Golden: Texas football will enjoy homefield advantage in Sugar Bowl

There won’t be anything easy in the Big Easy against Washington, but Texas should feel right at home.

The one thing you can bet your house on is that Longhorn Nation will show up in massive numbers for the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1. The Huskies are the higher seed, but they will walk into the Caesars Superdome as the clear road team and a road underdog at that.

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The Seattle-based Huskies live 2,573 miles from New Orleans while the Horns are just a little more than 500 miles from Cajun country.

Oddsmakers have already installed the No. 3 Longhorns as a 4½-point favorites for the New Year’s Day CFP semifinal. In case you’re wondering, when it’s a regular-season game, the oddsmakers usually give the home team three points for playing on their own field. While this is technically a neutral site, the Horns will enjoy having the Dirty South as a nice little backdrop.

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Of course, that was of little consequence last season when the Huskies beat Texas in the Alamo Bowl right down the street in San Antonio.

Texas' Sugar Bowl history is pretty sweet

Texas in New Orleans: Texas’ history with the Sugar Bowl goes back to 1948 when legendary Longhorns quarterback Bobby Layne  accounted for 234 yards and two touchdowns in a 47-7 win over Alabama at old Tulane Stadium.

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Layne earned the game’s first MVP trophy 70 years before his Longhorns QB descendent Sam Ehlinger earned the Most Outstanding Player trophy after he accounted for 233 yards and three touchdowns in a 28-21 Sugar Bowl win over Georgia in 2019.

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We all remember Ehlinger standing on the stage in the middle of the Superdome and proclaiming “We’re baaaack!” as Longhorns fans went wild.

It turns out Texas wasn’t back, at least not to the point of the stuff we’re witnessing in 2023.

New Orleans and Texas football go hand in hand

It's almost like a home away from home: New Orleans and the Horns are made for one another. They first ventured there and beat Tulane 12-4 in 1896, the first of eight straight wins in New Orleans.

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On a personal note, New Orleans was a highlight of my first season on the UT beat. In 2002, the Horns closed out their four-game nonconference schedule on the road and drowned the Green Wave 49-0 amid a sea of burnt orange at the Superdome. The streets of New Orleans were bathed in burnt orange that weekend.

The hurricanes were flowing at Pat O’Brien’s that Friday and the Horns kept the party going the next day. Freshman running back Selvin Young scored three times, including an electrifying 71-yard punt return in the third quarter. The final score doesn’t reveal Texas’ lackluster performance on offense, but the Horns were great on defense with Cedric Griffin’s 56-yard return of Marcus Tubbs’ blocked field goal included as one of many huge plays.

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I remember that game most for star cornerback Rod Babers doing such a good job of firing up the Texas fans during a timeout that he was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Rod B. was the original hype man.

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Texas improved to 8-0 all-time against Tulane in New Orleans. Since the Superdome was built in 1975, Texas is 2-1 by my count, but 2-2 all-time in the Sugar Bowl. It goes without saying that this fifth appearance is easily bigger than the other four combined.

The stakes have never been higher on a New Orleans trip.

Quarterback portal equals big bucks

The portal has opened: The exodus of quarterbacks into the transfer portal is no surprise because the portal has become big business.

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Just ask Nebraska coach Matt Rhule, who put some fat digits in the atmosphere last month when asked about quarterbacks transferring.

“Make no mistake, a good quarterback in the portal costs $1 million to $1.5 million to $2 million right now,” the former Baylor coach told reporters in his offseason press conference last Wednesday. “So just so we’re on the same page, right? Let’s make sure we all understand what’s happening. There are some teams that have $6-7 million players playing for them.”

Oklahoma’s Dillon Gabriel and Ohio State’s Kyle McCord are the biggest names to enter free agency so far — let’s call it what it is — and added themselves to a list that includes Miami's Tyler Van Dyke, Mississippi State's Will Rogers, Texas A&M's Max Johnson, Kansas State's Will Howard, Duke's Riley Leonard, Oregon State's DJ Uiagalelei and Washington State's Cam Ward.

Of the listed signal-callers, Gabriel, who accounted for 73 touchdowns in 24 games at Oklahoma, has the nicest NFL upside even if he is relatively undersized at 6-foot, 200 pounds. But if he doesn’t make it at the next level, he would have smartly exhausted his money-making potential in college.

If a player isn’t a lock to play in the NFL, then he should take advantage of every opportunity and pocket the big bucks before having to the real work sector. Plus, a lot of these players are getting started on master’s degrees, with the school footing the bill. Nothing wrong with that.

Give me a well-paying college gig over the hope of making it to the NFL any day.

The Cowboys are alive for NFC East crown

Beware, Philly, beware: The Philadelphia Eagles have wiggled off the hook on several occasions to maintain a healthy lead in the NFC East, including a win over Buffalo two weeks ago that wouldn’t have happened if not for Jason Elliott’s 59-yard field goal to force overtime.

They had no so luck in Sunday’s 42-19 loss to San Francisco, which sliced their division lead to half a game over the surging Dallas Cowboys, who have won six out of seven since taking a 42-10 humbling themselves to the Niners.

Dallas can forge a ties atop the division with a home win over the Eagles on Sunday. The Niners are obviously the league’s best team, but the Cowboys (9-3) have found something in the last month and change.

Imagine, the Texas Longhorns and Dallas Cowboys reaching the playoff semifinals of their respective leagues in the same season. That would be some first.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football hopes New Orleans proximity will aid in Sugar Bowl win