Comment by the judge: The biggest story in college football was Oklahoma and Texas moving to the SEC. This is an interesting look at what the schools may endure in the Big 12 before they leave. Good quotes from Jack Crowe.

By Dave Wilson

ESPN.com

Big 12 teams have never had to muster enthusiasm to take on Texas or Oklahoma. The Sooners have won 14 Big 12 titles in the league’s 24 years, including the past six. The Longhorns won the first Big 12 title in 1996 before adding two more in 2005 and 2009, and Texas’ self-assuredness (school motto: “What Starts Here Changes The World”) and standing in college football history elicits strong emotions from rivals.

But on Saturday, the Big 12’s departing heavyweights will play their first conference road games since opting for the greener pastures of the SEC, which means the Sooners and Longhorns can expect even more hostility than usual.

“When you go on a trip, you just expect to arrive with the respect of who you are and what you represent,” said Jack Crowe, who coached against the Longhorns as a coordinator and head coach at Arkansas and later as an assistant at Baylor. “Good luck on that one, boys. When they line up to boo you from between the bus and the door, you’ll know things have changed.”

Crowe would know. He was the Arkansas head coach in 1990 and 1991 when the Razorbacks were in the same boat. Crowe didn’t know the Hogs would be leaving the Southwest Conference for the SEC when he took the job. Even further, he said he didn’t know athletic director Frank Broyles would announce on Aug. 1, 1990, that the Razorbacks were departing, just three days before the Southwest Conference’s annual media event.

Arkansas’ experience three decades ago — as well as a handful of others since — could be a preview of what Texas and Oklahoma can expect.

In the recent history of college football realignment, Arkansas’ move is probably the closest comparison to the Big 12’s predicament, leaving a football-driven conference that was already facing questions about its future viability.

Maryland was a founding member of the ACC in 1953 and announced its departure for the Big Ten in 2012, but it had won just one conference title in football since 1985, and basketball coaches in the league were most vocal about the switch. Miami and Virginia Tech left the Big East in 2004, but both had been in the league a relatively short time and were the two best football programs in a legendary basketball league. Colorado left the Big 12 for the Pac-12 in 2010 and Nebraska went to the Big Ten in 2011, both dealing blows to the conference, but big-market star power still remained.

But the Razorbacks weren’t just leaving a conference. They were the only Southwest Conference school outside the Texas state lines, and their departure signaled the alarm that the conference could be in trouble.

If that sounds familiar, perhaps it’s because it’s a similar thought that’s been whispered about the fate of the Big 12 after losing its two most prominent members.

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So how hostile can Texas and Oklahoma expect it to get?

At that media day in 1990, emotions ran so high that Baylor coach Grant Teaff compared the Hogs’ move to that week’s invasion of Kuwait.

“I’m now thoroughly convinced that the Southeastern Conference is the Iraq of the college football scene in America,” Teaff said.

Then-Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum said that teams would be geared up to “get their last licks on Arkansas,” adding, “The fans will probably be more emotionally involved than the players.”

The players, for their part, were more insulated from it. They were already accustomed to fans taunting them. But the 1990 and 1991 seasons added a new wrinkle on the field.

“Players would hit you and say, ‘Take that to the SEC with you,'” said Quinn Grovey, Crowe’s quarterback in 1990. “There was a lot of trash talk.”

In the Big 12, fans are already looking for their chance to make themselves heard. On Sept. 11, during the only College GameDay appearance at a Big 12 site this year for the Iowa-Iowa State game in Ames, there were several “HORNS DOWN” signs in the crowd and another that said “TRAITORS” with the Texas and Oklahoma logos.

Fans tailgating in the Jack Trice Stadium parking lots took aim at Texas in particular.

“We brought them in [to join the former Big Eight] and they’ve been chaos with other schools,” said Joel Farley of Okoboji, Iowa. “I think we would still probably have an A&M in the conference, we would still have a Missouri, we would have a Colorado and even a Nebraska. We’re like, ‘Man, we just took everybody else’s problem.'”

On a day Cyclones fans were facing their biggest rival, they were already ready for Texas. What happens when the Longhorns actually have to go to Ames on Nov. 6?

“The booing might be deafening,” Crowe said. “The students will get their point across.”

Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian has acknowledged the SEC move could stir up opponents.

“Our bull’s-eye got a little bit bigger,” Sarkisian said in August. “We can’t be naive to that. Whether it’s crowd noise, whether it’s yelling at us on the bench, whether it’s the ‘Horns Down’ signal, all those things are really irrelevant to our ability to execute and succeed at a really high level.”

Former Nebraska coach Bo Pelini wasn’t just worried about the fans heading into the Cornhuskers’ lame-duck season in the Big 12 in 2010. He was already convinced the Cornhuskers were getting a raw deal from the league.

The season before, Nebraska celebrated on the field after Colt McCoy threw an incomplete pass as the final seconds ticked off the clock in the Big 12 championship game. But following a booth review, officials put a second back on the clock, and Texas kicked the game-winning field goal.

Now the Huskers were spurning the league and heading north.

“The league office was not happy and now you’ve got to play a whole year like that,” he said. “I remember telling the team, ‘Don’t expect any help from the referees. We’re changing conferences and that’s just the way it is.’ That’s the way it turned out to be.”

Late in the season, the 9-1 Huskers, ranked No. 8, traveled to Texas A&M for a big game against the No. 19 Aggies. Nebraska was penalized 16 times for 145 yards. Texas A&M had two penalties for 10 yards. The Aggies won 9-6.

Pelini cited several calls he considered puzzling. A pass interference call on A&M was waved off by officials. A player got called for what he considered an errant late hit. Another was flagged for targeting when Pelini said the film showed the player hitting the quarterback in the middle of his back.

“We didn’t get any breaks from the referees, I tell you that,” he said. “In my opinion, we got ripped off. It was a joke.”

And getting to and from the games could be a little less hospitable, Crowe said.

“You depend on a lot of people when you go on the road that aren’t your people, and it’s gonna be different,” he said. “And you’re gonna feel it.”

He recalled walking into Texas’ Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and being left at the entrance by the state troopers who normally escort coaches before and after games.

“The highway patrolmen walked out of the locker room and sort of stopped there for a second. One of them looked at me and said, ‘Well, this is as far as we go, Coach,'” Crowe said. “Literally, they didn’t want to be seen with me.”

Grovey, the quarterback, said fans were even more animated than usual.

“It was already difficult for us when we went to go play in Texas but [the impending move] intensified it a little bit more,” he said.

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Both Pelini and Crowe don’t believe it’s sustainable for Texas and Oklahoma to remain in the conference until their grant of rights are up in 2025, as officials at both schools have indicated so far.

Pelini said even a 2023 departure would be tough.

“Two years of it?” he said. “That’s crazy. You’re dealing with bad blood. You have to answer questions all the time about ‘This is gonna be the last time of this and the last time of that.’ It gets old.”

Pelini said it affected his focus in recruiting, too. Some players he was recruiting in Texas or California, two places Nebraska typically had fared well, didn’t want to play in the Big Ten.

That’s not likely a problem for either Texas or Oklahoma since their regional rivalries will remain intact, but there’s still the issue of trying to explain when and if the current players or recruits will play in a different league. Crowe just thinks that two of the sport’s blue bloods won’t want to deal with the tension if they don’t have to.

“I don’t think either one of them’s egos can stand to go down that path,” Crowe said. “It ain’t that much money [relative to the programs’ finances] and when you put it in the hands of people that can make big things happen … they won’t let that go long.”

Still, Crowe said it might be worth hastening the exit strategy for competitive reasons. Crowe was fired just one game into his third season after Arkansas joined the SEC. He took a job at Baylor and said it didn’t just feel like all of Texas was plotting against him at Arkansas, but it could have actually been a coordinated effort.

“I was told by a Southwest Conference coach, ‘Jack, it was sort of an unwritten rule that whenever you played Arkansas, every other school would help you with their information to put their game plan together,'” he said. “Normally, conference people don’t do that. But you’re not in the conference. They wanted to make sure every week you played every school.”

Texas will head to Fort Worth on Saturday to face TCU, which is 7-2 against the Longhorns since joining the Big 12. The Horned Frogs already had a chip on their shoulder after being left behind when the Southwest Conference dissolved and had to claw to get back to equal standing, working their way through Conference USA, the WAC and the Mountain West to earn a Big 12 invite.

Oklahoma has its own challenges, facing Kansas State in Manhattan, Kansas, where the Wildcats stunned the Sooners two years ago 48-41 before beating OU again last year in Norman 38-35.

While both Texas and OU are favored this weekend, Crowe preached caution.

“You’ve drawn a line with every other state [in the Big 12] that you’re about to throw ’em out,” he said. “You can be their undoing. You’re taking some of their pride with you, because it won’t be the same. Those other teams know it’s never gonna be any better than it was.

“Good luck, Texas and Oklahoma.”

Dave Wilson

ESPN.com

AGE: 48

COLLEGE: Kilgore College, UT-Arlington

BACKGROUND: Wilson won for a column about what Texas and Oklahoma could come to expect as Big 12 lame ducks on road trips to schools they were leaving behind, looking back at the hostile atmospheres that faced Arkansas after its split from the dearly departed Southwest Conference and Nebraska during its tumultuous Big 12 exit.

Wilson became a reporter at ESPN in 2020, after working as an editor for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine since 2010. A native of Kilgore in East Texas, he worked at five Texas newspapers, including nearly 15 years as a designer and art director before becoming an editor. This is his fifth FWAA honor, including a first-place for Best Feature in the Best Writing Contest a year ago.

After eight years in Bristol, Connecticut, Wilson returned to the Austin area in 2018 with his wife, Alicia and sons Parks and Coen and daughter Rosemary.

Comment by the judge: An emotional then-and-now look at a success story against the odds.

By Rich Scarcella

Reading Eagle

Wayne Sebastianelli had been with Adam Taliaferro from the moment he fell awkwardly to the field at Ohio Stadium and couldn’t get up.

Sebastianelli, the Penn State football team doctor then and now, stayed with Taliaferro in Columbus, Ohio, until his father arrived the following day. He visited him often at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital, first when he couldn’t move his arms and legs and then after he began his miraculous recovery.

So Sebastianelli was a bit apprehensive almost a year later when Taliaferro warned him about what might happen on the night of Sept. 1, 2001.

“I remember him goofing around a couple days before that night and saying he was going to run out of the tunnel and onto the field,” Sebastianelli recalled. “He’d pop in every now and then into the office and tell us that. I’d say, ‘Be careful.’ He was just going to do it.”

Less than 12 months after suffering a severe spinal cord injury at Ohio State, Taliaferro thrilled the record crowd of 109,313 at newly expanded Beaver Stadium and a prime time television audience when he led the Nittany Lions onto the field before their season opener against Miami (Fla.).

On that night 20 years ago, he wore his blue No. 43 jersey, waved to the roaring crowd as he waited to be introduced, walked onto the field and surprised everyone with a hop, skip and jog.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Taliaferro said. “We were in the locker room and I felt like I was a player all over again. I had that nervous feeling I’d get before every game. Doc Sebastianelli came up to me at my locker and asked if I was OK.

“He said, ‘Adam, whatever you do, people are going to appreciate it.’ I went out there and this peace just came over me.”

It was very unlike how Taliaferro had felt a year earlier, Sept. 23, 2000, as a freshman cornerback. He tackled Ohio State running back Jerry Westbrooks late in Penn State’s lopsided loss. He tried to use his arms to pull himself up and couldn’t. Then he tried to stand using his legs and couldn’t. He couldn’t feel his arms or his legs.

“The thought of being paralyzed never went through my head,” he said. “I remember Bhawoh Jue, our other corner, saying, ‘Adam, c’mon, get up!’ I remember him reaching down toward me and I started panicking because I couldn’t move anything.

“I remember looking up and seeing Doc Sebastianelli and Coach (Joe) Paterno. As time went on I started to panic. I remember telling Doc, ‘I can’t move! I can’t move!’ From that point it kind of got blurry.”

Sebastianelli, trainer George Salvaterra and other medical staffers from Penn State and Ohio State carefully placed him on a stretcher. Dr. Chris Kaeding, Ohio State’s orthopedic surgeon, helped stabilize Taliaferro, who received a steroid injection about an hour after the injury to reduce swelling. The following day, neurosurgeon Dr. Gary Rea performed a two-hour spinal fusion surgery on him at the Ohio State Medical Center.

After four days there, Taliaferro was flown to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, near his home in Voorhees, N.J. He slowly began to progress and was moved in early October to the Magee Rehabilitation Center a few blocks away.

“About four or five days into my stay at Magee, my dad (Andre) rolled me up to the rooftop so I could get some fresh air,” he said. “Two guys were playing basketball and I broke down. That was the first time it hit me that I was disabled. I realized I was broken. My body didn’t work anymore.

“That was the first time I cried. My dad said, ‘Get it all out. We were waiting for you to have this moment.’ That was probably one of my lowest points.”

He was told he had a 3% chance of walking again. About three weeks later, however, the turning point in his recovery happened. After his mother, Addie, and his father had gone home one night, one of his nurses looked at the end of his bed and noticed he was moving his toe.

“She asked me to do it again and I did,” Taliaferro recalled. “It was about 10:30 or 11 at night and she called my dad. He drove back to see it for himself. We had a celebration in the hospital room that night.

“He called Coach Paterno and some of my teammates to finally tell them good news. It was probably one of the best moments of my life.”

Andre Taliaferro also called Sebastianelli well after 1 a.m. and screamed the news to him.

“I still feel chills when I think about that call,” Sebastianelli said. “I knew then that he was going to be able to walk. He was the miracle. He just took off after that. It was meteoric.”

Adam Taliaferro walked out of Magee on crutches in January 2001, underwent therapy there as an outpatient for four hours every weekday until April and returned to Penn State as a student in May. He still expected to play football again and fulfill his childhood dream of playing in the NFL.

That was until preseason camp began in August 2002.

“I was sitting in the locker room and the guys were putting on their shoulder pads and helmets,” he said. “I felt like I was going to cry. It hit me that I wouldn’t be playing anymore. Then I thought back to the patients at Magee who were struggling just to walk and struggling to breathe on their own.

“I thought, ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ I never thought about it again. I always thought how fortunate, blessed and lucky I am.”

Tom Bradley, who became Penn State’s defensive coordinator in 2000, said Taliaferro would have had a great career in college and maybe in the NFL. A three-sport athlete at Eastern High, he was a first-team all-state selection on offense (running back) and defense. He was widely considered one of the best high school football players in South Jersey history.

“He was the best young defensive back I ever coached,” said Bradley, who was on the Penn State staff from 1979-2011. “He had great skills. He could do everything. He was tough. He was smart. He understood the game. He was coachable. He was just an exceptional talent.”

Taliaferro served as a student assistant coach, graduated from Penn State and earned his law degree from Rutgers-Camden. He joined Bristol-Myers Squibb as a health-care advocate and later became a politician. He’s seeking his fourth full term as a New Jersey state Assemblyman.

Now 39, he’s married to Erin, a former Penn State swimmer he met in 2001. They have two children, Cruz, 6, and Chloe, 3.

He said he wouldn’t have met his wife or become an advocate, a lawyer or a politician if not for his injury.

“Of course, I can be bitter about not playing football,” Taliaferro said, “but it really taught me how to discover myself. I truly thought I was just a football player and that’s all I could do. The injury was horrible, but the life lessons I learned going through it were priceless.”

Since his injury, he has put his name on a foundation that provides emotional, financial and educational support to individuals who suffer catastrophic spinal cord injuries and their families in New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Delaware. He often visits patients with spinal cord injuries at Magee.

“The biggest thing is to provide hope,” he said. “When I was at Magee there was a guy who had the same injury and he would walk into my room to visit me. It made it real for me. I remember how that inspired me. If I can serve in that capacity, I’m honored to do it.”

Sebastianelli and Bradley are not surprised by what Taliaferro has accomplished in his life. Sebastianelli said he had nightmares “for a long time” about that afternoon in Columbus in 2000.

Almost a year later and inspired by a prediction Bradley had made at his bedside, Adam Taliaferro made a walk at Beaver Stadium that will be remembered forever at Penn State.

“I was on our sideline and I could see the tunnel,” Sebastianelli recalled. “I saw Adam walk out. As soon as the crowd saw him, it was just over. I had tears streaming down my face. There was a referee standing near me and he asked if I was OK. ‘I’ve never felt better.’

“I’ve been doing this for 40 years and you just don’t see that. You don’t get that special gift very often. That was one of them. That was truly special.”

Rich Scarcella

Reading Eagle

Age: 63.

College: Penn State.

Background: This is Scarcella’s fifth FWAA award dating back to 1992, but the first time he’s received a first-place honor. A former FWAA board member, he’s also been recognized many times in the Associated Press Sports Editors, the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors and the Keystone Press writing contests. Born in Dunmore, Pa., and raised in Hazleton, Pa., Scarcella began his career at the Hazleton Standard-Speaker in 1981 and covered high school sports and Penn State football. He moved in 1986 to the Reading Eagle, where he’s covered high school sports, motor sports and professional golf. He started covering Penn State football at the Eagle in 1989 and is in his 34th season on the beat. Scarcella’s work has appeared in Lindy’s for three decades and in The Sporting News.

He and his wife of 38 years, Sandy, live in Leesport, Pa., with their dog, Captain. They have two sons, Eric, 35, and Joshua, 31.