Is Mack Brown the most overrated coach in college football

With the amount of flak he's gotten recently, Mack definitely isn't overrated right now. Maybe a couple of years ago.

 

Earlier this week, the Sporting News ranked the Big 12 coaches from top to bottom, but later on, it released its rankings of the nation's coaches from top to bottom.

How'd the Big 12 stack up?

Better than the rest of the competition.

Alabama's Nick Saban topped the list -- argue with that at your own risk and UMass' Charley Molnar brought up the bottom.

Where do the Big 12 boys rank?

No. 5: Bob Stoops, Oklahoma
No. 7: Gary Patterson, TCU
No. 10: Mike Gundy, Oklahoma State
No. 11: Bill Snyder, Kansas State
No. 16: Mack Brown, Texas
No. 40: Charlie Weis, Kansas
No. 41: Art Briles, Baylor
No. 44: Dana Holgorsen, West Virginia
No. 48: Paul Rhoads, Iowa State
No. 50: Tommy Tuberville, Texas Tech

That's everybody well above the top half of the line.

From the Sporting News:
The Big 12 coaches have by far the best average ranking: 27.2, which crushes the second-best SEC’s average ranking of 43.3. Next in line: the Pac-12 (43.8), ACC (45.6) and Big Ten (46.8).

In our top 25 are five coaches apiece from the SEC and Big 12, four apiece from the Big Ten and Pac-12, and two apiece from the ACC and Mountain West.

http://espn.go.com/blog/big12

 

Not to anyone who remembers Mackovic. Good work keeping clean after the Probation Wars of the late '80s/early '90s (Tal Elliot, the "bookie," was our Special Teams coach at Baytown Lee); but god they hated that man. "3rd and Draw" McGraw.

 

The only complaints I've ever had about Mack was his handling of the Chris Simms/Major Applewhite situation, and his attachment to Greg Davis.

 

No.. he's definitely not overrated.

In 2010, he might have had another National Championship had an unfortunate situation with Colt McCoy not happen. He's definitely earned whatever reputation he's gotten and he's a solid Head football coach and recruiter for one of the top 3 premier football programs in the NCAA.

 

I like you Realist but what's your point here? You hating on UT or something?

 

head coaches 1. set the tone 2. recruit 3. raise money 4. hire and fire

Mack does those things pretty well.

 

So, all the coach did was build a program that finished the season undefeated, after losing only 1 game the year before.

I R NOT IMPRESSED BY YOUR PREFECTION!

 

No doubt in my mind that UT wins that game if Colt stayed healthy.

Mack is a very good coach.

DD

 

I'm pretty sure if they had won the title, finishing an undefeated season, it would mean they were good in every single game they played.

I'm pretty disappointed that Mack Brown doesn't s*** gold and distribute it to the entire population of Greater Austin. However, I do think he's done about as good of a job as one could ask with the football team.

 

Their basketball coach is the overrated one, not Mack Brown. He does delegate a lot to the coordinators but there's nothing wrong with that.

 

Colt McCoy is a terribly average QB who would have been mutilated by Saban's defense.

Oh wait. He was, on the first play.

When will people stop thinking these Big 12 QBs who face zero pass rush and minimal coverage are titans of the position?

 

Gotta agree there. I was a defender of Rick Barnes for a long time. Not any more. It's time for a change in the program.

 

While I think Mack is very good (probably a better recruiter and personnel guy than a coach), it's even more certain OU wins the RRS that year if Bradford stays healthy, thus knocking UT out of the title game altogether.

The 'what if' street runs both ways.

 

Other than Greg Davis, I think Mack is a great coach. Not on Saban's level because he doesn't have the intensity Saban has, but I can't think of a much better coach for Texas.

 

Not really true. Landry Jones put up big #'s that year in part-time duty.

Their issue that year wasn't QB play, it was OL play.

They were down to walk-ons and converted tight ends....which is why Bradford, who isn't very mobile, was injured in the first place. If they had a healthy OL maybe they could have done something. But they didn't.

 

The final score was 16-13, and Bradford (arguably the best player in college football at the time) left in the 1st quarter.

If you don't think that it's reasonable to assume OU wins that game with a healthy Bradford, then ok, but I think that's pretty silly.

Especially if you want to posit that UT beats Bama with a healthy McCoy.

If McCoy is worth 17 points against Bama, surely Bradford is worth 4 against UT.

 

Not unreasonable to think that, but you're extrapolating an entire season based on the result of a mid-season game. Who knows what happens the rest of the year? We're talking about the very last game of the season. All else equal, UT wins.