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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But his honeymoon with Texas fans lasted only until the 2000 OU game, when the Sooners crushed the Horns 63—14. Fans couldn’t understand why Brown alternated quarterbacks, going from the freshman Simms to junior Major Applewhite, who had been the Big 12 Co-Offensive Player of the Year in 1999. Brown apologized to fans, coaches, and players afterward, calling it the worst loss of his career. He was lambasted for indecisiveness and playing it safe. What good is a great recruiter, asked some critics, if he can’t coach those kids to win? Things didn’t get much better the next year, when he again juggled the two quarterbacks, starting Simms but eventually replacing him with Applewhite in the Big 12 championship game, which UT lost. Still, UT went 11-2 and wound up ranked number five, the first time that had happened since 1983. In 2002 the Horns again went 11-2 and wound up number six.
The 2003 season ended terribly, when heavily favored UT lost to Washington State in the Holiday Bowl. Brown panicked, critics said, yanking then-freshman Young for the less mobile Chance Mock against a team that was number one in the country in quarterback sacks. The loss gave more ammo to newspaper writers, talk radio callers, and angry posters on message boards such as the newly created firemackbrown.com: Yes, Brown was winning games against teams like North Texas. But he couldn’t beat OU, and he couldn’t win a conference championship, much less a national championship. He couldn’t even get to a Bowl Championship Series game.
BROWN’S UT OFFICE is a long way from the dank, cinder-block field houses of his youth. The room, with dark paneling and white carpet, is large and heavy with a sense of accomplishment. Everything is orderly, and every artifact of glory is in its place: Heisman, Doak Walker, and Rose Bowl trophies on the coffee table; pennants, plaques, and group photos of teams past on the wall. Brown sat with his back to a huge window, through which you could see the grand expanse of Memorial Stadium. I asked him how he saw his job as head coach. “I’m in charge of a huge business with one hundred thirty student athletes, plus another forty-seven people who work in football in the building. And then there’s your investment with the media, your fan support, your faculty. It does get enormous. You’ve got to be able to walk out of Joe Jamail’s office with a coat and tie on and go into a high school with blue jeans that’s maybe five miles away and then go into a sixteen-year-old’s home that night. And handle all three situations well.”
Indeed, the best college football coaches are multitasking geniuses: part motivator, part psychologist, part salesman, and part football brainiac. Brown was born and raised for the role. His father, Melvin Brown, was the tougher of his coaching influences. Once, as a Little Leaguer, Mack took a called third strike, and Melvin, watching with other parents, yanked him from the game. His grandfather Eddie “Jelly” Watson was gentler yet still won more games than any other high school coach in Middle Tennessee history. Mack was brought up in a disciplined Church of Christ household, went to American Legion Boys State, sang in a choir, and played sports. He loved football most of all and got a scholarship to Vanderbilt, then transferred to Florida State, where, after his fifth knee operation, he gave up playing and began coaching. By the time he got to UNC, he had developed many of the things that make him the coach he is today, such as good-old-boy charm, an openness to others’ ideas, and the ability to sell his own. He likes to talk, often quoting Royal (“As Coach Royal says, ‘You don’t ever want to sit in the shade’”) and spinning football anecdotes and aphorisms, many of which he’s told before.
I asked him about the perception that he is a CEO coach. “I would think it’s a compliment if it means I’m in charge of a corporation that has a huge budget and is a great source of revenue and attention for the university,” he said. “If it means I don’t do anything but delegate, I’d say it’s an insult.” Brown acknowledges that he spends a lot of time trying to figure out the right thing to do, collaborating with the people whose opinions he trusts the most—his assistants—then making the final decision. “Even my wife tells me I listen too much. I listen to a lot of people’s opinions because I want to get their ideas. I’m gonna get all of those ideas because I feel I can make the decision a lot better if I know how our players and coaches feel.” When Brown arrived at UT, he found that his way was different from his predecessor’s. “Mackovic was a micromanager,” says former center Matt Anderson, who played for both men. “He’d watch the offense, critiquing everything, talking with players and coaches during and after practice. Brown lets his assistants coach. They’re the ones who interact with the players every day. I’d much rather have the offensive line coach talking to me on the field.” This doesn’t mean Brown won’t occasionally get down in the trenches with his players; at any given practice you will see him yelling, gesturing, and talking to his players face-to-face. “He’s all about execution,” says Hicks. “Run, block, catch, hit the runner. He makes the game simple.”
On the field and off, nobody works harder. Brown gets to the office at seven and sometimes doesn’t leave until seven—and then he often has to attend some UT function. He puts his players through intense, regimented workouts, but he also treats them with respect. They say his door is always open, and when they come in, he asks them about their family or school. “He always talks about academics and the importance of graduating,” says Rodrigue Wright, a senior lineman who could have been a first-round NFL pick this year but chose to stay and play his last year for Brown. “He always says that even if you do make the NFL, there’s only two or three years in the league on average, and you have to have something to do afterward.” Many of his players grew up in single-parent homes, and Brown, the son of a coach, becomes something of a father figure, often taking them to his home, where Sally will cook them dinner (the couple’s four children are grown and gone). “We look up to him,” says Young. “He makes us be better men—shows us how to treat our moms and girlfriends—when we see how he is with his wife. He shows you how to respect the adults around you.”
Brown wants his players to be happy, and he wants them to feel good about themselves. “We never have ‘weaknesses,’” he told me. “We have ‘areas of concern.’” He sits down with each player at the end of the year and talks about what just happened and what will happen next. He seems to be at his best one-on-one, as he showed near the end of the Rose Bowl. Just before the final field goal attempt, Michigan called a second time-out to try to ice Longhorns kicker Mangum, who trotted over to the sideline to talk to Brown. The TV cameras caught the brief conversation between the 21-year-old walk-on with more pressure on him than any Longhorn in modern history and his head coach, who had looked so intense and uptight throughout the game. With millions watching and their professional and personal lives depending on it, Brown laughed and joked and Mangum smiled and relaxed. Then Mangum went back out and kicked a football 111 feet through a space no wider than a Cadillac.
A UT ALUM I KNOW has season tickets to Longhorns football games and last year took his entire family to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl. But he’s stopped driving to Dallas for the Red River Shootout. He just can’t bear the pain anymore, on the field—189—54 over the past five years—or off, where Sooners fans young and old taunt him and his family. Jeff Ward, an All-American placekicker at UT in the eighties and now an Austin talk radio host, says, “A fan knows that something is going on. 63—14. Something’s wrong. Something seems to paralyze the Longhorns on that day.”
Depending on whom you ask, that something is either Mack Brown or OU coach Bob Stoops. Stoops is a defensive whiz who has devised elaborate schemes that confuse the Horns’ offenses (and almost everyone else’s) while he has allowed his backs to run wild. He’s brash and arrogant. He gambles. In 2001, OU had a 7—3 lead and a fourth down on UT’s 24-yard line with two minutes left. The Sooners lined up for a field goal, but Stoops had his kicker pooch a short punt, which put the ball inside the 5. On the Horns’ next play, Stoops ordered a blitz, the safety hit Simms as he threw, and the ball was intercepted for a touchdown. Final: 14—3. In 2002, OU, down by 11, had a fourth and four on the UT 8 with 22 seconds left in the first half. Instead of taking the sure 3 points, Stoops went for a touchdown, got it, then went for the 2-point conversion and got it too. Now he was down by only 3. UT got the ball back at midfield with 5 seconds left, enough time for one long heave into the end zone. But the Horns played it safe and ran out the clock. The Sooners went into the locker room with momentum and won 35—24.
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