Texas Coach Excuses OSU Loss

Posted by Mark Barnes Sep 12, 2006

For one split second, I had some respect for Texas coach Mack Brown. Despite winning roughly 84 percent of his games, Brown came under fire a couple of years ago, because his teams were loaded with talent, but he hadn't won a college football National Championship. Brown quashed the criticism in 2005, as his Longhorns ran the table and won the title.

Brown proved he could win the big one, and he never cried foul along the way. Of course, when you're trampeling over the competition the way his Longhorns did, what reason do you have to complain?

I gained some respect in 2005 for Brown. Less than one year later, that respect is gone.

After the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes spanked Texas in week two of the 2006 season, in a showdown of number 1 versus number 2, Brown's excuse was an obscure new rule that starts the clock, when a ball is kicked, rather than when the receiving team catches it.

Can you believe this? It's not like Texas lost by a point, after all. The Buckeyes treated Brown's boys like a fine cigar, smoking the Horns right down to the nub. This thing was a whitewash from the beginning.

In fact, Brown should love the new rule, which he claims cost his team 22 minutes of game time (I'm skeptical). If Jim Tressel's squad had 22 more minutes, Ted Ginn could have raced by Texas' starry-eyed secondary several more times, and this would have been a world class blowout.

Brown made himself and his team look bad with his ridiculous statement. He should have kept quiet, and fewer people might have noticed how badly he was outdueled.