UT Football Coach
Mack Brown
Interview
Notes from Evan Smith
"Famous saying number one: Football is a game of inches. So it’s fitting, perhaps, that Mack Brown is what you might call a but-for coach. As in, but for Dusty Mangum’s dramatic end-of-game field goal in the 2005 Rose Bowl, Mack Brown might not even have been coach of the University of Texas Longhorns last season. And—but for Vince Young’s once-in-a-millenium performance in the 2006 Rose Bowl, Mack Brown might still be the coach who couldn't win the big game, and Longhorns fans would surely be calling for his head. But—famous saying number two—history is written by the winners, so we find ourselves at the beginning of the 2006-2007 season full of love and admiration and good wishes for 54-year-old Brown, in full blacklit, can-do-no-wrong mode as he enters his eight year at UT. And why shouldn't we love him? Even if you leave the National Championship out of it, his record is astounding: back-to-back eleven-win seasons, four consecutive ten-win seasons, and nine consecutive nine-win seasons for the first time in the school’s history; the only active coach to put up nine wins in nine straight seasons; fifteen straight winning seasons; thirteen straight bowl games; second winningest coach in college football for the last nine years. And on and on and on. And yet—famous saying number three—what have you done for me lately? That’s what every single Horns fan will be asking Brown this season, as he and his Vince-less team try to meet the expectations of the great many for whom the only acceptable outcome is another National Championship. Better him than us." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 9.14.06Watch the 5.22.03 interview.