AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -For a guy who started the speculation over when he would retire, Mack Brown acts and sounds like someone who plans to keep coaching at Texas for a long time.
He’s having too much fun to think about leaving. And why would he?
His Longhorns are ranked No. 2, quarterback Colt McCoy was last season’s runner-up for the Heisman Trophy and if anyone thinks Brown is just setting up for one last hurrah, the roster is loaded with enough talent to make a run at national titles for years to come.
“When you win it all once, you know how good it feels and you know how good it feels for your whole state,” Brown said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“To have a chance to win all the games again is a very good feeling. And I still hurt as bad when we lose.”
His players say Brown still has the same edge during practice as they prepare for their Sept. 5 season opener against Louisiana-Monroe.
acker Roddrick Muckelroy said. “He’s like he always was.”
Brown won the 2005 national title and just turned 58 on Thursday as he enters his 12th season in Austin. His 115-26 record over that run is the best in the country and the Longhorns are the only team to have won at least 10 games eight years in a row. Since 1990, only Florida State’s Bobby Bowden (186) has won more games than Brown (181).
Things are just as good off the field. At a time when many schools are tightening their budgets in a tough economy, Texas just finished putting in new permanent seating in the south end zone and completed a swanky dress up of the football complex.
None of this retirement stuff would have even come up if Brown hadn’t started it first by proposing the Longhorns sign defensive coordinator Will Muschamp to one of those contracts designating him as the next head coach last November. The deal pays Muschamp close to $1 million this year and up to $2.5 million by 2013 even if he’s still a UT assistant.
For the record, Brown much prefers the term “coach-designate” over the often used “head-coach-in-waiting” when talking about Muschamp. Brown says that sounds too much like a medieval plot to take over the throne.
“It’s like he’s going to bring me a bowl of (poison) soup to kill me,” Brown joked in a preseason speech to fans. But he’s also serious that he’s not planning to leave anytime soon.
hamp deal was “a message for the future, not for tomorrow,” Brown said.
Muschamp, meanwhile, does his own job of deflecting questions of when he thinks he may be the Texas head coach.
“I’m the defensive coordinator,” Muschamp said. “Everybody wants a timetable.”
Brown says he’s puzzled by the timetable talk. Instead of winding down, he’s still trying to find ways to be a better coach.
Inspired by a nephew’s joining the Marines, Brown was among a group of coaches who traveled in May to Iraq to visit troops. Meeting wounded soldiers, flying in a troop transport and having to wear body armor in the intense desert heat gave Brown a new perspective on sacrifice for a common cause.
“You’re amazed at these kids. This is real stuff. These kids could die every day,” Brown said.
While he was gone, Brown made sure his players back in Austin knew just how hot it was in Baghdad. That only backfired once when it was actually hotter in Texas than Iraq, Brown said.
And Brown used the trip to get a lesson on leadership from Gen. Ray Odierno, top U.S. commander in Iraq.
The general talked not only about being a leader on the sideline during a game, but how to bring leadership out of his players every day through how they act and are dedicated to their teammates.
use. If we don’t have leaders, then we haven’t coached them right,” Brown said.
Brown had a chance to play for a second national title last season. Texas started the season No. 10 and rose to No. 1 by mid-October before a loss to Texas Tech and the Bowl Championship Series formula squeezed the Longhorns out of the Big 12 title game.
Brown said the Longhorns have put that disappointment behind them. The team motto for the season is “We Are Texas.”
“We don’t need to think about (last season), we don’t need to talk about it,” Brown said. “Let’s just go be Texas.”
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