TUSCOLA, Texas - The road sign on Route 83 that welcomes you to Colt McCoy's hometown needs updating, because it states, "Tuscola, population 714."
That head count was taken 10 years ago.
"I imagine we're pretty close to 800 now," City Secretary Billie Pearce said from behind the counter at City Hall.
It was Dec. 22, and Pearce was about to celebrate her 78th Christmas here.
"If you saw where the funeral home is?" she said, pointing outside to Bartlett's parlor. "Right across the street is where I was born."
That was a few years after Tuscola, the entire town, was picked up and moved five miles to make way for the railroad. Chester, did you remember to pack the First State Bank?
Not much has changed, Pearce says, from the days when she walked eight miles to swim and spent afternoons playing an off-shoot of hockey, on stilts, using tin cans. (It never caught on nationally.)
The major industries remain cotton, wheat, cattle and high school football.
Pearce has seen everything that's fit to be seen in Tuscola. In 2002, when it rained 17 inches in three hours, Lucy Simpson had to be rescued off the top of her truck. There have been close brushes with tornados.
In the 1950s, Eddie "the Claw" Sprinkle made it from nearby Bradshaw all the way to the Chicago Bears, where he earned the moniker "Meanest Man in Football."
Eddie Meador, Pearce's first cousin, rose from Ovalo to All-Pro safety for the Los Angeles Rams - Pearce used to drive to Dallas to see Eddie play when the Rams visited.
Nothing, though, has impacted the town as intimately as the ascent of Texas quarterback Colt McCoy, who leads the Longhorns into Thursday's Bowl Championship Series title game against Alabama at the Rose Bowl.
"We've never had as much publicity as we've had with Colt," Pearce said. "Everybody knows where Tuscola is."
Pearce paused to wipe tears that were streaming down her face.
"I'm just emotional," she explained, "talking about Colt and the Cowboys. I cry when I'm happy, I cry when I'm sad. I cry when I see a flag."
McCoy has an NCAA-record 45 wins as a starting quarterback, holds 47 school records and is Texas' only four-time team MVP.
If a town could bust its buttons, this one would.
Tuscola, at first blush, isn't much to look at. You'd say "Last Picture Show," except the town's only theater closed down.
Yet, you feel the closeness of community that comes when one of your own makes it big. Think, on a smaller scale, of Tupelo, Miss. and Elvis.
McCoy was born in Hobbs, New Mexico, but came to Tuscola in the seventh grade when his dad took over as football coach at Jim Ned High.
On a football field on the outskirts of town, 160 miles west of Dallas, 20 miles south of Abilene, McCoy made memories under one of hundreds of sets of lights that, from an airplane at 35,000 feet, dot the state on fall Friday nights.
McCoy went 34-2 as a starter, throwing for 116 touchdowns and 9,344 yards. His "whoop-dee-do" moment, as a junior, was leading Jim Ned to the 2A state finals.
"I loved it," McCoy said of growing up in Tuscola. "There were more people living in my dorm rooms in my wing when I got to Texas than in my hometown. People in small towns are so friendly, so nice. You know everybody; there are no secrets. Everybody knows where you are all the time."
Kay Whitton, who taught "introduction to business," accounting and college prep classes to McCoy at Jim Ned, is the leader of Colt's marching and chowder society.
Whitton has told McCoy, a 23-year-old fifth-year college senior, it is OK now to call her Kay, but he still insists on "Miss."
Whitton agreed to give a tour of the town, starting at the Jim Ned High parking lot, where it was determined she should drive so a visiting reporter could jot down important notes.
It took five minutes.
Whitton, who has been teaching in Tuscola for 16 years, buzzed the car back to the high school to show off the classroom where McCoy sat. In the corner was a rolled up banner from the "Colt 4 Heisman" campaign that didn't turn out so well.
There was a picture on the wall of Texas coach Mack Brown, who surprised the school with a visit, and one of McCoy's high school teams. Texas coaches who recruited McCoy liked to joke that Tuscola was so remote the hunting got better the closer you got to town.
Whitton was so sure McCoy would be famous some day she kept all of his test scores to show anyone who would care to see them.
"He has a persona about him that attracts people," Whitton explained. "He wasn't just friendly with the cool kids, even the kids that weren't so cool. He was friendly to all of them."
Later, gazing out at the football field, Whitton explained what made small towns different.
"When we were all sitting in those stands on Friday night watching him, 80 percent of people in stands knew Colt or his family," she said. "When you go to a 5-A school, they don't know them at all. So there's a connection there."
Most folks in Tuscola can't afford the trip to the Rose Bowl to see Texas play Alabama for the national title.
So, they'll gather around television sets and pray the game isn't as emotionally taxing as the Big 12 title game against Nebraska, won by Texas on a last-second field goal.
"That one scared me to death," Billie Pearce said. "We weren't breathing."
McCoy's father has already moved on, to coach at a bigger high school in a bigger Texas town. Colt will move on to the NFL, no doubt, hopefully to play for the Cowboys. But it will be different. He said it's been "an honor" putting Tuscola on his shoulders.
"I try to soak it all in," he said. "Right now I'm living in the moment, getting prepared. Some day, when it's all said and done, I'll look back and be very proud of where I came from."