Texas Longhorns can’t climb Jacob’s Ladder

You know the games at carnivals? The ones with the really great prizes—huge stuffed bears or turtles or whatever animals—those games that you know you can’t win, but you try anyway, because those stuffed animals are the best in the park? I hate those games.

There’s this one at the Santa Monica Pier called Jacob’s Ladder. There’s a ladder that you have to climb in order to get a stuffed bear. You have to reach the red buzzer at the top in order to win, but you can’t use your knees. You have to have your feet on the red rung of the ladder (the third-highest rung) as you ring the buzzer.

It’s an impossible game, but people play it because they want those bears. The night I went, people tried to climb the ladders because the bears wore Texas hoodies. It was the Texas Exes alumni official pre-game party the night before the National Championship and damned if I didn’t want one too.
I already had a mini Texas bear. I’d won it at the basketball game—the one where the baskets are actually designed so that you have to make a perfect shot to get it in because the rims are rigged. By “won,” I mean that I chatted up a recent UT grad named Eric and, after missing all three of my attempts, he gave me the bear that he had won.

But Jacob’s Ladder and games like it aren’t the type where you figure out the “trick” and then master it. These games require a small miracle from upstairs and a 50 slipped to the attendant.

I tried to climb that ladder three times. Each time I would just get balanced enough to attempt to move one foot and one hand onto the next rung. And with them extended, I would start to wobble and before I knew it the ladder had flipped and I was looking up at the Santa Monica Ferris Wheel.
That’s how I felt during the National Championship, as if I had one leg and one arm extended, ready to take that next step—even though I knew it would flip the ladder.

See, there are some things in life that are not fair. It’s not fair that Shiloh Jolie-Pitt hit the genetic jackpot. It’s not fair that Lea Michele can sing Barbra Streisand and I can’t even sing hymns on key. It’s not fair that on the third play of the National Championship, after getting cheated out of the game the year before, Colt McCoy got hurt on a quarterback sneak. It’s just not fair.

I’m not one of those fans who will preach about how if Colt hadn’t gotten hurt Texas would have definitely won. (Texas would’ve definitely won.) Truth is, I can’t say. Colt might’ve choked, thrown multiple interceptions, or pulled a Tony Romo on the Longhorns.

But we’ll never know. Because he did get hurt, and true freshman Garrett Gilbert did come into the game, and Texas didn’t complete a pass in the entire second quarter. Actually, that’s a lie. Gilbert completed two passes in the second quarter. They were just to Alabama players.

Life goes on. I had to be satisfied with my mini Texas Longhorns bear. I had to come to grips with the fact that Texas lost. But it’s difficult, because there will always be that “What if?” question in the back of my mind.

What if Colt didn’t get hurt? What if Gilbert hit Jordan Shipley when he was so wide open he might’ve been able to run all the way back to Texas? Those questions make the loss a little easier to stomach, easier than if Texas had just been outplayed.

I wanted that bear. I wanted that bear so badly that I willingly tried a game that I knew was impossible. I tried to climb that ladder even though the attendant told me there was no way I was going to make it to the top. Must’ve been a little like what Garrett Gilbert felt when Mack Brown handed him his helmet and told him: “Go get ‘em, son.”