There have hardly been darker days for the Texas Longhorns football program under Mack Brown than the past year.  The misfortunes and struggles are well documented on this site, and I would not call you crazy if you predicted a return to mediocrity.  There have been many criticisms, some well-founded, of Mack Brown including his ego, stubbornness, etc.

However, I think these recent hires should remind us why Mack Brown is as good as he is.  This is what Mack does, he is a people person. He is a CEO coach.  And he's the best damn one in the country in my opinion.  He brings together the coaches, players, and fanbase to succeed in a way that is unparalleled.  How did we ever lose sight of that?  One only has to look back to 2007 to see what Mack does when faced with adversity.  This is when he is at his finest, this is why he gets paid what he does.  The end results are not in yet obviously, but the 2011 season has a pulse again ladies and gentlemen.  Color me impressed.

And to top it all off, Mack more or less waited until after the bowl season to make all these hires, showing the utmost respect for the programs these coaches have come from.  Utter class, the only thing I would expect from Mack Brown.  This is our head coach fellow Longhorns.  For all his faults, be proud of who we have, one of the best in the business.

I think we can all agree that baseball receives nowhere near the coverage that football and basketball do.  One only needs to look at the television coverage of each sport for evidence of this.  But I don't think this excuses what I consider to be a massive overlooking of a serious error.

I feel that as much as Augie was an integral part of the previous two national championships with his gambles paying off immensely, he is just as much a part of this year's early exit with his lack of throwing the dice.  I am referring of course to Chance Ruffin playing six innings. 

When interviewed after the game about this decision, Augie's defense was that he remembered a game during the regular season where an early lead evaporated and was scared that this would happen again.  The Longhorns allowed 13+ runs four times this year: twice allowing 13 runs, once 14 runs and the last being the infamous Missouri game.  Are ya'll ok with a coach that is scared to play ball?  Because I personally find myself in the camp of "It's not even f***ing close to acceptable to say you were scared."  Where's Mike Gundy on this one?  I believe that if we played a 10 game series with Sam Houston State and a 12 run lead in every game, we would win 10.

I called for Chance to be pulled in the gameday thread among others, and I recall Kirk Bohls writing a blog about this very subject the next day.  Let's play a fool's game called what if and say that Augie pulled Chance during the second and the Longhorns go on to win a close game of 13-3.  Chance had only pitched something like 15-20 pitches at that point and so we'll say he's ready to pitch the next day.  This leaves us with Chance or Wood to start against St. Johns, and assuming wins, whoever didn't pitch in the previous game for the first against Rice and Kasparek for the second Rice game.  How can anyone disagree that this looks infinitely more manageable than the shitshow of pitching we showed up with against Rice?  Rice nearly scored the number of runs in one game these other three starters allowed in three games.  But of course this never happened because Augie felt it was necessary to keep our best starter in for 6 innings in 12-0 game against the worst team in the regional.  That's great coaching right there. 

PS.  Henry Melton, Benjamin Wells, and I'm 95% sure Derrick Johnson showed up to a house I was at a few days ago.  A few volleyball players there as well.  :DDD

I apologize for such a short post, as I have very little information from myself, but I know someone who works for the orangebloods staff and here's what he has to say, just passing it on:

"I'm hearing that John Chiles will now be a WR fulltime instead of a QB. He still might get some QB snaps, but he will no longer be part of the QB depth chart."

Not that our possibly former situation looked much better, but if this true this brings about Harris as our #2 QB and probably kills his thoughts of transferring.  I know alot of people were looking for more Colt and Chiles plays, but I'm not sure this is what they envisioned.  Would be sick to watch him out in the open field a little more however.

The conference commissioners today decided to keep the current BCS postseason format and will soon work on negotiating television contracts through 2014.  Only two commissioners, ACC and SEC, had any support for a playoff proposal.

The commissioners said that the BCS is doing better than ever before, which I feel that most fans would agree with, but that still isn't saying much.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=3375352

In other news, ESPN put up a poll on this subject matter up on their front page today, and as of right now, the standings currently look like this:

ESPN Poll

What a fucking joke.  Good to know the higher ups are in touch with the sport and don't just care about money or anything of the sort.

On a side note, DKR is nearing structural completion:

http://www.texassports.com/webcam.html