Bill Little commentary: Start overs vs. do overs

One of the poignant songs from the musical drama "Jesus Christ Superstar" is the lilting melody entitled "Could we start again please?"

It is rare in life, and particularly in sports, that you get that chance. You don't get "do-overs" in sports -- that opportunity to go back and change what has happened. And by the way, you don't get that in life, either. But the Texas Longhorns are faced with a rare opportunity to wipe the slate clean and put a 1-2 start behind them as they begin Big 12 play against Kansas State in Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium Saturday.

To do it, they will have to correct the negatives and build on the positives that came out of the 44-23 loss to Ole Miss on Saturday. In that game, there was a stretch in the first half when the Longhorns played as well both offensively and defensively as they have in years. From the middle of the first quarter -- when they found themselves trailing, 14-0 -- until a second before intermission they scored on five straight possessions and allowed the Rebels just 60 yards to take a 23-17 lead into halftime. Problem was, they didn't sustain it.

Make no mistake. This 2013 season's beginning has been far from what the coaches and the players wanted or anticipated. Coming in, they knew they had two tough non-conference games at the front end of their schedule. Both were as advertised, and both -- when the season is over -- likely will acquit themselves quite respectably. Brigham Young is a good team that is strong at home, and Ole Miss may wind up being the surprise of the SEC.

And while the dream of winning all the games hasn't worked out, they now find themselves with that rare chance to begin again.

That was the theme of personal accountability which permeated the Longhorns video reviews on Sunday as the coaches went over every play and keynoted every player from the Ole Miss game.

In Saturday's remarkable window of success from the middle of the first quarter through much of the first drive of the second half, quarterback Case McCoy was brilliant as he led his team to 23 unanswered points by the time the first half was ending. He completed 14 of 16 passes for 140 yards through the start of the second half. Meanwhile the defense was playing shutdown football against the explosive Rebels.

The crowd of over 100,000 was excited and involved. And then, it began to slip away.

Finally, in the end, it reminded me of an airline pilot who, on a snowy night in Des Moines, Iowa, turned the wing of our departing aircraft into the jet bridge. The damage caused the airline to bring in another plane, forcing an overnight stay in Dallas on the way back to Austin.

To his credit, the embarrassed pilot calmly made an announcement as to what had happened, and then he added these words: "No excuses. No explanation."

The former serves no purpose when you don't get the job done as the Longhorns failed to do on Saturday. But the focus must be on the latter. The "what" that happened is chronicled and available on video. It is the "how" and "why" that become important teaching tools as Texas moves forward.

It is easy at times like these to get caught up in the negative. But if you want to make it different, you can't immerse yourself in what "might" be. You have to go to work and reach for what "can" be.

"Could we start again, please?"

The answer as Big 12 play begins for Texas in game four of this 12-game regular season is most assuredly, "Yes."

It is, after all, part of life's lessons.

In the movie Silverado, Stella is a very short woman who surprises the movie's star by using a ramp to walk up to a level where she can tend bar in her saloon. When the guy looks at the ramp in amazement, her reaction is, "The world is what you make of it, friend. If it doesn't fit, you make alterations."

Angst is not an option when you are trying to get somewhere. You keep driving and figure out how to get where you want to go. Darrell Royal's 1968 Texas team was tied in its first game and lost the next, and at 0-1-1 embarked on a journey that began a 30-game winning streak. Mack Brown's first team was 1-2 with big losses to UCLA and Kansas State and then went on to a 9-3 season.

In both cases, the early record included a conference loss. This one is different. Conference play begins Saturday and the record is yet to be written.

How will it turn out?

All-American defensive back turned Frito Lay executive Lance Gunn spoke to the team a couple of weeks ago and offered this as a shared commonality for those who play the game about those who don't.

"They think they know, but they have no idea," he said.

And he had the players repeat it.

"Might" is trumped by "could" and better still by "can."

And that is why they went back to work on Sunday.

The University of Texas at Austin Athletics

Bill Little commentary: Start overs vs. do overs