WACO, Texas -- Imagine the incredulous looks you would have drawn a decade ago had you been brazen enough to forecast the current football landscape in the state of Texas.

Instead of lining up a trip to the next game, your friends would have staged an intervention and lined you up for a trip to the shrink.

Think about it. The 10-year anniversary of Texas' 2005 national championship season is approaching. The Longhorns were on top of the college football world after their unforgettable 41-38 win over USC in the title game. They were in the midst of a glorious nine-year stampede under Mack Brown that saw them win 10 or more games every year and five straight bowl games, including three BCS bowls.

Not only did the state capital reside in Austin, so did the state's football capital.

Meanwhile, finding Baylor on a football map at that time would have been more difficult than wolfing down a Gut Pack at Waco's famed Vitek's BBQ restaurant, then going out and running a 10K.

The small Baptist university about 100 miles up the road via Interstate 35 might as well have been a gnat in Bevo's path. The Bears managed just 14 Big 12 wins in the first 14 years of the league (from 1996-2009), suffered through 14 consecutive losing seasons and were playing their home games at Floyd Casey Stadium, an antiquated, off-campus venue perhaps best known for the green tarp draped across the south end zone to hide the empty seats.

So how in the name of J.R. Ewing did we get to the current state of affairs in Texas?

Leave it to that folksy football philosopher Art Briles to put it all in perspective.

"What is ain't," Baylor coach Briles deadpanned in his vintage Texas twang. "Just because something has been a certain way doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. That to me is the thing that's most inspiring about what we've done here. You don't have to go with the good ol' boy theory that that's the way it's always going to be."

Read the rest of Chris Low's story here.