Did Texas coach Mack Brown vote for Charles Gordon at wide receiver?
We know that Kansas University’s Gordon earned All-Big 12 Conference accolades at defensive back, but he also was on the honorable-mention list at wide receiver on the coaches’ all-league team.
Coaches could not vote for their own players, so that means at least one Big 12 football coach other than KU’s Mark Mangino placed Gordon’s name next to WR on his ballot.
Gordon, as you know, was used sparingly on offense. He caught just 15 passes, yet he was stationed as a wideout when he was involved in the watershed play of the Longhorns’ season.
If Gordon hadn’t been called for offensive pass interference in the Texas game Nov. 13 at Memorial Stadium, Texas almost certainly would not have scored with 11 seconds remaining and escaped with a 27-23 victory. A loss to Kansas would have eliminated the Longhorns from a Bowl Championship Series bowl.
Mangino, you’ll recall, garnered national publicity for blasting the penalty against Gordon, complaining that the flag thrown by veteran side judge Freeman Johns was motivated by “dollar signs,” that the Big 12 wanted Texas to go to a BCS bowl for monetary reasons.
Mangino was right about that. The Big 12 did want Texas to qualify for a lucrative BCS bid. However, to suggest that Johns had an ulterior motive for flinging that flag was ludicrous.
Hours later, Mangino came to his senses and apologized. Nevertheless, Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg, who coincidentally is head of the BCS this season, slapped the KU coach with a $5,000 fine.
By my estimates, the flag that cost Mangino five grand will result in 100 times that much for the KU athletic department. That’s right. At least an extra $500,000.
If Texas hadn’t been tapped for the $14.5 million Rose Bowl payout, the Longhorns would have slipped back to the Cotton Bowl, which pays $3 million per team. That’s an $11.5 million difference. As it stands now, the seven Big 12 teams will extract about $37 million — it could be a couple of million more — from bowl proprietors.
Take away $7 million, or a million per team for bowl expenses, and you have $30 million. Divide that 12 ways and each school will receive $2.5 million.
Let’s suppose Kansas had defeated Texas. In that scenario, the domino effect would have added another minor bowl with a payout of about $1 million. So instead of about $30 million after expenses, the Big 12 teams would have produced an approximate $24 million purse which would have translated into a $2 million payment per school.
Subtract $2.5 million — are you still with me? — from $2 million and you have the half-million-dollar payoff for Mangino’s $5,000 flag.
I’m oversimplifying the numbers, but that the gist is undeniable. The offensive pass interference penalty earned Kansas a ton more money than it cost Mangino, and that doesn’t even include the priceless national publicity the KU football program earned over the incident.
At the same time, if that whistle had cost Kansas a bowl bid, not even the half-million bucks would have soothed the wound. But KU went into the Texas game with a 3-6 record after being mathematically eliminated from bowl qualification a week earlier in a 30-21 loss to Colorado at Memorial Stadium.
If Kansas had defeated Texas that Saturday afternoon, what would the Jayhawks have gained?
Certainly, they would have captured the nation’s fancy, but fame is fleeting and, in retrospect, Mangino’s outburst produced just as much, if not more, coast-to-coast publicity than a stunning victory over the ‘Horns would have.
A decade from now, many Kansas fans will no doubt be chirping about how the Jayhawks were robbed in that 2004 Texas game. However, if you look at the big picture, KU gained much more from that game than it lost.
