DALLAS - The demise of Texas is upon us.

Once again, it has been orchestrated by Texas football coach Mack Brown and his star quarterback, Chris Simms, whose twin national legacy can be boiled down to five simple, painful words: Can't win the big one.

No.2 Oklahoma whipped No.3 Texas, 35-24, on Saturday afternoon at the Cotton Bowl. A three-point favorite, Texas led for the first three quarters. But then the Longhorns collapsed in a cottony heap as the Sooners showed national-championship potential by pounding out 21 fourth-quarter points.

Brown, the former North Carolina coach, was badly outcoached by Oklahoma's Bob Stoops. Brown's postgame news conference appearance was no better - he kept blaming a nearly non-existent "wind" as one of the reasons for the Longhorns' loss. And he offered up one lame excuse after another for why Stoops was the gambler in this game and Brown was as conservative as a Baptist deacon.

Bottom line: Brown has talent at Texas worthy of a possible national championship, but he coached once again like he was afraid to lose.

So he did.

Brown's Texas team looked a lot like his North Carolina squads used to against Florida State. Games like Saturday's are the reason Brown has never won a conference championship - much less a national one - as a head coach. He is a great grip-and-grin recruiter who can lure boatloads of talented teenagers to his program.

But he doesn't know what to do with them once they get there.

Simms was a little better than Brown - at least he more freely admitted to his mistakes afterward. But Simms threw three interceptions, and only completed 12-of-26 for 156 yards. One startling statistic defines Simms' collegiate career - in starts against Top 10 teams, Simms now has made 15 turnovers and thrown zero touchdown passes.

Simms ended the game buried under a pile of Oklahoma players, sacked on the final play as the frenzied Oklahoma students chanted "Chris-sie!! Chris-sie!!" It was an apt end to the Texas fall, witnessed on a gorgeous (and nearly wind-free) October afternoon by a screaming stadium of 75,587 split down the middle between burnt-orange Texas rooters and crimson Oklahoma fans.

"It's a horrible disappointment," Simms said.

Brown went to great lengths after the game to shield Simms from the news media, intercepting tough questions meant for Simms and once claimed: "Chris is playing as well as anyone in the country."

Riiiight.

The most striking example of Brown's conservatism came at the end of the first half. After Stoops made a gutsy series of moves that resulted in a touchdown and two-point conversion, Oklahoma had cut a 14-3 Texas lead to 14-11 in the final seconds.

But Texas got the ball back on the 50 with 0:05 to play. Simms, with his golden arm, could have thrown one into the end zone and hoped for a touchdown. What was the downside?

"A Hail Mary into the end zone didn't make a whole lot of sense," Brown claimed later. The coach ordered Simms to take a knee.

Brown wasn't the only high-profile coach to make some bad mistakes Saturday. If Bobby Bowden hadn't made an awful mathematical error by not going for two after Florida State's final touchdown, the Seminoles might have gone into overtime and upset No.1 Miami.

But at least Bowden already sports a national championship. Brown and Simms just have their legacy of "almost."

"We're both big guys," Brown said. "We can handle whatever's said."

Maybe so. But neither "big guy" can handle a "big game." That's why Oklahoma may win another national championship this season and Texas certainly won't - and likely never will with Brown as its coach.