the offense looked woefully inept. When the turnovers did happen the desperation increased. By the time this team got to the locker room at halftime down 10-0, the desperation reached a high level.

When I left the game at halftime to head over the Scholz’s, the mood was somber as I walked out of the stadium. Somebody that knew me said, “You may not want to take phone calls tonight.” As I left the stadium, I had no reason to believe that the Texas Longhorns would be able to do anything to change their current path.

As I sat at Scholz’s watching the second half of the game, I couldn’t help but wonder what took place in the locker room during halftime. For a team that has clearly had some leadership issues over the course of the last five games, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall of the locker room. Who was doing the yelling? Who was doing the encouraging? Who was doing the teaching? Who was nurturing the young guys?

Every player needs different things. Some players need an encouraging word. Some players need to be told what to do and to learn some thought processes from the older guys. Some guys need to be called out. Some players need to be taken to the side and simply told, “You’re better than this and this team needs you to reflect that.” Every player has his own motivation.

The locker room is where part of the magic happens.

Something happened in that Longhorn locker room at halftime because a different team emerged to start the second half.

Everyone is going to tell you, and rightfully so, that the Texas Longhorns are not out of the woods yet and there are things you still don’t know about this team. That is right. This team still has questions but might have played the best and most experienced defense it will face in 2007.

Texas was desperate on Saturday night. Texas was desperate to remain at the top of the food chain for football in the state of Texas. Texas was desperate to break the chain of bad football it had played over the course of four games. The Longhorns were desperate to be reflective of their own beliefs.

Desperation is a good thing. Desperation when combined with character brings about the results that everyone saw on Saturday night.

If someone tries to tell you that you can’t take too much stock in what happened on Saturday, feel free to tell them to shut up.

We might not have learned whether this team will beat Oklahoma. We might not have learned whether it can take this act on the road and perform when the crowd is not on its side. We don’t know if they can put 60 minutes of football together like the second half against TCU. While the defense played great, especially in the second half, we don’t know what it can do against a high powered offense.

We did learn that this team has tremendous character and that is one heck of a starting point to answering the other questions.

Jon Wooden always said that sports don’t build character, they reveal it. It was revealed to me against TCU that this team has the desire to win. It was reveled to me that this team has the components to win. More important than those, the Longhorns revealed that they have the character to win. While this team might not blow other teams out like the 2005 team, that character will give them a puncher’s chance in every game it has on the schedule.

After Kansas State, Texas A&M, Iowa and Arkansas State, character was the best thing for you to see coming out of this game.

Hall of fame coach John Thompson said, “You don’t play for the people in the stands. You do your thing and let the people enjoy watching you play.” 

I have and will always look at things from the athlete’s perspective. I was an athlete, many of my friends were athletes and I will always look at it that way. There is no other way of thinking about it for me. I have no desire to be a college coach. I’ve had that opportunity and turned it down. I have no desire to be in athletic administration. I’ve done that and left it. I am a player. Even in my old decrepit and bad knee state, I’m a player. I always take the players’ side even before I take a coaching side of things. I have one way of thinking about things and just about got going on my thoughts before I decided to pick up my phone and give you some other perspective. 

I started making phone calls Sunday afternoon. I called two former Texas football players (both played in the NFL). I called one former ACC player and one former Big 10 player (both of whom played in the NFL). I called two former Big 12 players that currently play in the NFL. I called one current Conference USA player, one current Pac 10 player and one current Big 12 player. I finally called a friend of mine who is a college assistant coach.

 I then afforded them anonymity. I did that not because I’m trying to protect them but because I wanted them to keep it real with me and give me their real thoughts. I even had a couple of them take a look at the internet so I could get their thoughts on that. 

I got a mixed bag or thoughts but they were definitely real with me. “I read one guy on your site that said Texas will go 7–5 now after a close win. That’s exactly the reason why he could never be a player and he’s on the net,” said a current player. “You have one game where you don’t play your best and you punk out on the season. Even if you play bad you don’t give up the whole (expletive) season. No athlete could ever think like that because you never become a player by ever thinking that way. Man I smile at fans but I never really pay attention to them or their opinions.”

 When I got about five minutes to talk to my coaching friend, he laughed about the Texas score and said, “Sometimes it just happens that way.” When I commented that Texas needs to play some of the younger guys because they have more natural talent he broke it down for me saying, “You media people kill me. You played a little football so that probably makes you worse. Look, this is real Sean. You might be tied into the program and have all kinds of sources because you write and do radio but you don’t know what’s going on inside the complex. Some kid may be ultra talented but might be too dumb to learn the system. Another guy might be talented but is a total me guy and nobody believes in him. Then you still might have another guy who can make big plays but is always out of position because that’s the way he played in high school. Every kid comes into college with a different level of football IQ.”

 We know that coaches read the internet and the newspapers even when they say they don’t. We also know that players read the internet and read the newspapers. When I talked to a current Division I player that I have known since he was a freshman in high school, he said, “I read the internet because it’s funny. Of course I want to read it if it’s good. The only thing I hate is when people get personal. But when it is about football, of course I don’t listen. If they knew that much they would be coaching or playing. The real is, unless you’re in that locker room with me and bleeding and sweating with me, I don’t give a damn what you think. Sean, you my boy! I play with your kids and hug your wife but when it comes to my team, I really don’t care what you write. As a player, that’s how I have to be.” 

Fans are great. Supporters are great. College football is the best game on earth. Nobody can keep the cliff-jumpers from creating their stories and calling it reality. Maybe some fans just have to be on suicide watch. It’s that kind of passion that makes college football at Texas what it is. Fact is, every goal that Texas set for the 2007 season is still in front of the team, still attainable and still within reach.

 This close game against Arkansas State could be the best thing to happen for the Longhorns. It’s amazing how many times I heard that from former players.

 A current NFL player said, “After reading your board, honestly that’s the reason fans are fans. Football is what I do. Fans do real estate, finance, deliveries, cook, fly planes or whatever is their profession. This is what I do 90 hours a week. It’s their hobby and they have hobbyist knowledge of it.”

Maybe true, maybe not. As I told him, work a hobby long enough and it is possible to develop a talent or to become an expert. And some things are easy to see even for an amateur that only dabbles in said hobby. I responded by saying, “Some hobby’s build an expertise. You don’t have to be an apple to recognize one when you see it.”