Mackovic was one smug bastard.
That Rice loss was terrible. Lots of shit happened in/around that game that make it unforgettable for me. First, it was a Sunday night game in the middle of the season for some reason so it was basically all alone in primetime on ESPN as there was no Sunday night NFL game then. Texas was top 10-15ish. Lost a close home game to a Colorado team that featured Slash (earlier in the season he beat Michigan on a 70 yard hail mary with no time left), soon to be Heisman winning RB Rashaan Salaam who would later kill himself and Rae Carruth who would later have his baby momma killed. But coming off an emotional RRS win with the Stonie Clark goal line stop.
A few nights before the game a group of players were caught after hours on 6th street and got suspended for the game. The guys that got caught all happened to be black. Well, there were lots of white players out on 6th that night who did not get caught. This caused a lot of discord within the team and there was some talk of players sitting in protest, though that didn't happen. This was also the week Mike Adams 'fell asleep behind the wheel' and demolished a photo booth with Pinkney in the car with him, so they got sat too. Speaking of this, what a difference a few decades makes in how things are prosecuted/covered. If that happens today its a DWI and you're off the team.
With a three decade win streak vs Rice on the line Texas shits the bed and loses 19-17. Westbrook goes down with a knee injury that ends his season. I recall a couple other dudes got hurt too.
Aggie game that year got moved off of Thanksgiving because they were, wait for it, under sanction and could not be on TV, win the conference or go to a bowl. They embarrassed us at home but we get an SWC co-champ because of a 4-3 logjam and either favorable tie breaker rules or hell maybe there were more than 2 co-champs because of shitty tie breaker rules. Finished the season 8-4 with a Sun Bowl victory over Mack Brown's Tarheels.