We're back with Craig Way, a voice of the Longhornsports. Longhorns playing this weekend in Dallas and actually in Arlington at AT and T Stadium in the Cotton Bowl semi final, the College football Playoff. They're playing Ohio State, which is slowly becoming a rivalry game if you ask me, going back many years, but before we went to the break, I asked Craig, if you had to do one of the sports that you call, you know, Craig does football, basketball, baseball, which one would you do for free?
That's like asking you would you would you spin Duran, DURAN or ABC for free? You know, back at the eighties there, you know, It's like it's like who was once to work for free?
Right now? I love I love what I do obviously.
And that's a variation what you said, Sandy on the question when folks ask me what's your favorite sport to do? And I always give the broadcaster cop out answer. And while it is a cop out answer, it is rooted in truth. And that is whatever's in season. And what I mean by that it's more of a physiological and psychological thing in season. For example, in September, on a Saturday evening. There's no place I'd rather be than dk R Texas Memorial Statedum's one hundred and one thousand fans there,
and you feel like you're supposed to be there. I will also tell you that in March in the NCAA basketball tournam there's nothing quite like describing a Final Four or an NCAA tournament game. There you feel you're supposed to be there. Same story in Omaha for the College World Series, that's a unique event. It's kind of a two week fortnighte that just kind of slowly unfolds and
you feel like you're supposed to be in Omaha. I had somebody once call it the town that time forgot because every day for about two weeks, you get up, it's about eighty something degrees, You go to the ballpark, you do a game. Then you go to either to an Italian restaurant or a steakhouse or in Omaha what they have a lot of or Italian steakhouses. You go there for dinner, You get up the next morning, you
do it all over again. Certain times a year, you feel you're in the right place and should not be anywhere else, And it just depends on the time of the.
Year, Craig, did you know I grew up in Omaha.
No, I didn't know that, though I love it in summertime. Yeah, it's a great tent, all right. Trust you're on the spot. You got to ask Craig a question. If you don't have one, I can whisper one to you and you.
Can't ask them.
Okay, but when I ask it, give me a look to make tell me if it's a stupid question. A right, But I have two questions, not unusual for me. My first question, what of this past Longhorn season, this current Longhorn season? What was the game you loved calling the most? Who did they play? What was the most exciting game for you this season?
Okay, I would say, you know, it's kind of hard not to get excited about a win over those guys ninety five miles to the year, and the mere fact that it was the restoration of the rivalry between Texas and Texas.
And yeah, I like the fact.
That the company that sponsors, that has the title sponsor on the game is a restoration company. So that's why they called it the restoration of the rivalry and not just the renewal of the rivalry that was that was really cool on Thanksgiving weekend.
Yeah.
I've got a lot of great memories in Texas against Texas A and M on even on Thanksgiving night. So I think a lot of that was really really cool. So that probably that one.
Okay, So that's funny that you say that, because my second question is I love it when the Aggies wear they're all black uniforms and they're all blacked out. Is that something we can get the Longhorn stew because I think that's so intimidating and super cool.
I keep asking Sandy and he's like.
I don't know. I don't know if they would do that or not.
Trisha, are you an Aggie?
No, I'm not an Aggy, But they are all black uniforms. Why can't other people do it too?
It's scary.
Well a lot do do it.
And what we've seen over the last fifteen years probably is an elevator of black as a third designated home color.
For a lot of teams.
Oregon with its Nike based uniforms, you know, and all that has all those different uniform combinations. Listen, there's two things that come to my two quotes. Two things that come to my one, the athletic director of Crystal Conti has said, our colors are orange and white. They're classic.
We don't want to mess with them that much. The other is an old classic quote from when Daryl Royal is the head coach and JB and Sandy are old enough to remember Daryl Royal so that you know, somebody asked them about why wouldn't you add another you know, wear some black or something. This question goes all the way back into the seventies to early eighties, and they said, why wouldn't you change the uniform and where's something different? He said, He goes, Hell, these are work clothes. We're
not going to candy them up. That was his quote back then. I think there's probably the athletic department is it feels pretty cool about out what they have. And I will tell you guys, this Texas is going to wear white in the Cotton Bowl on Friday Night. Even though Texas is the designated home team. They've gotten really fond of wearing those icy whites. Last year they were the designated home team in the Big curlt Championship and they wore those white uniforms when they blasted Oklahoma State
in the big CURLT championship game. The players choose that. A lot of folks say, oh, I can't be are they super? The players like wearing what they call those icy whites, white helmet, white jersey top, white pants, or as I say, on the air, trousers, white socks, white shoes with burnt orange numerals, lettering and trim. They like wearing those, and that's why they'll wear white again on Friday Night.
Craig Gay, quick question for you, A little trivia question about burnt orange. Do you know who claims to have kind of invented that color for the Longhorns.
I've heard a lot of different stories about this. I heard it had to do with color shortages during World War Two, I heard, I heard lots of different they tell me educated.
Did you ever hear the name Rooster Andrews?
Of course I remember the Great Rooster Andrews.
Yeah, he kind of told JB and I once that he was somewhat responsible for that classic burnt orange Texas color.
Whether it's true or not, and it was.
It wasn't secondhand, He did say that directly to us.
So yeah, at the time, that would make it, would it would fit the timeline because Rooster played in the mid forties during World War Two. How else would a guy four feet eleven inches tall be even allowed to be on party Rock kick an extra point against Texas A and m as did you?
You know?
But it might have started out if you go over to dk R Texas Memorial statem, you go inside Moncrief there with the athletic displays of trophies and things like that. There's a helmet there from the early fifties and it's a brighter orange shoe and then it went more burnt orange as the decade progressed, and I'm sure Rooster probably had some input in that.
Craig Way is our guest JB.
Yeah, I got to know this because you have a distinct voice. You know, it's very comforting over all these years, I'll say that very distinct voice. And in this era of AI cloning, has has anyone duped your voice?
Yet?
It's happened to Joe Rogan. You know, you'll hear some livery and you're like, wait, that's not me. Has this happened to you? Because there's a very high monetary value of your voice, and.
Especially especially in gaming.
Yeah, how do you protect that has anything happened and not how could you protect that if needed?
Yeah, that's a great question. Nobody.
Nobody's done it yet. They probably haven't valued my voice enough, and that's fine. I have friends who do sports radio in Dallas, guys I went to college with, and they do what they call the fake Craig Way, where they'll are mimic some play by play of a high school. They call a game every week, the Craig wait Orial high School Game of the Week.
And the first thing I told them was memorial, I'm not dead, but.
They'll they'll take my voice and they'll do goofy things with it and things like that. So I've also had people take what's called the uh. They took this, i think from Jimmy Kimmel, the unnecessary editing of Craig Way, and then would take like actual play by play calls of mine and then bleep out certain words to make it sound like I was actually cussing on the air.
Oh look at that, you.
Know, and it sounds like I'm actually cussing. There was a game against Baylor and Basketball a few years ago, and there was a tense moment in the game where the two teams almost got into an altercation. They kind of got nose to nose And what I actually said on the air was the better be careful, there's about
to be some serious stuff happen here. Well, I dragged the word S a little bit when I said serious stuff, and it sounded like I said the fourth out of the S worden when those guys got a hold of it. There's some serious you know. So people have had fun with it, JD. But I don't think anybody's aied it yet.
Craig Way, our guests calling the game this weekend, Let's talk about the game. Ohio State a team that took a loss to Michigan earlier this season. That may be the best thing that ever happened to them, because they sure looked good against Oregon. And how do you see the Longhorns matching up with the Ohio State Buckets right now? They're six and a half point underdog.
Yeah, first time Texas this season has been an underdog in any game. And this was a this is a this will be the most difficult test easily. Ohio State most of the season looked really good. They've lost by a point.
Out at Oregon in Oregon at the time was unbeaten.
Clearly they've avenged that with what they did to the Ducks in the Rose Bowl game last week. They had that one big stumble at Michigan, and I know folks are fond of comparisons in Texas. Of course, went to ann Arbor early in the season and really just dominated the game against Michigan. But a good friend of mine is Paul Keels, to play by play voice of the Buckeyes. I had him on my show yesterday on A thirteen Under the Zone, and he was talking about how they've
played angry since that game. And you think about their two playoff games, the win over Tennessee, a good Tennessee team, and the win last week in the Rose Bowl over Oregon were games where they got out of the gate very quickly and dominated and just blasted both of those teams. And that's one thing the Longerd's gonna have to guard again. Don't dig themselves a deep early hole, because it's going to be extremely difficult to rally against its Ohio State
defense that way. I think, then stand toe to toe with them. Offensive line will have to play really well. They're going to have to run the ball better than the fifty three total yards rushing they had against Arizona State. I do think the passing game is set up to have success against Ohio State when yours is feeling better physically, I think the wide receivers will be ready to go. And then on the defensive side, there are a Mecha
Buku and Jeremiah Smith are two explosive receivers. The log Warts haven't really encountered two like that in the course of a season. They're going to have to deal with that. And Ohio State has much like Texas does with Contrabuan Weisner and Jadan Blue. They have a two headed monster at running back and they're going to have to do in Quinn Shawn Judkins and Trebion Henderson, so they're going to have to be buttoned up against the run as well.
This is this is gonna be their biggest challenge with the season, no doubt.
Well it should be because they're playing for a chance to win to play in the National Championship Game. So hopefully Longhorns can pull it off this weekend. TB go ahead.
Yeah, I do have one more question because I've there's no one to ask about this, because no one's an authority on this subject. You're the closest person I can think of, Craig. So we're going to the Cotton Ball, you know, on Friday, in the Cotton Bowls in the AT and T Stadium, all right, And I always hated that every other year we take the game out of Austin enough to Dallas? Why do we have so much to Dallas? But the real question is is the Cotton
Bowl itself dead? Is it just the state fair that's keeping it alive?
How do you talk about it?
Your Cotton Bowl itself? The game's not having there?
Yeah, I mean is it is it.
End of an era?
Is it time to let that go? Or is it so classic it needs to stay.
Well.
I think there's two different, two different elements at work here.
First of all, with the Cotton Bowl stadium itself and why the Texas hou game has played on the fairgrounds of the state of Texas every year, and listening to past athletic directors, the lost odds for Texas, the current athletic director at Oklahoma jokistigleone and even crystal'conte CDC the ad at Texas Now it's it's always been about being a part of the festivities of the State Fair of Texas, and the two teams, Texas and OU are almost identically equidistant.
I think one ninety six one hundred ninety six miles and two hundred and one mile.
Something like that.
So it's it all and there's tradition. They've played that game on those fair grounds continuously since nineteen twenty nine. There was even before the current Cotton Bowl Stadium itself was built. In the early thirties, they had an old fairground stadium, wooden stadium, burned to the ground, and then
they built the new concrete stadium. And if you had that tradition of it being exactly halfway split down the middle, no other college football game has that, where the north end of the stadium is all burnt orange and the south end of the stadium is white, and it ends right at the fifty yard line. I always said that if I wasn't broadcasting the game, I'd like to sit on the outside of that row right at the fifty where Texas ends and OU begins, and vice versa, and
just listen to the conversations. So there's a lot of tradition and history that goes to that. Also, City of Dallas, to their credit, put up about fifty million dollars in renovations back several years ago. Now they'redue for more and I think that that's been approved because the toilet's still overflow in the cop Ball Stadium. I'm that people have told me so there's there's things that need to go. But that's the tradition of why that game is there.
I will tell you this JV. If they ever decide that they're not going to play that game in the Cotton Bowl Stadium itself at the State Fair, Texas, it'll go home and home. They're not going to go to Jerry World. It's a different thing at at and T Stadium, Jerry World as we know it in Arlington. That's where the Big twelve Championship game is played every year. It's
part of the college Football Playoff. The number one reason why that Cotton Bowl Stadium, Cotton Bowl Game, the Cotton Bowl Classic as they call the Cotton Bowl Game, moved there. Climate controlled environment. You know January games. Think about it
this this Friday night. What the temperature is going to be like in dow the Dallas for where there's going to bee in the low twenties with possibly snow so that you know when Sark was playing for BYU, they played in the Cotton Bowl Game in ninety six against Kansas State and therember snow everywhere all over the ground. He said, we were used to it because it was at BYU, you know where they were in the Wasatch Mountains.
But uh, they in order to be part of the Cotton Bowl Game and someff it needed a newer, modern look and that's why they moved that to AT and T Stadium at Arlington. It's in the rotation and it's hosted national championships. In fact, the last time Ohio State won a national title, it was in the AT and T Stadium.
So that is there to stay.
I think for the foreseeable future, the Texas OU Game is going to remain at the Cotton Bowl Stadium on the fairgrounds of the State Fair of Texas. If it were to ever leave, I think they'd go home and home. But I think they're planning to keep that there as part of the history and tradition and in environment and atmosphere of the State Fair.
As to say I had a feeling you you would sway my opinion on that, I mean a cold tempts would certainly favor Ohio State.
You know, great point, great.
Point, it'll be nice to be indoors.
I remember saying that everybody was really really happy that the playoff game at home against Clemson. It was sixty five degrees, wonderful and the sun is shining at his great time. And then I remember thinking, as Texas finished off that game, they're indoors the rest of the way to Atlanta. And by the way, it was cold when they won the Peach Bowl that day. It was cold Atlanta and then here, and if they win again, it's back to Atlanta one more time for the National Championship.
Catch Craig Way every afternoon on our sister station AM thirteen hundred Zone. Of course, he's got the call of the game this weekend against Ohio State.