The Magic of Roy Williams and The Play in the 2001 Red River Shootout

Twenty years ago today, Roy Williams delivered a hit on Texas quarterback Chris Simms that for me will always be the greatest tackle in my time watching college football.

Revisiting a handful of plays take me back to the moment in which I first witnessed them in a transcendent way. It’s not so simple as remembering where I was when they occurred — there are countless moments I can recite where I was watching them unfold.

But I can probably count on one hand moments in college football that upon rewatching, I can feel the surroundings. I return to the same headspace I was in at the time as if I’m reliving the moment.

The first is Kordell Stewart and the Miracle at Michigan from 1994.

Vince Young’s fourth-and-2 run in the 2006 Rose Bowl Game is another. And between the two is Roy Williams’ tackle.

It’s known simply as “The Play,” a label that in and of itself lets you know its significance. Williams makes a play that is so unbelievable in nature that just 2 1/2 years earlier, I chuckled at how unrealistic a similar tackle looked in Varsity Blues (a movie I love!).

Even among the microscopic fraction of athletes who make up Div. I football rosters, Williams’ play Everything about The Play and how it was set up was so perfectly executed, starting with Bob Stoops deferring to Mike on the preceding possession.

From the Dallas Morning News recap the following day:

I’m less certain of this detail than I am others to follow, but I want to say this sequence marked the start of my belief in calculated special teams.

ESPN.com’s Alex Scarborough published an excellent retrospective on The Play, which includes a breakdown of the decisions leading to it. I highly recommend it for a more journalistic take on the moment. As for me, I’m left with the memories from that afternoon.

Sometimes you reach a level of incredulousness where you’re physically unable to make a sound for a bit; that was me. I was a teenager and not yet the unbiased observer who writes you today, but rather an ardent fan who found reasons to cheer for one team and jeer another in games to which I had no previous investment.

In this instance, I didn’t have to manufacture my rooting interests. I couldn’t stand Texas, a byproduct of my San Antonio-raised dad’s lifetime disdain of what he perceived as Longhorn smugness. I wanted Cade McNown to win the Heisman in 1998 (lol) and in 2001, I was instantly put off by Horns quarterback Chris Simms.

Simms was one of the first celebrity recruits I can remember, heralded as a sure thing before he ever took a snap. Even before it began its devolution into the All-Takes, All-The-Time Network, ESPN college football coverage felt awash in speculation as to when, not if, the anointed son of NFL quarterback Phil Simms would replace veteran starter Major Applewhite.

Simms revealed a few years ago that Applewhite wasn’t welcoming to him, which…I can hardly say I’m shocked.

The Simms-Applewhite soap opera foreshadowed some of what plagued Mack Brown in his final stretch at Texas. Brown seemingly had a tendency to go with quarterbacks who had more fanfare, like 5-star prospect and not-yet-ready-for-primetime Garrett Gilbert instead of Tulsa record-setter G.J. Kinne.

Without knowing much of the behind-the-scenes dynamics in 2001, Chris Simms just seemed like a Billy Zabka ‘80s character. Roy Williams was Rodney Dangerfield, showing him up with the proverbial Triple Lindy.

Watching on the 27-inch RCA my parents bought me as a high school graduation gift four months earlier, I stood from the couch in my dorm suite. My knee almost knocked over the cup of Jim Beam and Safeway-brand Cola I I had been illegally drinking.

In a season where my alma mater was struggling mightily — that night after the Red River Shootout, my friends and I were in attendance as Joey Heisman and Oregon hung 62 points on Arizona — Oklahoma gave me reason to cheer.

The Play, more than an unparalleled athletic feat or a blow against perceived favoritism, was a moment that reminded me why I loved college football.

The 2001 Red River Shootout fell less than a month after 9/11. Try as I might to avoid the reference — and heaven knows I tried to capture why The Play resonates so profoundly for me without invoking that horrible day, especially after the inundation of reminders on the attacks’ 20th anniversary — it simply isn’t possible. A reason, maybe the reason, I recall The Play is so vividly is that it symbolized college football’s first true moment of emotional release in the weeks that followed.

South Carolina-Mississippi State on Sept. 20 was the first game, and first major sporting event excluding the World Wrestling Federation, staged after the attacks.

I had a small, personal connection to that game: My roommate’s high school friend was a freshman at Mississippi State, and the three of us had been in some AOL Instant Messenger chats in which he touted the Bulldogs as BCS championship contenders.

He heard ALL about Mississippi State’s Oct. 13 loss to Troy (then still Troy State and in Div. I-AA). Until then, though, there was no gloating when the Bulldogs lost to the Gamecocks on 9/20.

Even returning to competition that early felt…off. 9/11 is what I consider one of the three hinge events in my adult life (term applied loosely in this instance since I was a college freshman) — the other two being the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic.

I compared my sentiments about returning to college football in 2001 with 2020 last year. It’s unlocked and free for all on Patreon.

While I was ambivalent about the 2020 season, I never had a singular moment provide that same emotional release as The Play; perhaps the final stop in Coastal Carolina’s impromptu game against BYU, but even that isn’t quite the same.

The 2021 season has felt cathartic as a whole. It helps that it’s been mostly unpredictable and chaotic, outside of a dominant No. 1 showing no real weakness on what appears like an inevitable march to the national championship.

In that regard, 2021 is just like 2001. Maybe we’ll see a play comparable to The Play in the coming weeks.

But don’t bet on it.