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BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEDIA DAYSJuly 28, 2010Mack BrownDALLAS, TEXAS PETER IRWIN: We're now joined by Coach Mack Brown from Texas. Coach, welcome. Your thoughts about the summer and upcoming season. COACH BROWN: Thank you, Peter. We're really excited at Texas that the Big 12 stayed together and that we'll keep a lot of the traditional rivalries, the Texas-Texas A&M game, the Red River Rivalry, those type games will still be played. We actually polled our kids and our high school coaches and our players and parents of recruits, and they were all 100 percent that, if it could still work out to have a Big 12, they all wanted to. Disappointed to see that Colorado and Nebraska will not be part of it in the future because they both are tremendous universities and have great programs. That's the only disappointing thing, I think, for us is that we've had tremendous rivalries and games with both schools through the years. To not have them will be disappointing, but we also understand that they need to do what was best for them. Q. Mack, where would you list finding depth and good play at defensive tackle as the key to this season? COACH BROWN: It's our true key on defense. Kheeston Randall is here with us today. He's a junior. He needs to step up and play like Roy Miller and like Lamarr Houston from last year. And then we've got numbers at that position, but we do not have quality experience. We have to look at a number of guys to see what fits. We can go to a three-four, we can move Sam Acho in there. We'd rather not move Sam in. All of a sudden, you're looking at Calvin Howell, Tyrell Higgins, Kyle Kriegel, you're looking at freshmen. That's one of the keys for us to determine in preseason. Q. Mack, what are your expectations this year for Kyle Hix in particular and that whole offensive line in general, with all the new faces across the front group? COACH BROWN: We will go back and work harder to get the ball downhill from the tailback spot. We'll have the quarterback under the center more. We did a lot of self study and found out that we had more explosive plays when the quarterback was under the center in the running game as well as the tailback being right behind the quarterback. So we feel like we'll give them a better opportunity to be stronger and tougher in the running game than we've been the last two years. In our self-study, we're second in the country in rushing in '04 and '05. And then when Colt took over, we started throwing the ball so much that we have not been as aggressive in the running game as we would like. It worked. Colt threw the ball really well. He's the most accurate quarterback in college football history, but also when you have instances come up when you lose a quarterback -- and we lost Colt in the Kansas State game his first year and the Alabama game last year -- you're putting your second quarterback, in our estimation, under a tremendous amount of pressure if you can't run the ball. The other reason that we feel like we need to go ahead and run the ball more and better is the last two years in the BCS we played two-back downhill running Ohio State, and this year we played two-back downhill running Alabama. And in both cases, we didn't tackle the great tailbacks very well. We feel like by having downhill runs and working more in the running game and against the running game in practice would help us if we go out in conference and see someone who wants to just line up and run us. Q. Coach Brown, you talked a little bit about your quarterback. Obviously, he got thrown into the fire in the championship game, but what have you seen out of him? And, also, what did that experience of playing in that championship game mean for him? COACH BROWN: It was funny. When Colt got hurt and we turned to Garrett, and I said, Garrett, get your helmet, his eyes were as big as silver dollars. He looked at me like you got to be kidding. And he couldn't find his helmet, and it's got No. 7 on it. So he wasn't planning on playing. I saw him in pregame. He ate all of his steak, so he wasn't nervous. You can always tell the guys that say "can I get some of your steak" aren't going to play. And someone asked him this morning, What did you say to the team when you first got in the huddle? And he said, I really can't remember. I don't know that I said anything. I probably called the play they told me to. But it was obvious in the second half that he relaxed and got much better and made some plays. I really felt like we would win the game with 3:57 left. After the game, I walked up and said, I'm sorry if we put you in a real tough spot. His answer was the proper answer. He said, Coach, that's not a problem. The problem was I turned the ball over, or we would have won the national championship. And then he came back in the spring. He's been a tremendous leader. He's a 4.0 student. He got tremendous amount of respect from the kids in the game, and we feel like that carried over through spring and into the summer. Greg Davis has done a tremendous job with Major Applewhite, Chris Simms, Vince Young, Colt McCoy. So we feel like that Garrett will end up being as successful as that group in the same span of time. Q. Mack, a lot of people talking about the OU-Texas game October -- COACH BROWN: The Texas-OU game? Q. Yeah. But some people suggested in the new format moving to December. Any chance we can just compromise and just have a playoff game, one versus two, and play October at the Cotton Bowl and then in December at Jerry World? COACH BROWN: Next? We were told that we needed to stay away from the future of the Big 12 and our opinions about the future of the Big 12. I think the contract for Dallas and for the Cotton Bowl and the state fair is through 2015, and I'm sure that a lot of people now will look at the possibilities of what will we do in the Big 12 if we do not have a championship game to fill championship Saturday. So I think all of those are issues that our athletic directors and our presidents will start looking at immediately, I'm sure. Q. Mack, in the same vein, talking about the schedule and the fact that you will be playing a round-robin schedule but you'll only be playing three nonconference games. Do you have to take a look at that nonconference schedule and maybe maximizing it without the title game as part of the equation? COACH BROWN: Yes. Has that been determined? Q. Dan Beebe indicated the most likely scenario was no title game. COACH BROWN: We haven't been told that, but we've heard that that's a probability more than anything else. What we've discussed is that, if we do not have a championship game, that game had a great presence, as Barry is talking about, in December. It was up against a lot of other championship games. So you'd like to have a game in that slot for national TV to watch. But, also, you've got to look at your strength of schedule, because if you played in that game it was against a great team, usually on the other side, which helped your strength of schedule. And I know that Butch Worley and those who are doing our scheduling are looking right now at getting more of the, quote, Ohio State-type matchups nationally that we could have early in the season for the future. I think, when you looked at the realignment possibilities over the last year, it's been really difficult on the athletic directors to schedule for the future because they didn't know where they would be. They didn't know how many games they'd have. If that does occur, we'll have to get rid of a couple of games too. So that makes it more difficult for other teams because it's a small window of time here that you're changing your schedule to not play that fourth out-of-conference game. Q. Got a question about the leadership of Gilbert. How has he matured in that role left behind by Colt McCoy? COACH BROWN: We think Garrett is doing really well. Again, last year, there were times I would say, Garrett, you're not very vocal. You're not leading as well as I expected, and he said, This is Colt's team. I'll lead as soon as Colt graduates and moves on, and he did that. And I do think his presence in the national championship game gave him instant credibility with the older kids. And unlike Colt, who hadn't taken a snap when he stepped in that huddle, Garrett has. Q. There's a rumor that you guys have a football game somewhere up in the Nebraska area this year. Have you heard anything about that? Do you plan to go to Lincoln sometime this year? COACH BROWN: I haven't looked down the schedule. We open up with Rice. No. A lot has been said about the video and the game and the matchup and last year's conference championship game. I really -- I think that's a compliment to us, very honestly, for a program like Nebraska to be talking about Texas this time of the year, and they should be. They're good. They've gotten back. They're a mix and on the national scene. And my only disappointment is that we may never play again unless it just happens, because I love that game. I've said many times -- and I really mean this -- as a young coach growing up in a coaching family, I looked at coaches across the country that I admired and wanted to be like, and Coach Osborne is one of those guys. I've enjoyed him. I've gone to visit there. I've watched Nebraska practice. He helps me in so many ways. A lot of what we do was modeled after him when he was in the Big Eight at Iowa State and at Oklahoma. And I can honestly say that, if I called Coach Osborne this afternoon and asked for help, he'd give it to me. He's just a great person and a person I admire a lot. I admire Bo a lot. He's done a tremendous job. Of course, we coached against Bo in the Big 12 for a couple of years, and I think Bo is very similar to Will Muschamp. They're aggressive. They've got a great style of defense. They charge up the kids. And Bo will do a tremendous job. I also can say that the highlight of my old sports life in sportsmanship was in '98, when we played the game, the great black-shirt defense. After the game, Ricky Williams gained 150 yards, and we're out on the field with an ABC interview, and I actually told him to put your helmet on and keep your head down as you're walking off the field. I'll never forget that the Nebraska fans gave him a standing ovation and started the chant of Heisman, Heisman, Heisman. So I think it's a great place to play. There's a lot of spirit right now between the two schools. There's none between myself and Coach Osborne, our team and the Nebraska team. We have great respect for them. We look forward to going to play. And everybody is talking about Nebraska fans may not give us as good a welcome. I think they will. They're tremendous fans. I've never seen teams that clap for the other team when they leave the field. It's just an amazing place to me. And we've tried to model ourself, our fans now, in some cases, will stand up for the other team as they leave the field, and that was modeled at Nebraska. I remember the first year we got back, Coach Royal said, That's amazing. I wish we could get our fans to do that. I said, Coach, they're booing me. I can't talk to them about not booing the other team. I've got to work on me first. Q. Mack, there's been a lot of news in the SEC area this year about the agents. How big of a concern is that to you, and what do you guys do to help prevent that? COACH BROWN: It's a huge concern for all of us. It's not new. It's been a concern for years. And because of you, because of technology, there's just more visibility now than ever before, and I think that's good. I think the fact that you all are watching programs so closely and people have camera phones and video cameras now on their camera phones, that kids have to understand that, if you're going to break rules and you're going to be out in the public, you're going to be more scrutinized, and we're going to find it. When all this came up, we actually went back to look at what we're doing, and we spent probably 12 days on educating our players, our staff, and the parents and high school coaches on the agent and the agent rules. I do think that there's some great agents. We've got 52 kids, I think, right now in the NFL, and there's a lot of great agents that help those kids. So to say all the agents are breaking rules is unfair. And, secondly, we're lucky that -- because I think most of our guys have done right, from what we can tell. They're also talking to our players and current parents about, My agent's really good. Wait until the season is over and I'll get you in touch with him and you can sit down with him. So, hopefully, it's doing it right. But Butch Davis said it caught him off guard. If we got a call today and one of ours was involved with an agent, I would be disappointed and I would be shocked. The responsibility is on me. It's on our staff. It's on the compliance department. It's on the agent. But it's also on the young man. If a young man is going to sign at 21 years old for $20 million, he knows he shouldn't be going to parties or flying or taking cars. I think we're all accountable. I know there's some things in the works where we're going to work with Commissioner Goodell, the Players Association, and the NFL, Grant Taft. We're going to get everybody involved and just see what we can do to make it better. A couple of years ago, they started making it legal for players to talk to agents, and that's a dangerous one. You know, it's hard to have a relationship with somebody if you don't talk to them. You want to sit down and talk to them and go out to lunch, what did you pay for, what did he pay for, and then you've got to have receipts. If somebody takes a picture of you and an agent downtown, it gets gray already. I'm not sure we're where we need to be, but I do think, as disappointing as it's been for some universities and some young men to be accused right now, especially this time of year and it's very difficult. Usually when something is this public, everybody steps forward to try to fix it. So I think that some good will come out of the allegations here. PETER IRWIN: Coach, thank you. End of FastScripts |
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