The selection of Justin Thomas to the U.S. Ryder Cup team was made with team vibes in mind. Unfortunately for JT, the vibes couldn't have been lower during the American squad's scouting trip to Rome on Saturday night.
As a team, the Americans kicked back and watched college football's first marquee matchup of 2023 -- Texas at Alabama in primetime. Thomas' Crimson Tide, playing at home in Tuscaloose, closed as a 7.5-point favorite, but quickly found themselves in a dog fight with Scottie Scheffler's Longhorns. While Bama certainly kept it close and at times looked like they might pull away, Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers and the Longhorns offense kept answering before finally slamming the door, stunning Nick Saban's Tide and winning 34-24.
The game had a classic changing-of-the-guard feel, Saban's former pupil, Steve Sarkisian, possibly having Texas all the way "back," for real this time. Max Homa, one of the automatic qualifiers on the U.S. Team, captured that exact feeling and moment for JT and Scheffler:
As badly as Thomas wanted to be on this team, in that moment, he had to be wondering if it would have been better to be watching this game from home with no one there to ridicule him. He could have always flipped the channel or watched one of the four other games on thanks to his incredible TV setup. In this instance, we're guessing Scheffler and co. made sure Thomas had to sit there until the bitter end to watch his team's 57-game regular-season nonconference win streak end (and its 21-game home winning streak, by the way). Brutal.
Nice job by Homa capturing this, and nice job by JT being a good sport. Also, Homa is lucky his team (Cal) was playing in the late game after and nobody was around/up to get his reaction to Auburn beating the Bears 14-10 in Cali.
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