Mack Brown this past week announced that he is going to be inviting BCS experts to Austin to explain to his team why his team came up .024 BCS points short of Oklahoma.
"Starting out today, they think it is a viable chance for them if they go back if they go out and clean up in a few areas," Brown said Tuesday before the Longhorns began spring practice on Friday.
BCS experts? How about the game film of his team's loss to Texas Tech? Wouldn't that be the most direct explanation of where to "clean up?" A loss, to a team beaten down by Ole Miss (third-place SEC team) and utterly dismembered by the Oklahoma team you are trying to claim to be better than based solely on a win in early October?
But instead, Mack Brown is complaining about the BCS.
"We want to find out where we fell short in those areas. Is it margin of victory? Was it not scoring more because if it doesn't matter to the computers it does to the human vote? We're looking at all those things now."
Really, Mack? We are going to blame a national system for not picking you in a tie between three 11-1 Big 12 teams that went 1-1 against each other? When Oklahoma's resume was clearly the best of the three?
If so, I think that irony can officially be redefined. I think that system was pretty good to you in 2004, when Cal was left out of the Rose Bowl. To refresh the memory, that one-loss Cal team won 10 games by an average of 23.9 points per game, finished in the top six in scoring offense and defense, and whose lone blemish was a six-point loss at USC, which went 13-0 after drubbing Oklahoma 55-19 in the title game. (Texas's loss was to that Oklahoma team, 12-0.)
Aside from an unimpressive finale at Southern Miss (moved from Sept. 16 because of Hurricane Ivan; the Bears passed on a garbage time touchdown in a 10-point win), the thing that kept Cal out was that the Bears refused to pander for votes like Brown did after Texas beat Texas A&M (7-4) by a score of 26-13 at home in its finale.
"If you've got a vote, vote for us," Brown said. "I'm asking you to do that and I'm asking everyone across the nation ... This team deserves to be in the BCS. They deserve to go more than some teams that are being talked about."
Cal coach Jeff Tedford's desperation attempt to snap his school's four-and-a-half decade long Rose Bowl drought?
"We're 10-1, that speaks for itself ... I hope it works out that way. But it's out of our control for now."
That's a slight contrast. "This team deserves to be in the BCS more than them" vs. "It's out of our control." Shameless begging and politics vs. dignity and class. Guess which won out.
The Texas-leaning computers naturally didn't budge, but Texas sprinted past Cal as the polls shifted like A-Rod's account of steroid usage. Six coaches dropped Cal below sixth (nobody in the AP had them that low), two had them down at eighth. There is no evidence Brown asked a few coaches for a favor (not that we would ever know), but at the very least a few of those coaches manipulated their poll, dropping Cal farther to increase the impact of their votes.
So Brown played the system like a fiddle in the past. This year, he said that no one in the country could beat Texas after squeaking by yet another overrated Ohio State team in the Fiesta Bowl. And after complaining that the BCS shunned Texas, you honestly expect us to believe you are something more than a shameless, manipulative self-promoter?
Brown's comments consistently ring hollow as the whiny complaints of a powerful, entitled program that has had plenty of success in recent years yet never seems happy. Not saying he's a bad coach, but please. You can't say his pattering serves any purpose.
Despite being a good coach, he publicly accepts no blame toward his team's shortcomings against Texas Tech. Nor does he focus on the fact that it is the Big 12 that implements that BCS as its three-team tie-breaking rule. (Then again, why would he object; the BCS has treated him well before.)
As usual, Mack Brown even with a high finish takes the low road. He's begging to know what they need to do better in their 11 wins rather than their one loss. Like any good politician these days, he's completely missing the point.
So enjoy watching Texas relentlessly pile it on to any over-matched opponents in 2009. And enjoy listening to Brown whine about what the Longhorns did in their wins when it is their losses that keep them out of Pasadena.
March 12, 2009
JJ:
Yeah whatever. After Mack’s BCS swindle, how exactly did Texas and Cal then do in their Bowl games? I do recall Texas beating Michigan en route to a national championship run the following year while Cal folded against Texas Tech and disappeared the year after that. See ya Cal.
March 12, 2009
Kyle Jahner:
Two things:
1) The bowl results after the fact are irrelevant to coach behavior before the fact. Mack shamelessly begged. Tedford took the high road. The results of the bowls changes NOTHING. Even IF Texas was better.
2) Games aren’t played in a vacuum. Anyone who has ever played a sport can understand that being shunted off to a bowl regarded as beneath your performance and ability can effect a team trying to get up for the game. Some teams overcome it, and some play like they felt they should be somewhere else. Cal was in San Diego; their minds were in Pasadena.
My point was that based on their seasons, Cal had, at the VERY LEAST, equal standing with Texas that year, and probably had the better resume. And Brown cried until he got his way. And my point was that Brown is complaining now about the same system that got him into his first Rose Bowl.
Who knows. Maybe Cal, up for its first Rose Bowl in over 45 years, beats Michigan worse than Texas did. It was, after all, a Big Ten team in the Rose Bowl…