It has become sort of my own running joke that Mack Brown couldn't win a national title until Jim Thorpe showed up on campus. "Jim Thorpe", of course, being Vince Young who graduated from UT this past weekend. VY's Herculean and at times mythical football prowess while he was at UT must have had a smiliar impact amongst Longhorns as did Thorpe's amongst Carlisle Indian School backers during the first decade of the 1900's.
For you knuckle draggers who don't know, Oklahoma native American Thorpe was the world's greatest athlete for the first quarter of the 20th century. Thorpe helped lead all Indian Carlisle to college football prominence, led the Canton Bulldogs to a pro football title and for fun made $5,000 a year playing in the big leagues for John McGraw's New York Giants. Oh yeah, he also set the world record in the decathlon at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm.
Vince Young has struggled after his days at UT. From his flame out in Tennessee to his financial issues to his drunken arrest on assault charges in a club, he actually has much more in common with Thorpe than just sports. "Injun Jim" went through all of the aforementioned endeavors long before there was ever a Vince Young. Thorpe never could escape from the legendary days of schoolboydom and so it seems has been the case with VY. He's still a young man at age 30 and there's plenty of time yet to write his own story and end the parallels with a man history has regrettably mostly forgotten.
