After winning a Texas Bowl, Sugar Bowl and last year’s Valero Alamo Bowl, the senior class of Texas would be a perfect 4-0 in the post-season with a win against Colorado on Tuesday.
This is the 19th meeting between these two teams. The first coming in 1940 and the last in 2009 when the Buffaloes still played in the Big 12. Texas leads the all-time series 11-7. Texas has won seven of the last eight meetings, including each of the last five.
The two teams have played each other in a bowl game once before, the 1975 Astro-Bluebonnet Bowl. Texas, then led by legendary coach Darrel K. Royal, beat Colorado 38-21. Their other two postseason clashes came in the Big 12 Championship Game, once in 2001 (Colorado won 39-37) and once in 2009 (Texas won 70-3).
In the 2019 Valero Alamo Bowl, underdog Texas defeated #11 Utah 38-10. Quarterback Sam Ehlinger accounted for four touchdowns and 280 all-purpose yards in that game and the defense held the Utes to just 254 total yards.
On Tuesday, Ehlinger will join former Purdue’s Drew Brees as the only quarterbacks to take snaps in two different Valero Alamo Bowls. The Boilers beat Oklahoma State in the 1997 game with Brees seeing action in the fourth quarter. In 1998, Brees quarterbacked Purdue to 37-34 upset win over #4 Kansas State earning him MVP honors.
In 2019, Ehlinger was also a Bowl Offensive MVP and this year would the first offensive player to win the award twice. Ehlinger and Brees both attended Westlake High School in Austin.
Head coach Tom Herman’s overall bowl record is 4-0 including the 2019 Valero Alamo Bowl. His teams across his head coaching career are 11-2 (8-2 at Texas) when given more than one week to prepare for an opponent. That includes a 5-1 mark since the start of the 2019 season.
Texas’ appearance in the 2020 Valero Alamo Bowl will mark its fourth-straight bowl game under Herman, the first time since 2011-14 that the program has been to a bowl game in four consecutive seasons.
Since Herman took over the program in 2017, Texas has lost six times to unranked teams while being ranked in the AP poll — the most in the FBS.
Texas has committed only 52 turnovers since 2017, the fewest in the Big 12 during that stretch.