Under no circumstances will it be easy

This Huskies team is utterly incapable of playing anything that could be described as a normal football game, and I absolutely love them for it.

NEW ORLEANS -- I woke up at 4:45 on New Year’s morning on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was approaching midnight in New Orleans when I stood along with several thousand other Husky fans gamely attempting to sing along to a Journey song we only half know as the Washington players who have given us this utterly incredible season put on the purple T-shirts denoting them as Sugar Bowl champs.

In between I watched Michael Penix play quarterback like he was a damn sorcerer and felt my very soul torqued by a Texas drive that consumed 45 seconds of game clock and several years of my life in part because it should not have ever occurred. As Texas ran its final four plays inside the Washington 20 it occurred to me that it was possible I was going to cry if the Longhorns reached the end zone.