Ok so that’s your version and probably the version a lot of fans shared at the time.
Here’s mine:
The year before, I attended my final Rocky Willingham kicking camp. Mangum was a camper there...not even an honorary counselor like every other NCAA kicker I’ve ever met at one of those. He was there to learn. He was there to improve.
He worked his ass off. He got frustrated as hell too because his big issue was that he kept planting too close to the ball. For those that don’t know, doing that deprives you of power and it pushes shit off to the right if you’re a righty. But he kept at it, kept at it and kept at it. It got to the point where he was showing up early and was seen kicking with these pieces of tape marking his should-be plant spots. I’ve no doubt that he kept at it for the rest of that year and his senior year after that.
Heres my point with that little anecdote: at that point in his career, he was never going to miss that kick. It didn’t even make a flying fuck that one of those Michigan guys got a hand on it. When he lined up to kick the ball, Texas was winning that fucking game.