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Think stellar recruiting can override amateur coaching? Check out the not-so-thinly-veiled slap at John Cooper South ... er, Mack Brown:



By Adrian Wojnarowski
Special to ESPN.com

The NFL scout tells the story of traveling to the University of Texas to study tape on the long line of Longhorns pro prospects, popping a copy of the Oklahoma game into the machine and turning his discerning eye to the quarterback without a fighting chance for success. For three seasons, nothing changed: Same simplistic schemes, same vertical routes, same fallout for Chris Simms, cursed with the fallout as a big-game failure.

"Hang in there," the scout told Simms. "We see what's happening here."

...and Mack Brown is nationally in the Top 5 Coaches in Victories in the US over the last 3-4 years. If he can't coach how come UT has enjoyed more success than 96-97% of the teams in Division 1. Recruiting! I'll take Mack Brown's poor reputation for coaching and his unparalleled reputation for recruiting and cry myself thru those terrible 10 and 11 win seasons every year.

He is a very poor strategist and decisionmaker, but he's a great salesman and one of the top two or three recruiters in the nation. Recruiting will always keep his teams near the top; one of these years they're going to have so much talent that it will overcome his gametime deficiencies.

Unless Mack wins a National Championship he will never get any respect. That's the bar for him. It may not be fair but when you have the largest budget in college sports that has to be the goal. 10 wins/year is not the goal.

But eventually, it will catch up with him as they expect national championships down, there, not just 10 or 11 win seasons. Trust me, we at SMU would be thrilled to come close to their wins and losses each year.

.....there are a lot of legendary coaches who coached a lot longer than Mack Brown before they won their first NC. Bear coached at Kentucky, A&M and several years at Bama before he won his first-Tom Osborne coached 20 years at NEBRASKA before winning his first. It ain't that easy. Fact is Brown's one more than all but 2,3 or 4 teams,

Bear also coached briefly at Maryland, as I recall. The difference is that Bear was recruiting mostly local boys, not a team full of NFL-bound monsters. Put UT's talent under Bear Bryant and you wouldn't hear any "yeah, but he couldn't win it all" talk. Bryant was a great coach. Mack is a salesman with a headset.

....who wins more than 97% of the coaches in college FB proving that recruiting IS more important than coaching!

Recruiting makes up for a lot of sins. A great college coach has to be able to recruit to be truly successful. Look at Forrest Gregg who was a great coach (name another coach who took the Bengals to a Super Bowl). Yet, he had no talent to speak of and he didn't like recruiting. It will be interesting to see how TCU is in four years. Franchione was a great recruiter and a decent field coach.

Sam Wyche

Does this mean it's time to brush the dust off my Iggy Shuffle?

No, but you can dust off your ICKEY shuffle.

Mack Brown is to football what Roy Williams is to basketball. They both can recruit a team full of All-America players, and neither will ever win a national championship. Stallion's right - recruiting is vital. But once you get the horses in there, a coach should be able to develop them. Raw talent will give such teams a nice record while beating up teams with inferior talent. But when push comes to shove and these teams face opponents with similar talent, these coaches have shown nothing.

Gee, see there, there's so much dust and cobwebs I can't even remember the guy's name. Oh, right, Ickey Woods... That's it.

Anyway, if you'd even seen me dance, you'd call it "Iggy" too!