I fear that in Mack's determination to move on, he doesn't understand that now, regardless of how this season plays out, or the next, or - god forbid - the next, nothing will ever again be ok between us and him. Something broke last Saturday that cannot be fixed. Not by him. A sad thing to say, but I perceive that most Horn fans believe that's true.
Nah, we'll beat Baylor Saturday and all will be forgiven. While at DKR, watch for flying pigs and an ice warning from hell.
I have to say I agree. I feel really badly about this, but he's done absolutely nothing since the departure of Colt McCoy to earn my trust. Nothing will ever be the same.
Taps, Mack took us to the top, a place I hadn't personally experienced since 69. If Blake makes that interception, we play for another NC. If Colt doesn't go down in the 1st quarter, we win another NC. No one can ever take those heights away from him, or us. But, we have always had three seasons: 1. ou, 2. the ags, 3. all the other guys. A Texas coach who loses consistently (and badly) in one of those is not meeting expectations. He let recruiting, player development, and the coaching staff languish after the Alabama game. And he took our $5m while he did it. You can't stand at the top of the podium with mud on your face and go on saying, but look what I did six years ago. There ain't no humanity falling in flames from a burning gasbag ... just a sad resignation that a trust has been violated. Just like a wheel - no matter how once grand and efficient, when it's bended, it can't be mended.
Look, none of us should be embarrassed, demoralized, depressed or harboring deep anger about this. We can't let our emotional well-being depend on 18-22 year old athletes. But I do get a charge out of seeing UT compete with the best and win. I was pretty much convinced we had the best coordinators, strength coaches and position coaches in te Big 12, maybe the country. But I'm thinking the results don't live up to the hype and if they were that good, the results would be better.
I was one of the many who thought he should have been fired after the 5th straight OU loss in 2004. How on earth he let all that NFL talent get shutout 12-0 by OU still baffles me. After 4 blowouts, I just expect it from him.
Here's an interesting viewpoint... in my mind anyway. People change over time,, decade to decade. Consciousness changes. I'm a senior citizen. I have a pilot's license and always wanted an airplane. I can get one now, but it's no longer a priority -- it's not even a desire. Same can be said for a ton of things in my life. Flipping that in another direction, I'm now interested in things that I never stopped to think about 10 or 20 years ago. It's all very possible that a head coach at age 61, and with a large family of (some even) grown children, and a history of so many players and seasons that build in one's life almost a succession of generations of players.... that even the game of football and your participation in it can undergo many changes. I'm just winging it here now.... I would expect a senior aged coach in the game to have gotten to the point of seeing football, and life, now more from almost a spiritual perspective. The game of life. Young men dealing with adversity. Never giving up. Realizing you can't win them all, so how do you accept losing? What's it all mean? How do you GROK the game, win or lose? (from "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Heinlein) So what do all fans of all ages expect and look for? - 7 or more explosive plays? - win the turnover battle? - 38% or better in 3rd down conversions? - out-rush the opponent? - take care of the ball? - win the kicking game? - efficiency in the red zone for us? - stopping them in the red zone? I don't think fans ever watch a game at that level. Just as someone probably does not go on a date at that level. Life is a total concept, it's a big picture. A great line in a Bond book... Fleming had James Bond on a beach looking out, and said that Bond fixed his gaze looking out to sea halfway to the horizon. This game, or any game for all fans at all ages and disposition, at a stadium or watching on TV, is similar to the way Bond was looking out to sea: you see everything as a whole all the time, and on any one play you see a tiny part as a reflection of the whole. Every stoopifying missed tackle was no different than the gaze halfway out across the field at every second of the game. It all just had a certain look and feel to it. It's that same feeling of knowing just how things are in a dialog between a man and a woman, and you can be talking and be aware that your lips are acting erratically and are mouthing through words because all your senses are picking up signals, but you're in the middle of the whole thing and there is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, but no denial at all of what is going on. Fans sense and see and watch games with this level of continuity and impression, and you can run out a plethora of statistics to color a game but it will not coverup or discount that overall sensation of the game. What does a fan want? They just want it to feel right!. It's the same thing with the man-woman dialog over the bar table or restaurant table. You both just want it to feel right. The details and mechanics can be this or that and go this way or that way, but it's either right or it isn't. I can imagine a time in a coaches life when everything conspires so that every game played will somehow feel right. A bouncing ball, and all the things that can happen in a game, may determine the outcome. But win or lose, you feel right about the game. You showed up, they showed up. The game just went this way. Now you can look back at key plays, circumstances, and all that. But you won't bemoan the game as a whole, because you know you and the whole team had done everything you could do. You were ready. It's what you do. You can't not be in a game and not be ready. It's in your bones. And the fans may be disappointed in an outcome, but they can live with it ... because it felt right in every other way. The disappointment in that game the other day is because almost nothing about it felt right. It is as if nothing was going on leading up to the game, because so much did not even show up during the game. In 1958 Royal showed up in Dallas and beat a Bud Wilkinson team 15-14. I think Royal beat him 8 out of 9 games counting that one. Coach Wilkinson retired. He had had his run in the early 50s. Not it ran out. He was older, and Royal was at an age and disposition to make it a point to show up for that game with everything on earth on the line. And it showed. Wilkinson had once gone on a run of 47 straight wins, over three seasons. Now he couldn't hold off Royal-coached team in the annual Cotton Bowl game. Things mean different things to us at different times in our lives. Aging is a blessing, because priorities really should change. The soul inside needs to adjust to changing priorities and live in bigger or different ways. I think sports requires a particular mindset of naturally placed priorities that match the needs and perspectives of that game. For a long time I could not understand Coach Royal bowing out of the game at the time that he did. Now I understand. It's also why I'm not getting an airplane. Or that Harley. And why I'm delighted to get my daughter a Cockapoo. I'm old enough for her to be my granddaughter, but she's in the 9th grade and going through that puppy thing. To see her smile over it the way she does is something I had no clue about decades ago. I am adapting to my life as it is, in all ways. I have set aside some childish things that meant a lot to me as a child, and have taken on many other things more suited to my age and disposition. I don't care about immorality of the human form, only of the soul. But I have a ticket to the games and hope to see everything on the field that somehow feels right. I can't explain it in x's and o's, but I'll know it it's right. By that gaze out across the field on each and every play.
If ands and buts were candy and nuts. . . . . . .Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They didn't and we didn't
Before this past Saturday, I would have agreed with Taps. However this team got flat out whipped and were very badly coached in all aspects. While I thank Mack for all he's done, it may be time to turn the keys over with some intensity and fire instead of dying embers.
"I even give Manny Diaz a pass. I guarantee you, if Mack resigned yesterday, and Manny had control of this team, the tackling would instantly be better, b/c we would have real, actual practices again." You are off on this one. Diaz has pretty much complete control over his defense and how they practice.
In reply to: "I fear that in Mack's determination to move on, he doesn't understand that now, regardless of how this season plays out, or the next, or - god forbid - the next, nothing will ever again be ok between us and him. Something broke last Saturday that cannot be fixed. Not by him. A sad thing to say, but I perceive that most Horn fans believe that's true." Unfortunately, I agree with you. I have never heard / seen my Horn friends, my family and the UT fanbase this roiled & genuinely pissed off in 50 years of closely following the Horns - and yes that includes those ou blowouts and that period 2002 - 2004.
