This is the year Mack earns his salary

S

SouthAfricanHorn

250+ Posts
As I sit and ponder the effects of Ike on our schedule I can't help but think that I really don't give a flying **** how it affects our ability to prepare and play our conference schedule. No excuses this year. No talk about "well, playing Arkansas limited our ability...etc"

Put me in the camp that says this is the exact type of year when head football coaches show what they're worth. I'm not talking about bringing the alumni base together, giving motivational speeches and being a great advocate for student athletes, etc etc etc. Those qualities transcend the season at-hand. Those are all great attributes of our coach. I'm talking about taking a young, talented team that isn't expected to challenge for the Big XII and turning them into a solid team that plays up to their potential and surprises people. And by people I mean the opposing team.

Yeah, this isn't ground breaking news; it's something I feel like a lot of us have been talking about throughout the summer. How good can we be? How will our secondary progress? Who will be our star running back?

To me, this is the year when Mack needs to COACH these guys up to the level they need to be at to win games they're not supposed to win. He needs to coach the team to put the players in a position to succeed. No post-OU excuses. Just f'n win. Win in Boulder (which I think we will). Go into Dallas to play a VERY good OU team (that we may have no business beating this year) and just WIN; then come out and beat Mizzou the next week. I'm not looking for a 'good fight' or post-loss adjustments that help us win the rest of the games on the schedule. I'm looking for pre-victory coaching. I'm talking about taking care of business. I'm excited. I'm emotional.

Spare me the excuses. Just ******* win this year. Give me a year when I can celebrate the unexpected victories as opposed to accepting the unexpected loss(es).

Go out and coach.

No excuses. Just win.

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-SAH

PS This isn't meant to be a knock on Mack or a rant. Just how I feel right now.
 
Arkansas, Colorado, OU, Missouri, Okie St, and Texas Tech is a rough stretch of schedule. I'm not making excuses, but I don't think any team in the country can go through that schedule w/o a loss. If we can manage only one loss to those teams, I think most Texas fans would consider it a great job on Mack's part.
 
I'd be thrilled with one loss! There are certain games which mean more than others. Beat OU and lose to Tech in a close, well-played game is fine. Because we'll be in a position to win the South. It's just time to win those really important games. I guess, as with every season these years, OU is the most important game in the stretch. We're not 'supposed' to win that game, but there are teams that take care of the business they need to take care of and slip up along the way. Those teams (read: OU) still play in significant bowl games at the end of the year. If we want to play in one of those games we'll have to beat OU in my opinion. It's time we take our fate into our own hands and this year there is really only one person that can do that and it's Mack.

Edit: maybe not thrilled with a loss, but it's understandable
 
I agree with you SAHorn. We have beaten all these other teams and there's no reason we shouldnt again this year. We SHOULD beat Rice, Arky, CU, OU, Mizzou, Okie Lite, Tech, Baylor, KU, aggy. We have just as much talent if not more than every single team on that schedule. Everyone is acting like were playing the best of the best week in and week out. Come on people, we own every single one of these teams (minus blow u) since 98.

I too am tired of excuses and I can just see this Ike thing being one of those excuses this year. BS it's an excuse. Deal with it. Go do what your paid to do. Do you and I not execute at our job becasue of something like this....no, we push on and keep on keeping on. Suck it up.

Mack does need to earn his stripes this year.
 
I wasn't really aiming it at you, but that's ridiculous. You brush off Stoops' 8-4, but Mack is an underachiever. You ever stop to think that the 10-3 from 2005 actually was a pretty good bounce-back year? It could have been much worse.
 
I want to see the list of several teams that would be expected to beat ou at a neutral site*.

*Assuming the neutral site isn't a bowl game.
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BevoMD, I'm not sure if it's due to attrition from talent leaving for the NFL (I'm sure other teams have this issue) or our constant turnover at DC (other teams have coaching turnover, too). I don't know what it is but that's a great question. There is always "something". The comparison isn't perfect but it is certainly valid. Very frustrating.

I appreciate where we are, but this year, to me, will prove if we really do belong with those other teams. I'm so tired of seeing OU in the top 5 and us on the outside.
 
SA Horn makes an interesting point.

This is a year when both coaching and various players stepping up (or not) will make a huge difference.

The Big XII is loaded this year. Much like the SWC of the late 70's, albeit currently all pass oriented.

Question remains, will we develop a D and therefore contend for the title as in '77, 79, 81, 83, or just fail, as in other years.

I'm honestly curious to find out.
 
The Mack v Stoops argument just doesn't fly with me. They are two very very different coaches. Stoops is an aggressive, go-for-broke style guy, who will fall to 8-4 every now and then but who also wins three consecutive conference championships. Mack is the sturdy as a rock coach. He doesn't call the deep pass on 4th and one, he fields a solid team that puts up 10 wins a season. It is part of who he is and a big reason he starts seniors. They may not make the big flashy plays or stops in the backfield, but he plays conservative and they are less likely to get burned for the deep ball.

That being said, don't expect Mack to go-for-broke this season and win out. The three greatest challenges are stopping Mizzou and Tech's high-flying offenses and battling a top 5 (rightfully so) OU. Now against Tech and Mizzou he could start all his really fast freshmen DBs and put the heavy bitz on and risk it. This would probably result in a win at Tech (we saw Harrell collapse under this pressure), but a loss at Mizzou (Daniel is heisman good). Maybe we win both that way, but maybe we lose both. Mack will go conservative and see what happens. Against OU I don't know what the play is but that is just a damn hard game.

In short, this is Mack's time to show how good of a raw-talent coach he is, but I would not expect any fireworks in these tough games. We will play coservative football and we will not win out. A riskier coach might win out, but he might also go 8-4.
 
but what about the 10 win season streak! If you think about it, mack has lost 3+ games 6 out of 10 yrs here. If you're playing 13-14 games a year and with our talent, you better be winning at least 10 games a year.

Yes, I'd be very disappointed if we don't win a conference champ. in the next 2 yrs. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't but that would be piss poor. Needs to prove he and greg can get it done without a superman/best college player in history.

rant over, back to coffee.
 
Quite frankly I don't give a **** about that 10-win season streak. It's really quite meaningless unless there is some hardware to go with it. It's all about the hardware. Show me the hardware. Other teams may not have as long a streak of 10-win seasons because of a one or two year slip up, but they win their conference or are playing in a BCS game every other year.

I just can't buy that streak **** when we lose to aTm and K St in the same season and those are two of the losses.
 
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