Billionaire Texas booster defends Brown
Texas head coach Mack Brown has at least one major booster in his corner.
Longhorn State billionaire attorney Joe Jamail told Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman on Friday morning that Brown believes he can still have a strong season despite the embarassing setback last week at BYU.
"Mack's still enthusiastic and thinks we've still got a good chance to win this conference," Jamail told the newspaper. "I watched about five minutes of the Tech-TCU game last night, and they couldn't beat my [bleeping] grade school."
The 87-year-old Jamail, who talks to Brown every day and said he expects better results against Ole Miss this weekend after the loss to BYU, will be in attendance for the game against the Rebels on Saturday. He does not believe that Brown is on any kind of a hot seat right now. Brown's contract, of which Jamail prepared, goes through 2020. Jamail said that Brown hasn't lost his enthusiasm for the job.
"I thought the year before last he was getting tired of it," Jamail said of the 8-5 season, "but he has never suggested at any time that he was going to leave. He's never mentioned to me or even hinted that he'd think about leaving. He tells me what he believes. There's no fake to him.
"If you look around, we've got a clean program and one of the most successful programs in the country if you took away the last three years. But heck, 9-4 [last year] ain't too bad. Now it's not too good for Texas. Yeah, it's not going that well right now, but look at what I'm reading about Oklahoma State [the allegations in the Sports Illustrated investigative series] and Alabama [former offensive lineman D.J. Fluker was accused of taking money while in school]. Mack would fix this in a heartbeat if he could."
We'll see if the Longhorns are able to stop the rushing attack of Ole Miss, which features Jeff Scott, Bo Wallace and Barry Brunetti, one week after surrendering 550 rushing yards to BYU last week, a loss that cost defensive coordinator Manny Diaz his job. And we'll see if Brown can get back in the Win column.
Nonetheless, as of now, the man whose name is on the Longhorns' football field at Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium is in Brown's corner, so that's obviously a pretty big deal.
Dave Miller, the college football editor and writer for the National Football Post, is on Twitter @Miller_Dave.
