Mack attacked

Texas coach has come under fire, but it's hard to argue with his record

One evening earlier this week, Sally Brown caught a brief glimpse of an old college football game on ESPN Classic. It was a North Carolina-North Carolina State tilt from the mid-'90s, and her husband, Mack, was the head coach of the Tar Heels "You were young back then," she said to her husband. It was a joke, the kind that people -- especially close friends and spouses -- tell each other as time picks up steam and gobbles calendar pages. But it wasn't entirely a joke, either.

Not long after that game was played Mack Brown left Chapel Hill to become the head coach at Texas. He left a place where basketball is king and where a little football success was good enough to keep the people happy in the autumn. He moved to a place where every football defeat is cause for a public examination of the collective Longhorn soul (to say nothing of an informal referendum on the soundness of the current coach). There are a few places like this in the country: Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma. It is a possible that none are more charged than Texas.

In 1998, with Ricky Williams en route to the Heisman Trophy and an Opie-esque redshirt freshman named Major Applewhite throwing for 2,453 yards and 18 touchdowns, Texas went 9-3 and won the Cotton Bowl. Brown could do no wrong. Back-to-back nine-win seasons followed. And then back-to-back 11-2 seasons. In five years at Texas Brown is 49-15, a winning percentage of .766 that trails only Darrell Royal in school history. (Royal, still a huge presence in Austin and a good friend of Brown's, was one of college football's all-time best coaches). But let's be fair: He worked in the era of unlimited scholarships, when Texas could win seven or eight games a year just by being Texas. The landscape is dramatically different now).

Yet Brown is under fire. Constantly. The big-money Orangebloods, however, haven't made any effort to buy the coach out and run him off. Nobody is that stupid. But among the media and grumblers, there is a constant sense that Brown should be doing a little more. That he should be going 12-1 or 13-0 instead of 11-2. That he should beat Oklahoma. Mostly that he should beat Oklahoma. He has lost three straight to Bob Stoops' Sooners, who won the national title in 2000, and for that Brown is considered a failure in some corners, which is absurd.

On Wednesday afternoon I sat with Brown in his office beyond the south end zone of Memorial Stadium. He was wearing practice clothing, no shoes and, as always, a mature self-awareness. Sally Brown was right in many ways: Her husband was much younger back at North Carolina. "I've grown up an awful lot in the last six years," said Mack. "I've learned that Texas is so much different from North Carolina, even more different that I could have imagined. We've had a great six years year. It's a wonderful place.

"But what they have here is what you would call pressure," he added. "The standard here is very high. And winning doesn't change the standard. If you don't win all the games, you screwed up. That will never change. It will be the same for the next guy and the guy after that."

Brown can reel off the criticism as easily as he can recall the phone number of his brother, Watson, who is the head coach at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. "No 1, they say we're soft, that we don't hit enough in practice,'' he says. "Well, we hit about the same amount as everybody else. No. 2, we're not prepared. No. 3, I'm too conservative and No. 4, I can't win the big game. I talked to coach [Bobby] Bowden and coach [Joe] Paterno about [the criticism]. 'What's [considered] the big game?' Coach Bowden told me: 'It's the game you lose.'"

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How much criticism is valid? As with any coach, a little. Stoops has been a little more daring and creative than Brown in their head-to-head matchups. Maybe Brown could have done better by Applewhite and Chris Simms in the three years the quarterbacks played together. Maybe he could work his players harder every day in practice instead of treating them like mature athletes. (But is that the right way to go?) But 49-15, man. That's a big number. As for the charge that he doesn't win big games, I don't know what else to say in his defense. Brown beat Kansas State last year in Manhattan. He also won at Iowa State and at Nebraska. His teams have taken three straight won three straight against rival Texas A&M (a job that won't get easier now that Dennis Franchione is running the show in College Station). Brown is 3-1 against Nebraska, 2-1 against Colorado and 3-2 in bowl games. It all comes down to Oklahoma, though. (For Bowden it comes down to Miami and for Ohio State it comes down to Michigan and for Tennessee it comes down to Florida).

Here's what I think: Winning big games and national championships in college football in the year 2003 is not simply a function of getting good players and coachin' 'em up. If it was, we might see more repeaters and more potential dynasties. Instead, it's an annual crapshoot, built in part from dumb luck and chemistry. Last year Ohio State won half a dozen games it could have dropped. In 2000, Oklahoma could have lost to Texas A&M and probably should have fallen to Oklahoma State. Then the Sooners benefitted against Florida State in the Orange Bowl, when the Seminoles only deep threat, the unforgettable Marvin "Snoop" Minnis, was suspended. Little breaks, adding up.

Those breaks have not added up for Texas in the Brown era. They will, eventually. It might not be this year. Texas, which lost to 38-28 Arkansas the second week of the season, is inexperienced at quarterback and shaky along the defensive front. Oklahoma looks awfully good, and the Longhorns have to face Kansas State before they even play the Sooners. But Brown continues to bring in good players, treats them like adults and operates a clean, classy program. It's just a matter of time.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden weighs in with a Viewpoint every Friday on SI.com.