The 2006 Texas Longhorns football team represented the University of Texas at Austin in the 2006 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The team's head football coach was Mack Brown. The Longhorns (also known as Texas or UT or the Horns) played their home games in Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium (DKR), which during 2006 was undergoing some renovations to improve older sections as well as to add extra seating capacity. The 2006 team was the defending national champions since the previous year's team won both the Big 12 Conference championship and the National Championship. That was the program's second Big 12 Championship (27 conference championships total, including 25 in the Southwest Conference), and fourth consensus national championship in football. Their championship victory in the 2006 Rose Bowl was also the 800th win for the program and the Longhorns entered the season ranked third in the all-time list of both total wins and winning percentage (.7143). In 2006, the Longhorn's game against Ohio State University in September was one of the most anticipated college football games of the regular season. Texas lost the game to Ohio State and completed the regular season with an overall record of 9 wins – 3 losses, and a 6–2 record in conference games. They were ranked 19th in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings, issued prior to the bowl season. The Longhorns ended their season with a victory in the 2006 Alamo Bowl against the unranked, 6–6 Iowa Hawkeyes to improve to an overall record of 10 wins – 3 losses. They were ranked 13th in the final national rankings by both the Associated Press AP Poll and the USA Today Coaches Poll As of May 1, 2007 seven players from this team had been drafted by professional football teams and two more had signed professional contracts as free agents. Leading into the 2006 season In most preseason rankings, Texas was listed in the top five. In the initial USA Today Coaches' Poll, which is part of the Bowl Championship Series formula for determining which two teams play for the national championship, Texas was ranked number two. The same poll had Ohio State number 1, meaning that if both teams held their ranking until their September 9, 2006 match-up, it would be a rarely seen early-season meeting of the two most highly ranked teams in the sport. The teams did keep their respective ranking