Orange Crush 
Augie Garrido, Baseball Coach, The University of Texas 
The Eyes of Texas Are Upon Him
Even though University of Texas head coach MACK BROWN is coming off a Rose Bowl victory and has assembled one of his most talented teams yet, five Straight losses to Oklahoma have the Orangebloods in a panic. Will the world’s nicest guy ever finish first?
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Young later scrambled for another touchdown, Michigan got a couple of field goals, and UT finally got the ball back with three minutes to go, down 37—35. Young marched the team methodically down the field, and Texas lined up for the winning field goal. I asked a couple of men if they were nervous, even though they knew what happened next. “Yeah!” they answered simultaneously. “All right, all right, all right!” Walters announced, flashing a hook ’em sign. The center snapped, kicker Dusty Mangum swung his leg, and the ball, barely tipped, wobbled over the goalpost. Everyone erupted in cheers, hopping up and down and giving high fives. Clark sat back down again. “How sweet the wine,” he said.
The January victory was huge for both UT and Brown. Yet afterward, some fans still found reason to complain. UT had been ranked number six, they pointed out; Michigan was ranked number twelve. The Longhorns were supposed to win. Also, it wasn’t as though Brown had come up with some brilliant game plan; if any other college kid had been at quarterback, UT would have fallen apart. And if some Wolverine had gotten just one knuckle more on that kick, the Longhorn faithful would have wintered in despair.
But none of that mattered to the tailgaters. The Rose Bowl win had propelled Texas into 2005, the season in which many of them believe UT will beat OU (which graduated its Heisman-winning quarterback and many of its receivers and offensive linemen) and Mack Brown, the nicest guy in the meanest sport, will finally win the biggest game of all. “How many days until kickoff,” yelled Cody Norris, a late arrival. “One hundred and fifty-three? I’d rather chop off my big toe than wait that long.”
BROWN WAS HIRED away from the University of North Carolina in December 1997 for one reason: to bring a national championship back to Texas. He had a reputation as a “CEO coach,” and he knew it wasn’t enough to win on the field. Brown had to bring back the customers, improve the goodwill of the company. His to-do list looked something like this:
1. CALL COACH ROYAL.
The new coach, who was born and raised in Cookeville, Tennessee, knew all about Royal, the last coach to win a championship for Texas, in 1970. Brown’s father and grandfather were both high school football coaches, and they talked about the UT legend, who was in his heyday in the late sixties, when Brown was a star high school running back. When Brown was interviewed for the UT job, he asked Royal, who was part of the search committee, if he’d help him get the program back on its feet. Royal, who liked the confident, optimistic coach, said yes. He had been mostly ignored by his three successors, but Brown gave him an office and an open invitation to visit and accompany the team on road games. The new coach would even ask the old one to speak to the team. In return, Royal became Brown’s mentor, giving him wisdom: Football at Texas is every day, he said. You’re responsible for the way millions of Texans feel every day. It would be pressure like Brown had never felt. Royal also gave him comfort; both Brown’s father and grandfather had recently died, and Royal would become a father figure. He also gave him cover; Royal would become a major ally when things went sour.
2. REACH OUT TO FANS, ALUMNI, AND THE MEDIA.
The day after getting the job, Brown met with the media and more than two hundred die-hard members of the Longhorn nation at the Frank Erwin Center, where he fired up the crowd by talking about playing a bold, high-scoring offense and a swarming, aggressive defense. Longhorns fans had heard about Brown: He ran an honest program and his players graduated. He was both emotional and smart. He was a hugger, known to cry after losing games, and he was a winner: an offensive coordinator at OU in 1984 under Barry Switzer (the best he’d ever seen, the hated Sooner coach later said), a head coach at age 32 at Appalachian State, then Tulane, and then UNC, the basketball school that he took to 10-1 and number seven in the country, just before being hired at UT. After the Erwin Center pep talk, Brown hit the road, crossing the state and speaking to alums and fans at Longhorn Foundation meetings, telling stories and football anecdotes in the cadence of a politician; by football season he had given 93 speeches. The hungry Longhorn faithful packed the meetings and afterward met him, shook his hand, and were thrilled that he looked them in the eye and remembered their names.
3. MAKE THE PLAYERS FEEL COMFORTABLE.
At the first team meeting, Brown joked with the players to stop ogling his wife, Sally, and he talked about having fun. “He came off really well,” says former linebacker Anthony Hicks. “He struck us as different from [previous coach] John Mackovic—the way he would run the team. He was aggressive and had an open personality. With Brown, I thought, ‘This is gonna be fun.’” Brown did little things that meant a lot, like getting the team an air-conditioned bus for rides to the practice fields in the summer. He was, the athletes all agreed, a player’s coach. He wasn’t above fooling around with them, dropping down and doing push-ups, even dancing. And he was sincere. “He cares about you as an individual and as a player,” says former linebacker Dusty Renfro, who played at UT from 1995 through 1998. “He wanted to make sure everything going on in your life was okay. He always took your side first—against other students, the administration—until he found information to change his mind. A lot of coaches are not like that.” The player Brown needed the most that first season was running back Ricky Williams, who was contemplating leaving school early for the NFL. Brown persuaded him to stay for his senior year, and from that time on, he has not lost one player early to the pros.
4. BOND WITH HIGH SCHOOL COACHES.
Texas has more blue-chippers than any other state, and Royal advised Brown that he needed to connect with the men who coached those boys. Brown and his new staff set out to visit every one of the 1,200 high schools where kids suit up in pads—and then stayed in touch with them. He started a high school coaches’ clinic, where coaches could visit UT to learn how the big kids practice and play; it’s now second in size only to the Texas High School Coaches Association clinic, attracting more than one thousand coaches every March. Brown also invited the coaches to fall practices, which are usually off-limits to the rest of the world, and he gave them each a free pass to every home game. They came, they saw, they returned home excited about Brown, the UT facilities, and the Longhorns.
5. BRING BACK THE LETTERMEN.
Like Royal, former UT players felt underappreciated. Brown let them know they could visit his office anytime or come to any practice. “That hadn’t been done in recent years,” says Ted Koy, star running back and member of the class of ’69. “He told us UT has a rich football tradition and he wanted to cultivate it.” Brown threw himself into helping with the yearly lettermen’s golf tournament, and more and more former players began to show up. This April, 160 came, old-timers like T. Jones (class of ’59) and Koy and more-recent grads, like Hicks (’99). Most wore orange, and all had nothing but great things to say about Coach Brown. “He’s brought back the family feel,” says Hicks, “the orange blood, so people can say, ‘This is Texas.’”
6. RECRUIT AS THOUGH YOUR JOB DEPENDS ON IT.
Brown almost immediately started knocking on the doors of high school phenoms. Recruiting is all about persuading, and nobody persuades like Brown. “He could talk me into eating a ketchup popsicle,” said Bay City quarterback Beau Trahan, part of that first class of recruits in 1998. Brown routinely scored the country’s top prospects, such as New Jersey quarterback Chris Simms in 1998 and Midland running back Cedric Benson in 2000. “Coach Brown just makes you feel like you’ve been friends with him your whole life,” said Simms, now a quarterback with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Benson was the recent number one draft pick of the Chicago Bears). To lure players, Brown also set to work upgrading UT’s facilities. The 70,000-square-foot indoor space, a.k.a. the Bubble, was built. He remodeled the Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletics Center into a huge state-of-the-art facility. He installed a trophy room, where he encouraged visiting prospects to hold the Outlands or the Heismans of the past. He expanded the weight room. He took the kids down the hall past photos he’d put up: Longhorn All-Americans and academic All-Americans, great moments in UT history, and a wall of NFL helmets with the names of the Horns who had played for each team. He took the kids and their parents to the athletic facility’s academic center, with its 36 computers, and told them that UT spends more than any other university on counselors and tutors for its athletes. And, he can now say, it works. When the NCAA released its first-ever academic report cards in February, UT passed, scoring higher than OU.
Royal—check. Fans, alumni, and media—check. Players, coaches, lettermen, high school kids—check. By the start of Brown’s first season, his to-do list was done. That year the Horns went 9-3, with Williams running wild and winning the Heisman. Enthusiastic fans packed Memorial Stadium again, and by the time UT won the Cotton Bowl, Brown was a local hero. He’d go out to restaurants and people would stare or ask questions about the team or ask for autographs. Brown would politely answer and sign. After the season, his salary was increased to $1 million a year.
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