Rick Barnes and Mack Brown ...

Hey, I like them both.

This idea that Brown had all this wind at his back is ********. Sure, we had tradition, but this program was a mess. Broken fan base, mediocre recruiting, spotty results.

4-7 the year before Brown got here.

In the last FOUR YEARS Brown has lost 7 games. He has won 43 and a title.

Texas Football has a lot going for it. Brown helped re-ignite a lot of that.

I love Barnes and wouldnt trade him for anyone, but why does he get a free pass for washing out of the tourney so early last year with the National Player of the Year?

Look around the landscape. For every Pete Carroll, there is a Richt or Rodriguez. Great coaches who so far havent sniffed a title game.

Urban Meyer followed a national championship by losing 3 games with the Heisman Trophy winner at QB in his super duper offense.

I am not all excited [or surprised] about 9-3 this year, but some people need to get a grip.
 
i think barnes is just a tougher coach. he is demanding of his players, will bench players in a heartbeat, and will work their arses off. i like some of the things he does--like making his players submit a list each week ranking each player from hardest worker to the one who is showing the least amount of effort. he compiles the lists and posts the results for the team to see. a lot of hornfans would like to see rick's toughness on the football field. bottom line is that both are great coaches and great guys, but rick is simply a no b.s. kind of guy that demands excellence.
 
I'm one of the "can't win them all" variety of Texas football fans, so I'm not freaking out about Mack. He is a good coach, and as long as he makes necessary changes to the defensive staff after this season I don't have a problem with the job he is doing. It's also fair to point out that he is the #2 most successful coach in Texas football history and he is on pace to take the #1 spot. So regardless of how great some of you perceive our "resources" to be, we haven't had any coaches (even DKR) win as many games with consistency as Mack does.

That being said, I think Barnes is a better coach. The shot you take at Barnes for "not winning anything with the best player of the last decade" is just as ignorant (if not more) as comments like "omg brown can't win without Vince Young!!." That Texas team started four freshman and one sophomore--it was likely the youngest team to ever make the NCAA tournament; it's not fair to expect too much from a team that young regardless of how talented they are.

Also, as others have pointed out, basketball is not football. Several "elite" programs have fallen off the map in recent years (Syracuse, Maryland, and to a lesser extent Michigan State.) UConn won two titles in the last decade yet failed to make the NCAA tournament last season with a young team similar to ours (actually quite a bit more experienced than ours.) Illinois has been stunningly mediocre since their great 2004 season. Kansas has been a joke in the NCAAs, etc.

Barnes has had some bad timing with early entries, but he is pretty much one "TJ ford back for his junior year" or one "DJ Augustin is a freshman for 2005 team instead of 2006" from being Billy Donovan, and I very much think that it will happen soon (maybe even as soon as this season.)
 
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Scenario for you:
1. Next year the football team sucks and we go 4-8 with the worst offense in D-1. Mack will tell us that we are 3 years removed from a national title and Greg Davis holds all the records here at Texas.
2. Basketball team sucks and goes 10-22. Do you think Barnes would sit there and tell us all that we have X amount of McD AAs and have made the sweet 16 X times in the last X years? **** no he wouldn't.
That is the difference.
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Game. Blouses.
 
It's apples and oranges. Mack Brown isn't even a coach, much less a better coach than Rick Barnes. He is more Director of Football. If he gets graded as Director of Football he gets a bit of a pass for sticking with Akina (up until now - if he doesn't make a change then he's crazy). He gets a "D" for sticking with Davis. He gets an "A" for recruiting. He gets probably a "C" for being a gameday motivator.

I don't really follow basketball as a fanatic so I can't comment on Barnes, but his record in the postseason doesn't seem all that different from Penders to the casual fan like me. It's more along the lines of Penders got a couples of wins when he shouldn't have and Barnes got some losses he shouldn't have. Doing more with less and doing less with more can end up being the same thing.
 
I'm just pissed Bob Weltlich isn't getting his due for preparing Texas basketball to be put back on the map by Tom Penders. If it weren't for Kaiser Bob's tireless efforts, we wouldn't have even needed Penders. Weltlich was a Knight disciple, people. SHOW SOME RESPECT OR I'M GETTING MY RIFLE OUT AND PELLETS WILL RAIN ON YOUR POOL.

MEET ME AT THE SALAD BAR IF YOU'RE MAN ENOUGH.
 

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