Mack Brown recalls poison cheese metaphor he got from Bill Parcells ahead of Texas A&M game in 2005

Throughout the entire 2005 season, one team was on Texas‘ mind. Mack Brown‘s squad wanted a go at USC in the national championship game in their backyard, the Rose Bowl. The Longhorns really found their stride down the stretch before having a rivalry game to attend to in College Station against Texas A&M.

Fresh off a massive victory against Kansas, Brown was confident. That was until Bill Parcells rang him up nd infused a dose a reality. Parcells did so with an interesting metaphor, calling Texas a rat and all the recent success a bunch of poison cheese.

“I get a call from Bill Parcells,” Brown recently said on See Ball Get Ball. “He coached me at Florida State and said ‘Man, you’re in trouble.’ I said, ‘Coach, we’re undefeated, we just killed Kansas. What’s the deal, man?’ He said ‘Nah, you’re like that fat rat that’s sitting around eating poison cheese.’ And that’s where that came from. Because he said ‘You’re about to get beat. All you’re talking about is USC and you’re not thinking about A&M. They’ve had a tough season. They win this game, it’s their national championship. That’s all they want.’

“So I got off the phone. Got the equipment manager to drop cheese from every locker with his quote about it. ‘Don’t be the fat rat eating the cheese, man.'”

For a moment there, the poison was working inside Kyle Field. Texas held just a six-point lead going into halftime before Texas A&M converted an opening drive for a touchdown. With just over 12 minutes remaining in the third quarter, Texas was down and in jeopardy of losing its status as an undefeated team.

Brown told his team in the locker room that the cheese got to them a little bit. Thankfully for him, Texas turned things around and wound up winning by 11 points. The rest is history, destroying Colorado in the Big 12 Championship game, and then producing the all-time classic from Pasadena.

Had Parcells not picked up the phone, who knows if Texas would have had to right mentality heading into the game. As mentioned by Pracells, Texas A&M did not have much to play for. Coming into the game at 5-6, best-case scenario was making a bowl game.

Texas maybe avoided one in what could have been a historic loss to a bitter in-state rival. Twenty years later, we find out Parcells is the one to thank.