Recovering From A Provoscopy: It's Always Sunny in Austin

A light breeze wisped through Darrell K Royal - Texas Memorial Stadium on Sunday evening as the gray-headed man in the black tee shirt and orange workout shorts came sprinting through the tunnel at the south end of Joe Jamail Field to join a Longhorn practice which had just gotten underway. These, in their own way, were the winds of change.

If you think about it, then wrap that thought in absinthe-dipped rolling paper, sprinkle some meth on top, and light up that thought, this intro doesn't get any more vintage Bill Little than Bill could write himself, and he actually wrote it!

Whoaaaa.

We sustained some head trauma when the Dreamwagon crashed headfirst into a Provo cornice, so please bear with us we sift through Captain Bill's literary rubble -- inspirational words that arose from the ashes, like a concussed quarterback climbing out of a pile of Samoan linebackers.

Back to the prose...

Fewer than eight hours before, Greg Robinson was getting ready to take the hour and a half drive from his home in Southern California to Los Angeles International Airport (conveniently known as LAX), where he would board a flight to Austin to help the Texas coaching staff begin to prepare for their upcoming game with Ole Miss on Saturday. It was shortly after 11 a.m. when the phone rang as he was packing to leave. And Mack Brown made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

His job?

Hours earlier, on the flight home from Texas' disappointing performance in a 40-21 loss to BYU, Brown had studied the video of what had been a record setting offensive performance by the Cougars. He knew what he had to do.

RETIRE!

That is why the phone rang at the home of Greg and Laura Robinson on Sunday morning.

Yes, the Robinsons would love to attend your retirement party. And I bet you even remember his kids' names.

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - harder in the game of college football than making changes on a coaching staff

Apparently not. Austin is a jet-fueled carousel for qualified coordinators.

But two games into the 2013 season, following a tough year before...

Three years, asshole. We're counting.

Mack Brown realized that he had no choice but to reassign defensive coordinator Manny Diaz and go in a new direction. As it turned out, he went in an old direction - one that had been immensely successful.

Greg Robinson won the 2004 Rose Bowl. Hire him back and the Texas Longhorns of Austin, TX, USA shall return to the Rose Bowl. QED.

That was why he was on his way to Austin originally. When he jogged into the Sunday practice, he was the 'Horns new head man on defense

Yes, it's apparently that easy to pull an average coach out of early retirement, call him Mr. Fix It, and hope everything gets better.

If ever there was a call for "Mr. Fix-It," it had come for Robinson. And he wasted no time in getting started.

Holy shit! I just predicted that. Here's another one: 8-4.

The excitement was evident, and pervasive. It came through his eyes.

Greg Robinson evidently bleeds burnt orange, pervasively, out of his eyes. THIS IS THE MAN FOR THE JOB.

"I have always wanted to get back in the game," said Robinson, whose resume includes time as a head coach at Syracuse and as a defensive coordinator both at Texas and Michigan in the college ranks. "My hair may be gray, but I can still run."

We have an opening at Middle Linebacker.

At a "young" 62 years of age, few people in the game can match his "been there" list.

Unfortunately the Done That part of the list is fairly brief. There's a reason why Robinson's résumé is spammed all over Careerbuilder.com and Monster.ca

Asked if he had come into town as a hero riding a white horse or a chariot, he simply said: "Just say I came riding in on a pony. It is about the game, the other coaches and staff, and most of all the players. It has never been about me."

ON A FUCKING PONY?! Like the one Steve Edmond rides on the way to a missed ankle tackle 18 yards downfield? This is exactly the imagery you want from a new defensive coordinator re-hired to instill toughness in a Charmin-soft D. Chris Christie's gunt would provide more resistance than our DL. And our new white knight DC is riding in on a goddamn pony to save the day. If Christopher Guest and David Lynch ever team up to make a movie, it would be about Mack Brown.

"When I see defense, I see a style. It's wild and reckless and flying around. It's the challenge of getting that ball back for the offense, and doing it as fast as you can. You have to create plays. Our whole objective, the philosophy I have built in my own mind, is that we are going to challenge all 11 players in every way shape or form. Now how do you go about doing that? It takes great fundamentals to whip a guy across from you…to cover a guy that can run 4.3, or to win on a pass rush. All of these things take great fundamentals, great techniques. Then, you have to generate the reckless kind of game where you are trying to create chaos. You get that by studying the offense and really learning what you are dealing with, and attacking it as opposed to being attacked. I'm not a big believer in sit back and read and react. Are there times when you have to be able do that? Sure. What we want to do is win, and do everything we can to do that."

We will not be romanced by notions of dominance any more! Empty words. All of them. And the next uniform change better involve pink tutus.

If ever there seemed a perfect fit, it may be Robinson

Then again, it may not. But that's what happens when you approach the hiring process like a game of Plinko and the same name mysteriously wins every time. I THINK WE'VE FOUND OUR GUY.

"I never expected that offer when I answered the phone this morning," he said after the Sunday evening practice. "It's funny how things work."

Shall we phone a friend? Let's see if he's home! Or you could use a lifeline...

******

You know you've reached the bottom when your rivals don't even laugh at the charades in Austin anymore, but just feel genuine sympathy. Relatives that failed to call when your daughter was born appear out of nowhere deeply concerned for your mental health because Mack Brown refuses to retire.

The nation has called MackBrownTexasFootball's bluff and we're out of cards to play.

Our best advice is to hibernate until 2016.