Mike Roach wrote a book titled “The Road to Texas.” The book shares how Mack Brown was able to convert young boys from Texas who grew up in the 1990s dreaming of playing for any school but Texas.
In the 1960s, middle and high school boys dreamed of wearing the Longhorn helmet and playing in the SWC. By the late 1980s and for most of the 1990s, many 5-star boys no longer dreamed of wearing the Longhorn helmet, and playing in the SWC was to be avoided at all costs.
It was not an easy job for Mack to convert, which is why he started well before becoming the Longhorn head coach in 1997. Returning 5-star athletes to Texas from boyhood dreams of playing for Miami, Florida State, Florida, Washington, and many other programs was a herculean job that required Mack to not to allow competitive coaches to scalp him of his strength.
The Demise of the SWC was inevitable
The decline of the SWC as a conference with exceptional sports teams started in the 1970s but reached a hyper-sonic state of decline in the late 1980’s. The SWC led the nation in backstabbing, cheating, open pocketbooks, and NCAA infractions. Many professionals, with tongue in cheek, said that a SWC game should start with a burglar alarm. In truth, the SWC got caught more often then other conferences because many of the coaches were sloppy recruiters bragging to others of athletes signed and stupid enough to actually confess to infractions.
Of course, there were other factors that also caused the rifts from competitors in the SWC:
Private schools were no longer able to compete financially with state schools;
too many Division I teams in one state to support a solid fan base for all Texas Universities;
the SWC was too regional in scope for national exposure;
The Cotton Bowl's contractual obligation to feature the SWC winner against another ranked team became an anchor around the Bowl committee's neck.
At best, the SWC teams' who played in the Cotton bowl were mediocre.
If the reasons above are not enough to destroy a conference then consider this, while the feuds, scandals, NCAA rules infractions and fan apathy were indeed reasons for the death of the Conference
· the official beginning of the end for the SWC can be traced to a 1984 Supreme Court case in which Oklahoma and Georgia won an antitrust case against the NCAA, seizing control of television deals. Market size and TV sets became significant factors for a conference. Not good for the SWC because 90% of its schools were in Texas which hurt its marketability for a big-money TV deal. It was a regional conference in a sport going national.
· Arkansas was the first to see the need to leave the SWC to maximize revenue for the Arkansas program. The SWC paid visiting teams $175,000 per game, which Arkansas said was unfair. Arkansas fans followed the Razorbacks to Rice, SMU, TCU, and.... and helped fill their stadiums but only received $175,000. When Rice came to Arkansas, the Owls brought 400 fans, but the institution still received $175,000.
· Toward the end, attendance had become a significant problem for the league's smaller schools, with Texas, Texas A&M, and Arkansas subsidizing the rest of the conference teams.
What T.V. sports viewers wanted to watch were the kingmakers and one of the King makers was Notre Dame who said “ Let’s make a Deal”. The Deal exposed the real motivations of academic institutions. Joe Paterno said it best about Notre Dame.
"We got to see Notre Dame go from an academic institution to a banking institution." The race for the money with T.V. contracts was on. Penn State followed suit and moved to the Big 10 for "economic" reasons, and Arkansas was invited to join the SEC. For some reason, the members of the SWC still did not understand that money was one of the primary driving forces of Arkansas's decision, not disloyalty. The SWC official's comments were clueless and knee-jerk, saying "the Iraq of college football "is the SEC. Quite frankly in hind sight quite shocking that the SWC leaders were so clueless about the new football frontier, and there lack of understanding of the significance of T.V. rights based on viewership led to the decline of the state of Texas football.
The Problems with Texas football was caused by a Lack of hands on leadership from the decision makers for the conference. Head in said ostrich like is a good analogy. Lack of pro-active leader was the major problem that caused this dark period of Longhorn football from 1986-1996 not the coaches. The U.T. and State decision makers chose not to listened to all the 5 star recruits and their families who were bored with the SWC and tired of the internal strife caused by infractions. Leadership chose not to make hard decision to improve the SWC choosing instead to take the easy way out by blaming Coach Akers, McWilliams, and Mackovic for poor performance. The decision makers had no clue that the problems were systemic and not coach related. The decision makers were so clueless that when Arkansas left the SWC, they accused Arkansas of disloyalty instead of listening to the real reasons.
instead . ad they chose to blame poor performance There was a lack of leadership Power politics destroyed the SWC and quality sports It is a condemnation of both the leaders The 1988-1996 years were just as dark as the were just as bad as the 2013-2022 years for Longhorn football but for vastly different reasons.
By the time leadership chose to acknowledge the problem it was too late for great football in the from 1986 to 1996.
The first signs of recruiting problems was the recruiting of Blake Brockermeyer.
Blake Brockermeyer -The Reluctant Longhorn.
Blake’s father, Kay, was an offensive lineman for Texas, but his son never intended to sign with Texas. Blake had other visions for his future in college football. UCLA, Florida State, Washington, and…… were his dream schools. As with many high school players in the late 1980s and 1990s, Blake was not impressed with the SWC. A conference composed of Texas schools and Arkansas. He says in the book “The Road to Texas” by Mike Roach, “You know, TCU wasn’t very good, and I didn’t want to stay at home anyway. Texas had not been very good the last few years, and so really, I thought if I wanted to get to play somewhere” else….. It took the influence of strength coach Dana LeDuc, Coach David McWilliams's charisma, and his parents to convince him to play in the SWC.
B.J. Johnson, Fozzy Whitaker, and Roy Miller never considered visiting Austin but Mack Brown changed their minds.
B.J. Johnson “ I Never Grew Up Wanting To Go To Texas.”
B.J. Johnson is another example of a Texas athlete who wanted to leave the state to attend a more exciting conference. B.J. says, “Texas was never a school I watched that often.” “Florida State was the school that I wanted to go to naturally.” “ I didn’t start loving Texas until I had to go down to a football camp.” When I met Darryl Drake, “That’s kind of what made me start liking Texas and having some interest.”
In 2000, Johnson was the first freshman to start at wide receiver since 1992 and then had one of the best freshman receiver seasons in school history setting seven records. He set the school's freshman single-season record with 41 receptions and also set the school's single-game freshman for receptions (9) and receiving yards (187) in 2000.
He caught the game-winning catch against Texas Tech in 2003.[4]
Even in the early years of the Big 12, many great high school players wanted to play out of the state. When Fozzy Whittaker was in middle school, he was a Miami Hurricanes fan. Fozzy says, “I loved the University of Miami…. especially in the 2000, 2001, and 2002 era.”
But when Ricky Williams had his Heisman run and Cedric Benson joined the Horns, he became more interested in the Texas's Longhorns. Fozzy joined the Longhorn Nation in 2007. The 2007 class was ranked 3rd best in the Nation that year.
Roy Miller
The SWC and Big 12 were not on his radar screen in Roy Millers early years. His favorite team was Mack Brown’s North Carolina team. Living in Killen his recruiting cycle started at 15 years of age. He verbally agreed to play for Baylor and later Oklahoma but verbal agreements are non-binding so after visiting the family environment built by Mack Brown Roy signed with Texas in 2005 . Coach Mack Brown and Gene Chizik made Miller the top priority of their recruiting class. In fact, Coach Mack Brown visited Killeen Shoemaker High School to visit Miller and greeted every single teacher in the building. Considering the massive popularity of football in Texas, Coach Mack Brown was regarded with more importance than even the Governor of Texas. Being a University of Texas’ alumni, Miller has been an All-Conference player, Big 12 Conference champion, Big Twelve Player of the Week, a National Football champion, and The Fiesta Bowl’s most valuable player on defense. Miller finished his Longhorn career playing in 49 games and starting in 19.
Roy signed with Colt McCoy, Jamaal Charles, Henry Melton, and other great athletes. Roy attended Texas from 2005 to 2008
Quan Cosby The Road Less Traveled
Quan, like many Texas football players, didn't dream of becoming a Longhorn when he was younger. He wanted to be like the exciting Auburn and Florida State players, Bo Jackson and Deon Sanders. Quan admits that he only watched one school, and that was Florida State. However, everything changed for him when Mack Brown became the coach, and Chis Simms hosted him during his visit to Texas.
In 2001, Cosby was close to signing with Texas and becoming a part of a class that included many future NFL stars. However, he decided to pursue his love for baseball and turned down the scholarship. Money was the driving factor behind his decision. After spending four years in professional baseball, he realized he wanted to return to football and become a scholarship college athlete. At the age of 23, he started over from scratch. Cosby was a part of the 2005 Longhorn recruiting class, alongside great athletes such as Colt, Jamaal Charles, and Henry Melton. Cosby even shared an apartment with Jamaal Charles. A couple of years later, both McCoy and Cosby were breaking records.
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Quan Cosby
As a senior in 2008, Quan set some impressive records by catching 92 passes for 1,123 yards and ten touchdowns. By the time he left Texas, he had become the second-leading receiver in career receptions with 212, third in career receiving yards with 2,598, and fourth in touchdowns with 19. His 4,701 all-purpose yards also earned him the #6 spot in Longhorn sports history. Despite his impressive accomplishments, Quan's major regret is that his eligibility was up, and he could not play on the 2009 national championship contender.
MICHAEL HUFF - A MICHIGAN WOLVERINE TURNED LONGHORN
It was all Michigan all the time in the Huff family. When Michigan played the family gathered to support the Wolverines. The family never watched Texas football in Michael’s formative years.
According to the book “The Road to Texas” by Mike Roach Michael Huff had two scholarship offers for track from the University of Houston and Arkansas and only one football scholarship offer from Purdue. Texas offered a scholarship late in the recruiting process. He visited Texas in December after his last high school football game. Mack Brown offered him a scholarship as a “developmental prospect”. A two-star athlete. Since Michael had few football scholarship offers, he committed immediately. His family was shocked that he received a football instead of a track scholarship.
Michael demonstrated exceptional speed and mental toughness as a Longhorn, starting in 50 out of 51 games. Throughout his career, he achieved numerous milestones, including recording seven interceptions - 4 of which were returned for touchdowns, setting a school record. In addition, he made 318 tackles, had 44 pass break-ups, forced six fumbles, and made three recoveries.
Michael wrote the article below for The Players Tribune. The full article is in the link below, and the text has been saved just in case the link is lost. In the USC game, it was Michael who stopped USC’s White short of first down, which led to Texas's touchdown to win the game. Michael had double digit tackles, one important game changing tackle, and one fumble recovery and was named Defensive player of the game.
QUALITY CONTROL COACH / UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN
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Best defensive back- Michael Huff 2005-
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When Texas is playing good football, it just seems like the world is a better place.
It’s hard to describe exactly. It’s almost like there’s this warm feeling all throughout campus, Austin, central Texas, and the entire state. There’s a definite buzz of positivity. The grass is greener, everyone is happier and sweet tea just tastes that much sweeter.
You hear plenty of theories around the state about why the Longhorns suddenly stopped winning a few years back. It’s been analyzed and reanalyzed up and down by every person who has an opinion about football. But I think that, ultimately, none of it really matters. I’m not here to discuss what went wrong, or whether “Texas is back.”
What I do want to talk about is what this program means to me — because it means a lot. It means just about everything.
I was fortunate to spend eight years playing defensive back in the NFL. It’s something I’m very proud of and that I’ll always be thankful for, but — and I tell this to every young man I meet who has similar ambitions — it was a job. From the moment you’re drafted to the day you retire, there is always a business element attached to playing in the league. Even though you spend your whole life dreaming of making it there, a lot of things become much more complicated once you’re in the NFL. From the outside, you only see the money, the nice houses, the flashy cars and the endorsements. But once you’re immersed in the actual pressures of the job — the injuries, the benchings, and the reality that, at any moment, your career could be over — your perspective changes just a bit. Your relationship with the game changes.
In college, things were a lot simpler. It didn’t matter whether you were a five-star blue chip, or a two-star guy like myself — everyone was treated the exact same. You slept in the same dorms, ate the same food and were held to the same standards. The coaches might have made the decisions in terms of scheme and playing time, but it was the guys you lived with — and grew up with — who you really answered to.
When I close my eyes and think back to that time in my life, the first image that pops into my mind is the DB room. Oh man, the hours I spent in that room. I can see Quentin Jammer right there at the front, quietly watching film. When I was just a redshirt freshman, he was one of the guys I looked up to. He was also the person I never wanted to disappoint.
Duane Akina
Fans and the media often focus on (and blame) college coaches, but what is often overlooked is how crucial veteran leadership is to players' growth.
Yeah, if I ever screwed up during a game, I knew Duane Akina, our DB coach we give me an earful. Longhorn player Rod Babers said
Akina was a coaching intellectual.
“Coach Akina was a new-age coach who really wanted to break us down mentally and intellectually. As a true teacher, he wanted to find out how we best learned the concepts.”
Huff continues, But during those practices and games, it was guys like Quentin I didn’t really want to let down. If I was supposed to be behind the line before we started a drill, I knew I better make sure I was behind that line or otherwise those seniors would be all over me. We all knew what we expected out of each other — and it was that standard that led to us producing the best defensive backs in the country for the better part of a decade.
When I first enrolled at Texas in 2001, I was a track guy. I liked looking pretty in my uniform and grabbing interceptions. But tackling? That wasn’t for me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was a pretty selfish, one-dimensional player.
Four years later, I was a starter on an undefeated team playing in its second consecutive Rose Bowl. The final play of my career, it was fourth-and-two with USC leading us 38-33 late in the fourth quarter. The Trojans were on our 45-yard line and we needed to prevent them from getting a first down in order to keep our national championship hopes alive. When the ball was snapped, they handed it off to LenDale White, one of the most physical running backs in the country. And with the help Brian Robison, Tim Crowder, Rod Wright and the other guys up front doing the dirty work, I got an open shot at LenDale and stopped him just short of the chains.
And I think most college football fans know what happened from there.
That was a play I couldn’t have made when I first arrived at Texas. Not just physically, but I also wouldn’t have had the aggressive attitude andinner fire to do that. That play was possible because of a lot of work that had gone on behind the scenes to mold me as a player and as a person. It was possible because of a mentality ingrained in me that we would not and could not lose.
Over time, I think that edge — that mentality — slowly left our program.
And the biggest reason why I decided to rejoin the Longhorns as a quality control coach last year was to help bring it back.
If you went back to when I was 18 and told me I would be a football coach one day, there’s no chance I would have believed you. To me football was more of a fun game than a life-long career.
But after I retired and was living in Dallas, it felt almost strange not to be involved with the game. I didn’t just miss being around football, I missed being in Austin and with the Longhorns every day. I met my wife there, and we had always dreamed of going back one day. It was Charlie Strong who first encouraged me to get involved with the program. I have him to thank for inviting me back. Then when Tom Herman took over last December, I met with him in his office and we discussed a plan for how I could best help the program. It involves a lot of different things but I was all in and now love what I’m doing.
Here’s what I can say for certain about Coach Herman: You will not find another person more focused or more dedicated to winning. He’s a really smart and detail-oriented person who probably could have found success in a number of fields, but decided to pour his talents intofootball and the young men who play it.
What I appreciate about him most is that he’s a players’ coach. I don’t mean that in the sense that he’s going to love you all the time — what he understands is that that’s not the best thing for every guy. There are a hundred different kids in this program with a hundred different personalities and needs. Tom has shown that he knows that reaching a young person requires a different approach for each kid. And he’s going to find the right buttons to push with each player and you’ll come out of his program as a better player and person than when you arrive. Now that I’m a parent myself, I really appreciate that about him and his staff.
Myself? The younger version of me needed to be pushed and yelled at a bit in order to learn. I remember when we were playing Oklahoma State early in my career, there was a receiver on their team who was talking trash. So after I broke up a pass in a physical manner, I decided to step on his back a little on my way back to the huddle. But I never made it back to the huddle — Mack Brown pulled me off the field immediately and said, in very clear terms, “If you do something like that one more time, you’ll never play here ever again.”
And that was exactly what I needed. I was involved in a lot of plays throughout my college career, but that particular play is the one that makes me feel most embarrassed because I was only thinking about myself. I was happy that I made a play, not that our team had. And that that’s the kind of mentality you can never let exist in a successful program.
As I matured into my junior, senior years I watched how the guys ahead of me operated. And gradually the coaches let me take charge and become a leader. I realize now that if I had maintained that selfish attitude when I became a starter — even if I was really good — it would have eventually been passed down to the guys below me. And that’s a problem that can’t be fixed through schemes or techniques — that’s culture.
A winning culture isn’t something that gets created overnight. It’s much easier to lose than it is to develop. Sometime in the last decade, I think Texas lost that culture of accountability. We became more scared of losing than committed to winning.
That’s what Coach Herman and this staff are changing. Every message is clear, it’s about doing your job, being accountable and playing for the man next to you. I absolutely love what we’re preaching to these kids and the approach the staff takes. It reminds me so much of what Coach Brown built here in the past and in just a few months with Coach Herman, I see it developing again. The culture is changing.
Want to know the worst feeling? The complete opposite feeling of when Texas is playing good football?
Wearing an Oklahoma jersey.
Just awful. Embarrassing. Gross.
There were more times than I care to remember when I was in the NFL that I would lose a bet with a teammate over the Red River Rivalry game and be forced to wear that awful jersey. I had to wear quite a few college jerseys of teams other than Texas during my NFL career. Later on in my career, when Texas started really struggling, it always kind of served as a reminder of how the program was slipping. I remember when I was a sophomore and we only won nine games. It felt like the world was ending. Today, we don’t have a single kid on our roster who has ever won a bowl game. That’s something that seemed unimaginable to me a decade ago.
A big part of my job — the part of my job that I enjoy most — doesn’t have much to do with football. I spend a lot of time with our players just talking about life and my experiences. We’ll grab food or walk to class together and I get a sense of what their lives are like. There are a lot of things different now than when I was in college. The whole social media thing has made it pretty easy for outside influences to filter in negativity to kids who are at an age when it doesn’t take much to feel negative as it is. So that’s a different kind of challenge. But I also recognize that a lot is the same. They have the same hopes and fears as any college kid. A lot of the players occupying the DB room today remind me a lot of myself at different phases of my college career. So it’s nice to be able to offer them the advice I think I would have needed when I was their age.
That’s all to say that, in being around these kids, I’ve seen firsthand that they’re doing the right things. I see guys like DeShon Elliott and P.J. Locke and they’re doing the things that Quentin Jammer and Rod Babers asked of me, and that I passed down to underclassmen. As a coach, as an alum and as a mentor, that’s really nice to see.
Texas is a huge school with a lot of passionate fans, so the impulse is always going to be to react to a single result and wonder whether the program is back to where it once was. But that’s just not how it works. What we’re trying to build here — what we had here — took much longer than one game or even one season. Because there’s simply no quick fix for excellence. There’s no one game that’s going to signify that we’re back.
We took a step back in our season-opening loss to Maryland but grew from that. There are no moral victories of course, but USC was a real turning point for this young team from a maturity standpoint. Now we’ve won our first two Big 12 games and are heading into OU as a much better team.
The Sooners are a team we all have circled on our schedule. It’s the greatest rivalry in college football. The game’s played on a neutral field, crowd split right down the middle and it’s surrounded by the Texas State Fair. We even have a countdown clock in our facility that lets you know when that game is coming. It seemed so far away for so long but now it’s just hours away.
Saturday will be a great challenge as, despite the Iowa State loss, we still know Oklahoma is an amazing team. It’s an opportunity for us to compete at the highest level and to take a huge step towards getting back where Texas belongs: Among the elite of college football.
Hook ‘Em
Michael Huff
KASEY STUDDARD
AARON WILLIAMS
In Aaron’s youth, a chance meeting with Longhorn weightlifting coach Jeff Madden put him on the path to becoming a Longhorn. At 12 years of age, he was invited to the Longhorn locker room to meet Roy Williams, Cedric Benson, Vince Young, and many others. He was hooked on Texas.
Three-year defensive back who appeared in 37 games, including 23 starts in his last 26 games, at cornerback and on special teams ... declared for the NFL Draft as a junior ... 2010 Nagurski Trophy and Thorpe Award watch lists ... second-team All-Big 12 in 2010 ... posted 106 tackles (64 solo), three sacks, 12 TFL, three pressures, four INTs, 24 PBU, six forced fumbles, one fumble recovery and five blocked punts ...
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Aaron says about defensive back coach Duane Akina. He was a quarterback at Washington , then built the Desert Swarm defense at Arizona before coming to Texas. He was the architect of the DBU (Defensive Back University). Aaron considered going to Auburn to be coached by Will Muschamp, but instead Mack Brown hired Muschamp to come to Texas. Muschamp pushed the players to their limits and made them winners.
SELVIN YOUNG