I was born in El Paso, TX but that wasn’t my home for very long. After taking my talents to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, I eventually landed in the place that I call home now, Austin, TX. Austin has no professional sports teams, the closest thing we have to town is the San Antonio Spurs, and I wasn’t going to grow up cheering for those losers. We have the University of Texas Longhorns to root for, and the city doesn’t get anymore electric than a Saturday afternoon in the fall. Burnt orange fills the whole town and the folk’s spirits around here just seem to rise up. That’s how important UT football is to Austin; it’s more than just a game. It’s tradition, excellence, family, and most importantly, its’ about winning. Well, it was about winning up until the end of the 2009 season.
The Texas Longhorns lost the 2009 BCS Championship game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. Star QB, Colt McCoy was knocked out of the game on just Texas’ fifth play from scrimmage. Freshman Blue Chip prospect Garrett Gilbert came in and kept the game relatively close until the Crimson Tide pulled away and took home the title with a 37-21 victory. Now, at the end of that game I was devastated. This was more excruciating than when Michael Crabtree made that play in 08 to drop Texas from the ranks of the unbeaten in Lubbock. EVERY Texas fan knows exactly what play I’m talking about. Anyways, after a couple days of being upset I started to look at the bright side. Texas almost pulled out a victory with a freshman QB who essentially played the whole game. To this day I’m not convinced Bama would have beat Texas with McCoy healthy. Save your argument, wasn’t going to happen. Texas was going to come back LOADED in the 2010 season with talent and depth on both sides of the ball. Future pros were all over the D, which was honestly the part of the team I was most excited about. If I had told you a juggernaut school like Texas, coming off a National Title appearance the year before would go 5-7 the next year. Would you believe me? I wouldn’t either.
That 2010 season was the beginning of the fall for Mack Brown and what was left of the Longhorn program. A school like Texas isn’t supposed to rebuild, it’s supposed to just reload. Mack Brown was known as “Mr. February” early on in his career, and the name fit, for a while. When you get guys like Cedric Benson, Vince Young, Jamaal Charles, Derrick Johnson, Jordan Shipley, Aaron Ross, Earl Thomas, the list can go on and on, but you get my point, he deserved the name. Notice, most of those guys were recruited in the earlier part of Mack’s career. He lost something; he lost that IT factor everyone close to him knew he possessed on the recruiting trail.
How you let
Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin, Johnny Manziel, and even Jameis Winston
(who was once quoted as saying he wanted to be a Longhorn) skip out of town is beside me. I wanted Mack gone at the end of the 2012 season, but when you have brought a National Championship and so much success to a University, you get some time to prove yourself again. Only problem is, he didn’t do it.
Colt McCoy won 45 games as a starter in his tenure at Texas. Can you guess how many wins the Longhorns have won since he departed for the NFL? Go ahead; open up a new tab and Google it. The answer is 36 for those to lazy to check for it yourselves, yes 36 wins. Now, I don’t know what college football you guys have been watching but the games I watch have a lot of passing. The pigskin flies up and down the field, especially in the Big 12 Conference. Either Texas has been watching some other sport or they have been messing up bad, really bad. Garrett Gilbert, Case McCoy, David Ash, and Tyrone Swoopes. Those are the guys who were chosen to sling the rock around, why? Man, I’m still trying to figure that out. Once again, whom does that come back to? Mack Brown.
I love Mack Brown and will forever be grateful for all the memories and “super heros” he brought to Austin during my childhood for me to look up to. As much as it sounds like I’m dogging him out, which I am, I’m just being honest as to why this once perennial Top 10 program is worse off than Shaq’s free throw mechanics. Two years after he left, his bad decisions are still haunting this program. It felt like towards the end of his tenure he was just there for the money and played off to the boosters more. I get it, when you’re making $5.2 million a year, I’d favor the guys signing the checks, too. The Charlie Strong era is just beginning its second season and there’s glimmers of hope. Let’s just hope that when, not if, Texas returns to the elites of College Football, Charlie Strong doesn’t make the same mistake and hold on longer than he should. Sorry Mack, this wasn’t easy to write.