Austin, Texas – It’s said Eddie “Jelly” Watson never met anyone he didn’t shake hands with or hug around the neck. His influence on high school football players is legendary in the rolling hills of middle Tennessee, where the local football coach has regal status in burgs such as Hartsville, Lynchburg and Collinwood.
In the late 1950s, he never made a bigger impression on a player than he did on two wide-eyed kids, ages 7 and 6, who bounced up and down in the school bus that carried his Cookeville Central High School Cavaliers to their games. Mack and Watson Brown idolized their grandfather. They lived on his word, some words more than others.
“He always said, ‘You need to do what’s right,”‘ Mack Brown said. “‘And if you do what’s right and do the things in your life that make you happy, you’ll be successful.”‘
Mack Brown, 54, is happy, more so than some critics feel he has a right to be. In his eighth year at Texas, he has corralled a splintered Longhorn Nation by using a Tennessee aw-shucks persona and a powerful grasp of Longhorns history. He also did it by being the only coach in the country to win at least nine games each of the past nine seasons.
And this year, he has his best team, a second-ranked 4-0 squad reminding many of the last undisputed national championship team here in 1969 under Darrell Royal, one of the legends Brown embraced when he arrived.
However, Brown also has two holes in his résumé big enough for Bevo and his extended mascot family to stampede through. In 10 years at North Carolina and the past seven at Texas, Brown’s teams have never won a conference title. That would be forgiven in Texas if he hadn’t committed the ultimate sin: losing five straight to hated Oklahoma.
As a 14-point favorite over a rebuilding 2-2 Sooners team, he could – no, should … no, must! – end the streak Saturday when the teams meet at the Cotton Bowl. A loss would dust off the firemackbrown.com website; a victory, topped with a national title Jan. 4, would solidify his legend as the second coming of Royal.
Despite his accomplishments at Texas, his legacy might depend largely on winning Saturday’s game.
Funny, Brown never thought coaching could be so important. His first association with coaching pressure was granddad going hunting and fishing on game day. Brown would watch Texas games on TV in the 1960s and see Longhorns fans throwing rose petals at Royal’s feet.
As a kid, Mack Brown played youth baseball and played receiver with Watson, the quarterback, his senior by a year and now coach at Alabama-Birmingham.
“We were closer than most brothers because we were always on the same team,” Watson Brown said. “I was the shortstop; he was the second baseman. I was the quarterback; he was the receiver. I was the point guard; he was the two-guard. We never played against each other. You get very close when that happens.”
At the time, coaching wasn’t part of their DNA. Their father owned a sporting goods store, Brown & Watson, and the sons played at Vanderbilt. Mack wanted to be an attorney while Watson wanted to be a sportswriter. “I know,” Mack said. “I’ve said since, ‘My gosh, what happened to him?”‘
When Mack transferred to Florida State to play under assistant coach Steve Sloan in 1971 and Watson took a graduate coaching position when Sloan took over Vanderbilt in 1973, the brothers considered following in their grandfather’s footsteps.
Sloan gave them advice they live by to this day: “Make sure it’s about the kids and not about the sport.”
For Mack Brown, it had to be about the kids. His first coaching experience was as a graduate assistant at Florida State in 1973-74, when the Seminoles won one game in two years.
“In the weirdest way, it was probably really good because I got to see all kinds of crises and how coaches had to handle them,” he said. “I knew going in that if you won, you had problems, and if you lost you had all kinds of problems.”
Watson was the first to learn. He was fired at Vanderbilt after five seasons, the last two both 1-10. Meanwhile, brother Mack took the pro-style offense he learned coaching under Florida State offensive coordinator Dan Henning and lifted downtrodden Tulane to a .500 record in 1987 and later North Carolina to three 10-win seasons.
By 1997, Texas had dropped lower in the state than Laredo, belly-flopping to 4-7 under too-corporate John Mackovic. When Texas came calling, Brown turned to the legend he saw on TV as a kid.
“(Royal) said, ‘The whole university community is like a box of BBs that had been dropped and spread all over the floor,”‘ Brown said. “‘It’s a very powerful place if you can get all of those BBs back in one box.”‘
He has them all back – except one: Oklahoma.
Talking to Brown, however, you think he’s ready to grab his fishing pole Saturday. Pressure bounces off him like passes off his receivers’ hands in last year’s 12-0 loss to Oklahoma. It goes back to 1989, in the middle of a 1-10 season at North Carolina. His team was playing a struggling Georgia Tech.
He turned to Tech coach Bobby Ross and asked, “How do you do this?”
“He said, ‘Unless you’re positive, unless you’re showing that you’re tough enough to lead the program and unless you can see the vision that it’s going to be OK at some point, nobody else will,”‘ Brown said. “So I’ve always taken that and felt it was true.”
Which is why he treats the huge hole in his résumé with all the worry of a hole in a doughnut. When he took North Carolina to No. 4 in the country in 1997, powerhouse Florida State beat the Tar Heels. When he led Texas to nine-plus win seasons, Oklahoma played in three national championship games.
“My timing’s been bad,” he said with a smile.
However, last year’s Rose Bowl victory and this year’s win at Ohio State are winning many of his staunchest critics who never listened to Royal when he said, “I was on the selection committee and we could still be looking and not find a better fit for Texas than Mack Brown.”
His next tormenter could be Southern California. Or maybe Virginia Tech. Then again, maybe this is the year those rides on the school bus in Tennessee pay off. Maybe it will boil down to the philosophy learned at his grandfather’s knee.
“Enjoy the kids and let them have fun and not get into a deal of, ‘Oh, no! What if? What if we don’t do everything that we’re supposed to do?”‘ Brown said. “I’d rather say, ‘You know, we’ve got a chance here to do everything.
“‘Let’s have some fun and do it.”‘
Mack’s mark at UT
Highlights of coach Mack Brown’s coaching tenure at Texas:
43 Games Longhorns have won in the previous four years.
23 All-Americans in seven years; one Heisman Trophy winner.
8 Consecutive winning seasons.
7 Consecutive bowl appearances.
7 Consecutive years of nine or more victories.
7 Consecutive top-25 finishes.
Source: University of Texas
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
