Today is the kind of day on the Texas High Plains that would make Bum Phillips proud.

The late, great Texas football coach said a lot of things about life in his home state. He once, for instance, might have told a TV reporter after coaching his Houston Oilers to a win in Buffalo — late in the NFL .season when the weather in upstate New York was at its worst, with wind chills in the minus double-digits, snow, wind and sleet — that the folks there ain’t seen cold.

“I used to coach football in Amarillo, Texas,” legend has it he said on national TV.

Well, coach, today is your kinda day.

It’s about 10 degrees. Wind chill puts the temp at something south of zero. It is, shall we say, a bracing kind of day.

I also am reminded of something one of my sons once told me. It was during his first winter in Amarillo. I’m trying to recall if he said it the day he moved from Huntsville, in the southeastern part of Texas, to Amarillo after graduating from Sam Houston State University.

Whatever. It got so cold that day in 1995 that my son moaned, “Dad, I can’t feel my face!”

Yep, this is his day, too.

Hey, and just think: The winter solstice is still five days away!