HOUSTON -- Texas coach Tom Herman knows he has a long way to go to get the Longhorns where he wants them to be.
But finishing with the school's first winning record since 2013 following a 33-16 victory over Missouri in the Texas Bowl on Wednesday night certainly has them on the right track.
"It's really important for these guys to call themselves a winner," Herman said, "and to be able to walk around their hometowns over the next few weeks of Christmas break knowing they had a winning season. It wasn't going to be life or death. We would have been just fine next year, but this was a big step forward."
Freshman running back Daniel Young had 64 yards receiving with a touchdown and added 48 yards on the ground to pace Texas (7-6).
The Longhorns, in a bowl for the first time since 2014, bounced back from a loss to Texas Tech in their regular-season finale to finish with their first winning record since going 8-5 in coach Mack Brown's final season in 2013.
Shane Buechele and Sam Ehlinger split time at quarterback for Texas, and both players threw a touchdown pass. The defense helped out, too, with Anthony Wheeler scoring a TD on a fumble return in the first half and Davante Davis grabbing an interception with about three minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Armanti Foreman dashed 18 yards for a touchdown on the ensuing drive to extend the lead to 33-16 and put the game out of reach.
Michael Dickson, who won the Ray Guy Award as the nation's best punter, was selected the game's Most Valuable Player, making him the first non-offensive player to be Texas Bowl MVP and the second punter ever to win MVP of a bowl game, joining Florida State's Graham Gano, the MVP of the 2008 Champs Sports Bowl.
Dickson, who will forego his senior season to declare for the NFL draft, punted 11 times for 452 yards, with four landing inside the 5.
He was shocked that he won the honor.
"I didn't believe it when they told me at first," he said. "I was like, `Wait, why am I going on stage?' It's still kind of sinking in now."
Missouri coach Barry Odom said he's never seen a punting performance like Dickson's.
"I guess that's why he won that award," Odom said. "He's pretty good and they played well off of it."
Drew Lock passed for 269 yards and a touchdown, but also threw an interception and lost a fumble in the loss, which snapped a six-game winning streak for the Tigers. Lock led the nation during the regular season with a Southeastern Conference-record 43 touchdown passes and had thrown three or more in eight straight games.
"We'll use this as a learning tool and motivation and continue to build our program and build our team," Odom said. "We've got a lot of exciting things happening."
Buechele connected with Young on a 22-yard touchdown pass to put Texas up 7-0 early in the first quarter. Ehlinger found John Burt for a 7-yard score later in the first to push the lead to 14-0.
The Tigers (7-6) got within 14-7 when Ish Witter ran 4 yards for a touchdown in the second quarter. But Witter fumbled later in the period and Wheeler scooped it up and rumbled 38 yards for a touchdown to leave Texas up 21-7 at halftime.
Lock threw a 79-yard touchdown pass to Johnathon Johnson on the first play of the second half, but the 2-point conversion failed, leaving the Tigers down 21-13.
They cut the margin to 21-16 with a 28-yard field goal by Tucker McCann with about three minutes left in the third quarter, but weren't able to move the ball much after that.
The Longhorns went up 23-16 when a bad snap sailed over Lock's head and rolled out of the back of the end zone for a safety near the end of the third quarter.
Texas used a 41-yard field goal early in the fourth to make it 26-16 with about 12 minutes left.
Ehlinger was 11 of 15 for 112 yards, and Buechele finished 6 of 14 for 55 yards.
THE TAKEAWAY
Texas: Herman's first season with the Longhorns was somewhat of a disappointment, but his team's performance against Missouri should give fans hope that the program is back on the right track.
Missouri: Texas found a way to stymie Missouri's potent offense after the Tigers scored 45 or more points in each of their previous six games, a school record.
HONORING NOBIS
Texas junior linebacker Breckyn Hager honored former Longhorns star Tommy Nobis, who died this month at 74, by wearing his retired No. 60 jersey. The Longhorns also wore stickers on their helmets with No. 60 to honor Nobis. The linebacker played for Texas from 1963-65 and was the top pick in the 1966 NFL draft by the Atlanta Falcons. He was a five-time Pro Bowler who played in the NFL until 1976.
UP NEXT
Texas: Herman appears to have two improving quarterbacks in Buechele and Ehlinger, but to develop more consistency next season the coach might need to pick one as his starter and stick with him.
Missouri: Lock will have to decide if he'll declare for the NFL draft or return for his senior season. With offensive coordinator Josh Heupel leaving to coach Central Florida, Lock's decision could hinge on his feelings about the new offensive coordinator.
"This game won't affect my decision at all," Lock said. "If we had come out and scored 150 points on them, it wouldn't have made a difference. If we had scored zero, it wouldn't have made a difference. I still have things to evaluate, and I'm going to take in a little more information before the deadline."
If you were going to take 60 years to win a premiership, and you wanted to make it a premiership worth 60 years of waiting, how would you script it?
Here's one way.
You could start two years beforehand with a crisis that led to the captain and coach leaving the club. You could replace the coach with a rookie called Luke Beveridge whose chief claim to fame was a couple of premierships in the amateurs and a stint in security in the public service.
You could replace the captain with a heart-and-soul veteran called Bob Murphy who in the season in question would do his knee and not play again after round three. You could put him out on the ground on grand final day anyway, because as sure as eggs, he was. I don't mean after the game, but during it. Surely you could see it. You could have it that he had his matchday guernsey on under his jacket all day.
You could survive a rash of injuries to other players besides, and finish seventh on the ladder, from where no-one has won a premiership before, and put yourself in a position where you had to win four finals in a row, starting with one in Perth.
You could win, and two, and three, gathering momentum as you go, and sweeping your hometown up along with you, and a lot of incidentals and casuals besides. You could turn the grand final, which it might easily be forgotten is just a game of football, into a kind of morality play. You could write it so that at the end of the day, everyone felt a little bit better about footy.
Even your opponents might come around to that point of view eventually, for this was a rare grand final day on which it was possible to barrack for one team and not against the other. You could, without giving offence to the Swans, make it that good guys win.
When it was done, and you'd stopped pinching yourself and slapping your own face, and the time came to divide the spoils, you could have that coach call up to the podium that maimed skipper and as 100,000 are your witness, hand over his premiership medallion, saying something like: "This is yours, mate. You deserve it more than anyone." Then he would also hand over joint responsibility with the stand-in captain for receiving and raising that mythical cup.
You'd have to write in a pause here, for tears and tissues, and _ why not? _ a beer.
Impossible, yes? A fable, yes? Well, why not give it a few more twists? Why not pair yourself in the grand final with the Sydney Swans, the minor premier, the team that that is always there, the gold standard when it comes to finals style footy, the team whose captain, Kieren Jack, no-one could doubt at the end when he said: "We didn't get the job done, but we're coming back. We're going nowhere."
Why not make it that you engage them on titanic terms for three-and-a-half quarters, and every now and then have them look as if they might be about to shrug you off, and send shivers up all spines at the crucial moment early in the last quarter when Lance Franklin shapes a goal from 50 metres that reduces the margin to a point, and seems to presage a winning Swans surge?
Why not massage the script so that you match the Swans in what they do well, ferocity at the fall of the ball, and add something they don't, fleetness of foot and a preparedness to use it? Why not make it the sort of game in which every good turn deserved another, and every tackle, too, and in the third quarter have it that both teams find extra reserves of strength, as men in mortal danger do?
Why not now cast some improbable heroes? One could be, say, Tom Boyd, a lump of a lad who you poached from Greater Western Sydney in that crisis moment, really the president insisted and because you didn't want to be seen as a club that would accept to be pushed around, but who for two years you have found to be a bit of puzzle. Maybe he could grow through this final series, figuratively, but you would almost swear literally and on this day play his best match.
One could be Jason Johannisen, although you probably wouldn't given him that haircut. One could be Liam Picken, son of a Collingwood great, but now with one over his dad, a premiership. Maybe it could be that he took four years to get onto a list, and spent most of his career since tagging, but was liberated by the new coach to play as a deadly forward?
One could be Dale Morris, a 33-yearold who the coach surely had in mind when he said this team was all heart, because for a dozen years it has leapt out of his chest so that he could play on and beat outsized opponents, and did again this day.
One could enigmatic Jake Stringer, who had only one decent moment for the day, but what a moment?
Why not, when the time came, link all these instant heroes in the final act? You could have it that in the centre of the MCG, Franklin is about to drive the Swans forward, but is tacked and dispossessed _ no-one strips Buddy Franklin _ by Morris, and ball tumbles free to Boyd, who tears up the playbook and thumps it forward and perhaps catches a gust of the crowd's urging tumbles and rolls through.
You could make it that just before that, Johannisen had kicked a goal that was overruled by a TV umpire because of a supposed touch on the goal-line, though everyone on both sides had accepted it and were in the centre for the next bounce. You could moralise here, about how a great grand final might have been ruined by a fatuous protocol. But it would be edited out.
You could have it that the Bulldogs beat the Swans at their own game. You could have it that exaltation on the boundary line and in the crowd looked like exactly it was, bursting with deliverance of 62 years. You'd have to leave a bit of space here, for more tears and cheers.
You could have the joy washing from one side of the MCG to the other, and back and forth across the change rooms, too, and not one player removing his guernsey _ because why would you ever take if off? _ and dozens of old players not bothering to hold back their tears and mouthing the theme of the week and the moment: "I never thought I'd see the day."
You could make it the best thing some old lags in the press box have ever seen in footy. You could even make it an AFL/VFL premiership double, like anyone has ever done that?
But who on earth would ever would you believe that any footy team could do all that?
The Bulldogs just did. They bloody well did. It's a fairytale, and even if the whole competition returns to normally programming next year, it will always be a fairytale.
NEW YORK - It had been a long time, more than three months to be exact, since Christian Hackenberg looked like the confident quarterback who had excited Penn State fans during his 2013 freshman year, who was on everyone's top-10-in-the-nation list at the start of the season.
On Saturday at Yankee Stadium, Hackenberg showed a captivated sellout Pinstripe Bowl crowd of 49,012 that he could still be that guy, leading the Nittany Lions back from a two-touchdown deficit against Boston College and carrying the game into overtime.
Hackenberg threw four touchdown passes, including a 10-yarder to tight end Kyle Carter in overtime that, combined with Sam Ficken's extra point and a big miss by Boston College, gave the Lions a dramatic, 31-30 victory over the Eagles. It was a successful return to bowl competition in Penn State's first such game since the 2012 NCAA sanctions.
The Nittany Lions finished with a 7-6 record in James Franklin's first season as head coach, and their first bowl win since the 2010 Capital One Bowl.
It was a fitting end to the season for Hackenberg, who completed 34 of 50 passes for 371 yards, his first 300-yard passing game since Week 3 at Rutgers. He had endured his share of struggles - and criticism - behind an inexperienced offensive line.
"It's not about me," Hackenberg said of the criticism. "For me, every day I came in and tried to work as hard as I could and become a better player . . . to be the best teammate I could be and push these guys to take their game to the next level.
"That's a big role for a quarterback, especially at Penn State. You need to be able to elevate everyone else's play when need be, and we were able to do that today."
Franklin tried all season to deflect the criticism directed at Hackenberg, telling anyone who would listen Hackenberg "wasn't really the issue" because of the offensive line's problems.
"I love Christian Hackenberg," Franklin said. "I wouldn't trade him for anybody. I think he's got a really bright future at Penn State moving forward. I will fight and defend him till the end."
Ficken, who had been given Derek Jeter's locker in the Yankees' clubhouse, where the Nittany Lions dressed for the game, kicked a 44-yard field goal with 20 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter for a 24-24 tie and to force an extra period.
Boston College (7-6) had the first possession and scored on Tyler Murphy's 21-yard touchdown pass to David Dudeck. But Mike Knoll hooked the extra point attempt wide right, the eighth point-after try that the Eagles missed this season, with Knoll missing two.
"We've had a lot of difficulties through the year on extra points and field goals," B.C. coach Steve Addazio said. "We started with those issues, and we ended with those issues. It's my job to get it fixed."
Penn State converted a pair of third-down conversions on its overtime possession, the first a 17-yard pass to Jesse James where the 6-foot-7, 270-pound tight end bowled over a defender to get the first down. Later, on third and 7, Hackenberg found the 6-3, 250-pound Carter matched up against a smaller defender and threw him a perfect pass in the end zone.
Ficken drilled the extra point, then ran away in celebration from his gleeful teammates lest he get trampled by some of the bigger Lions.
Hackenberg's other touchdown passes were 72 yards to freshman Chris Godwin, 7 yards to Eugene Lewis, and 16 yards to DaeSean Hamilton. Ultimately the game ended, in a baseball stadium, on a walk-off extra point.
"I think it's kind of cool," Hackenberg said. "That was special. I feel really excited for our seniors and how the team prepared. I think it's going to help us going into the offseason."
