Texas Teflon Man Mack Brown Faces Turning Point

Mack Brown
Kirk Bohls and Randy Riggs went over Texas’ horrific 2010 season with a fine-toothed comb for a synopsis in Sunday’s edition of the Austin American-Statesman. While their muckraking doesn’t produce any startling revelations, the piece succinctly sums up the whole meltdown, as well as where the Longhorns now stand.

Plenty of characters in the Statesman’s story have moved on since Bevo wrapped up a bowl-less year. Whether by their own choice or that of someone else, Greg Davis, Will Muschamp, Duane Akina and a host of other major players in the 5-7 drama of 2010 are gone.

The main man in the middle of all the chaos, head coach Mack Brown, somehow made it back to Bellmont.

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Yet, it was Mack who admittedly “pouted” after the Longhorns lost the 2010 national championship game to Alabama.

It was Mack who strung Muschamp along with a “head coach in waiting” title without ever giving the defensive coordinator a timetable for taking over.

It was Mack who decreed that Texas would convert to a power running game despite not having the proper personnel.

It was Mack who turned into “the king of entitlement.”

And, at the end of the day, it was Mack who threw his underlings under the bus when things went bad.

Ironically, if the Statesman story is to believed, Mack had grown so distant from the day-to-day operations of his program last year that he had to have out-of-work NFL personnel man Vinny Cerrato explain which coaches needed to go and which needed to stay.

Now, Mack has thrown some of his school’s monster money around to hire some rainmakers to join him in trying to turn the program around. Supposedly, that new blood has his juices flowing again.

Talking about feeling re-energized and getting back in the game isn’t the same as actually doing it, though. With all those highly regarded young hot shots joining Texas’ staff, the temptation is going to be strong for Mack to just sit back and put the onus on his coaches to get things done. The past year showed that approach is essentially a house of cards.

UT has been wildly successful under Mack’s watch. One bad season doesn’t undo a national championship, conference titles and lots and lots of wins. Given the heights that Texas has reached, Mack clearly deserves a shot to make things right.

However, Mack walked Texas into the wasteland last year. When he realized the ‘Horns were lost, he apparently had no clue how they had gotten there.

At some point, you have to wonder if the real problem down on the 40 Acres isn’t the people working for Mack, but who they’re working for.

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