The University of Texas announced Wednesday that the UT System Board of Regents has approved a deal in which UT football coach Mack Brown‘s current contract — which pays him $2.017 million annually — will be replaced with the 10-year deal that will pay him $2.159 million in 2005 and $100,000 more than that amount each year through the 10 year term of the contract.
The new contract is the fourth most lucrative one for a college football coach. Only Bob Stoops at Oklahoma ($2.3 million), the departing Nick Saban at LSU ($2.3 million) and Tommy Tuberville at Auburn ($2.28 million) make more than Brown. Due to one-time $1.6 million bonus he received on his 53rd birthday this past August, Brown was the highest paid college coach in 2004 with earnings $3.6 million.
Geez, just think what Brown could make at UT if he could ever manage to beat Oklahoma — to whom his teams have lost five straight times — or win a conference championship, something that none of his teams has ever accomplished during Brown’s 17 years of being a head coach on the major college level. Not to have won a conference championship at a school with the resources and talent of Texas is a major blemish on Brown’s resume.
Moreover, Brown’s Texas teams have had a history of playing poorly in big games. They have lost five consecutive losses to Oklahoma and Brown is clearly overmatched by his nemesis, OU Coach Stoops. Brown’s Texas teams have lost both Big 12 championship games in which they have played, including the galling upset by Colorado in 2001 that prevented that Texas team from getting a BCS bowl berth.
The bowl record of Brown’s Texas teams (3-3) is similarly tarnished. Last year’s 28-20 loss to Washington State in the Holiday Bowl was particularly awful, as Texas made WSU’s zone blitzs appear to be a new invention in football.
So, one certainly has to admire UT for keeping up with the compensation levels of the elite group of teams in college football, which is where UT aspires to be. However, a valid question remains as to whether Mack Brown deserves it.
In more troubling news for UT, assistant coach Dick Tomey, who is largely responsible for the development of the UT defense this season into an elite unit, will be departing the UT staff next season to take the head coaching job at San Jose State. Perhaps even more troubling from an emotional standpoint, Tomey is attempting to persuade UT graduate assistant coach and former QB great Major Applewhite to join him as an assistant on his San Jose staff.