If your answer was "people skills," then welcome to Barking Carnival, coach!
Now, I understand that Mack Brown doesn't go home with five million simoleons sticking out of his Dockers™. There's taxes, he's got an agent, there's the subscription to ancestry.com. But we've all got overhead, so let's stick to the gross. I guarantee you his agent did.
You hear about astronomical salaries all the time. And, sometimes, really tight markets can squirt out some really crazy numbers. Take college head football coaches, for instance. Running a football program is an ancient and mystical art. There are so many moving pieces, so much personnel to cover, so much time involved. And that's just on the field. Then, there's everything else, like the academic support staff.
[ducks]
Cabbages? Really, Barkers? OK, I'll get to the point. What is our metric for value, here? Some combination of high wins, high graduation rates, and low Fulmer Cup finishes? OK, then.
When I hear about $5 million changing hands, I expect that something else went the other way. Mack Brown charges $5 million to run this football team. Vasherized would do it for a handle of brownwater, two copies of Juggs, and the change you've got in your couch. Not Mack Brown's couch, yours. Oh, and can he get a ride?
If Vasherized, then, took his hangover and his Texas Longhorns up to Provo and laid an egg, we would consider ourselves well served. We'd lynch him, but we wouldn't hate him, because he didn't rip us off.
It's taken you about 60 seconds to read this far (on average, Scipio, relax). In that space of time, Mack Brown has earned $40.
You probably almost certainly know more about football than I do. That said, when Texas played half a game against NMSU, I expected to lose in Provo, because I'm the guy who wrote this:
There are two kinds of seasons: those that open with Pygmies, crushed beneath the wheels of heedless chariots on a Saturday, and those that open with a coordinator explaining that 'they surprised us with a bunch of junk defenses which is why the offense didn't really get going until late in the 2nd quarter,' in The Statesman, on a Sunday. Right next to Kirk Bohls being pithy about something he predicted, sometime.
And last Saturday, when Texas showed that they hadn't fixed problems with the run defense from last year, I didn't expect they would fix them by game's end. Some time in the 3rd quarter, therefore, I switched to water and saved my marriage.
Torbush. That's the defensive coordinator Mack Brown wanted to bring to Texas, remember? Mack Brown came to us as a professional second fiddle to a football factory who was good at smoothing ruffled feathers in press conferences. He's done exactly the same at Texas. But actual football? How in the hell would Mack Brown know? How long did he hang on to Bull Reese? Greg Davis? Now, we're supposed to be saved by a guy who was as responsible for the (bad) defense in Michigan as Major Applewhite was for the (so-so) offense in Alabama. So, what do we need Mack Brown for? We already have one Bill Little.
The answer? Mack Brown really is a "CEO coach." It all makes sense, now.
He of the Charlie Brown coaching tree isn't qualified to make these decisions, but he's in charge anyway, so accustom yourself to failure. And, if there is still a sunshine pumper among you, let him eat this:
"In watching us practice, our defense and our defensive coaches are so far ahead of where we were this time last year."
That was Mack Brown, less than three weeks ago. So I'll say it again: Mack Brown isn't qualified to make personnel decisions, not with coaches and now (as others have ably shown) with players. We have 15 years of data to prove that. Are you pissed off about Manny running a defense like it was on PlayStation? Shit, Mack Brown is running Texas Longhorn Football like it's Civilization. From 1991. On an 80286. Wait ... it's booting up. You like AOL? Mack Brown is still on dial-up while the rest of the Big 12 is on a T1 line. And that's not fair.
Hiring Robinson two months ago was Brown's confession. Mack Brown, by the way, is up to $80 by this point. Feeling productive?
You may have seen this article, matching team performance to recruiting prowess and speculating about a "coaching effect." From 2002 - 2012, Texas was in the black twice: 2008 and 2009. Our return on recruiting investment, however, was in the red for 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, and 2012. That's right: even with the personnel hole left in Texas' roster by coaches taking home a paycheck without actually making a difference, Texas was still be underperforming over the last three years.
You can tell your wife the numbers show you were right all along, just don't forget to say you're sorry anyways.
You go home after work. By this point, Mack Brown has earned $19,230.77. Well, at least we can say he was paid that much. But "earned"?
Please.