What would it mean if Texas is finally back, folks?

Imagine sautéing potatoes in butter, then adding sausage, then packing them around some kind of “loaf” manufactured from semisoft cheese, then deep-frying the whole thing, then serving it in the skins of the very potatoes you just saturated, topped with more cheese, more bacon, and a sour-cream sauce intended to ensure cardiac arrest. This is apparently one of the featured cuisines at this week’s Texas State Fair, which culminates in the Texas-Oklahoma football game at the adjacent Cotton Bowl, presuming you survive to see it.

In a deeply divided America, the state fair’s food is both a Lipitor endorsement and a paean to our nation’s shared fealty for defiant excess, which is exactly the spirit ESPN broadcaster Joe Tessitore embraced in 2016, when—after Texas outlasted Notre Dame, 50-47, in a pair of overtimes—declared that, “Texas is back, folks.”

Tessitore, of course, in attempting to infuse artificial drama into a game played the first week of the season, could not have been more over-the-top wrong. Texas went 5-7 that season, which gave the administration they excuse they needed to dismiss head coach Charlie Strong; they then hired hotshot Houston coach Tom Herman, who proceeded to flounder through a 7-6 campaign in 2017.

But now here we are again, two years after the fact, with Tessitore’s extravagant proclamation having long been transformed into a meme; here we are again at a crossroads for a program that once again appears to be on the verge of full-on backness. After a season-opening loss to Maryland that seemed to verify that Texas was still floundering through its post-Mack Brown malaise, the Longhorns have won four straight, and if they somehow manage to upend a ranked Oklahoma team for the first time since 2015, they could not only alter the tenor of the Big 12’s quest for a playoff berth—they could shake up the national firmament.

It’s kind of mind-blowing to realize that it’s been nine years since Texas last played for a national title under Brown. In that time, it seemed that the Longhorns’ footprint in perhaps the most football-centric state in the union was on the verge of waning for the course of a generation, the way it had done in the late 1970s and 1980s, amid the void left by legendary coach Darrell Royal.

But even the lulls under coaches like Fred Akers pale by comparison to what we’ve witnessed over the better part of the past decade. This is the longest Texas has gone without winning a conference championship or playing in a conference title game since the 1930s; with the ascendance of Oklahoma—not to mention in-state programs like Baylor and TCU--over the course of that time, and with Texas A&M’s move to the Southeastern Conference opening up the state to more southern recruiters, it’s appeared, for some time now, as if Texas might be stranded in this purgatory for quite a bit longer.

But now there’s an opening, and that opening is right now. Beyond Oklahoma, the Big 12 is in flux: Baylor is recovering from scandal, West Virginia’s undefeated season still feels like a bit of a ruse, and typically underrated programs like TCU and Oklahoma State have already lost key games. Which means if Texas somehow finds a way to neutralize Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray—who, if the Oakland A’s ever loosen their grip, could become the most fascinating two-sport athlete since Bo Jackson—there’s reason to believe that the Longhorns could actually rescue Joe Tessitore from meme-related infamy.            

In a year when a single team has largely drained the oxygen out of the national conversation, that might not be a bad thing. It would provide evidence that the firmament is not fixed--that everything that goes up (even Alabama) must come down, and then go up again. It would prove not just that Texas is back, but that anyone can make it back, as long as you don’t pile on too much, too soon.