Let me preface this by saying that this is a very long post so if you don't want or care about a Texas viewpoint, please ignore this post and carry on. If you are interested, it's a bit of a view from our side of the equation.
I've been lurking on this board for about a year and decided to register recently to give you guys some perspective from a Texas alumni/fan point of view. As a background, I'm a Texas graduate living in Austin and I frequent multiple Texas pay sites. I've been a season ticket holder since I graduated in 2000 and haven't missed a home game since 1996. As for the Texas message boards and reporting, let me be the first to tell you that Shaggy Bevo is a mess and a waste of time as you probably already know. I avoid that place like the plague. insidetexas.com and orangebloods.com are the two heavyweights at the moment with orangebloods being FAR more conservative than insidetexas with their reporting.
The majority of us alumni and fans are very doubtful that Saban will leave Bama for Texas. The train wreck posts you see on Texas sites are the result of a highly vocal but scant few "look at me" posters. The reporters and insiders have been saying that there is a lot of smoke regarding Saban to Texas but most of them and the rest of us are realistic and realize the chances of that are low. We mainly are just looking for a culture change as we feel Mack has let things slide way down since the loss to Bama in the 2009 MNC. No, I'm not one of those that claim Texas would have won if McCoy hadn't been hurt. No one knows what the result would have been and I don't dwell on ifs and buts. Bama won and that's that. There were rumors though that Mack Brown would have retired had Texas won that game and that it pretty much killed him when Texas lost. But that's neither here nor there so I won't go down that path.
Since that game, our program(and not just football) has been in disarray in all facets except for making money which evidently is one thing Texas is very, very good at doing. Our recruiting has been terrible, especially at QB, and player development has been terrible as well. Our S&C program has been a mess for years and the athletic department is bloated with golden parachutes handed out everywhere. Hell, Manny Diaz is still getting paid and he hasn't been on campus in months. After he was canned for being an atrocious DC, he was "transferred" to another position in the department. This happens all the time and it starts at the top.
We've been wanting a huge culture change and that started with our old AD, DeLoss Dodds, stepping down recently. Mack is supposedly the next domino to fall in this. 99% of our fan base is very appreciative for what he's done but we also feel he has been given ample time(4 years now) to fix things. It hasn't happened so we feel his time is done. The problem has been that Mack is very stubborn in that he wanted to leave on a high note and it basically came down to some of our big money boosters telling Mack he can either retire gracefully and get his parade or he can resist and go the pine box route. Recent rumblings are that he will be stepping down this week. Multiple sources have just put that out in the past hour or two although it's a rumor that's been around since September for us.
The Texas insiders say that Mack won't be stepping down until a replacement is already signed, sealed, and delivered and that is why a few people go off the deep end regarding Saban because of all the smoke and timing. I would love to have Saban as a coach but I doubt it will happen. Honestly, as someone else stated earlier, I figured it would more likely be Malzhan as we already have a history of poaching Auburn's coaches. That's probably off the table with the MNC appearance though. The other names out there are Harbaugh, Fisher, and Mora. Briles from Baylor was on that list until just recently when he signed an extension with Baylor.
One of your posters, Krazy I believe, really hit the nail on the head in regard to Texas being very tied in with politics which makes situations like this very delicate and difficult to navigate. That includes both the education side and the athletics side. The Texas governor, Rick Perry, is an Aggie. Thanks for taking them by the way as that is the most backward, mentally challenged fan base you'll ever meet. They think their program is on par with Alabama and Texas. If you really want to know what you gained in the SEC by getting Texas A&M, just google "squeeze ags." Yes, they really do that and have no female cheerleaders in football. Weird.
Back to Perry, he gets to appoint the board of regents as Texas is a state school. Recently Perry got the idea that he wants to turn Texas into a degree mill with a very low cost per degree for students. Perry appointed a couple of his flunkies to the board when the openings became available to try and oust our president, Bill Powers. Powers as the president and the big wig on the academics side was resistant to that idea and rightly so. Texas is a premier educational and research institution and we want to keep it that way.
Ironically enough, Bill Powers has been reported to be anti Nick Saban and very supportive of Mack regardless of the football program being mired in mediocrity and worse for the past four years. The story is that some of the big money Texas donors(think billionaires who have immense political pull) told Powers they would protect him from Perry if he would stay out of the athletics situation. They did get Perry off his back but whether Powers leaves the coaching deal alone remains to be seen. The board meeting regarding Powers employment this Thursday is supposedly a standard meeting but the timing seems highly coincidental and there have been rumblings that it's a shot across the bow for Powers in order to make sure he backs off on his resistance to Saban or anyone else for that matter.
In short, it seems Mack will definitely be out this week, there is a lot of smoke regarding Saban to Texas but most of us are still doubtful and just waiting. Honestly I believe that most of this smoke around Saban is simply because he is the polar opposite of Mack Brown as a football coach and we are ready for Mack to go and are rubber banding to the opposite end of the spectrum in coaching personalities. However, when I saw Earle's post the other day, it really piqued my interest and has actually made me rethink my doubtfulness somewhat. I'm still doubtful any of this comes to fruition but considering the timing of Earle's post in relation to what's being reported on the Texas sites I frequent as well as Saban's extension not yet being signed(which I gathered from this thread), it seems that there may be some substance to this. I was at 10% for Saban to Texas but Earle's post pushed me up to 25%. That's just my opinion and I am definitely not an insider for either side.
Regarding our arrogance as Texas fans, I think it's more frustration than arrogance but yes, we can be arrogant as well. If you ever run into an obnoxious Texas fans, simply ask them when they graduated. I guarantee most will say they went to Texas State down the road in San Marcos because they couldn't get into Texas. Granted, we have our douche nozzle fans just like every other school but for the most part, we are pretty level headed and just want our school to be top notch in both education and athletics. Quite honestly, in reading this board, I would say our fan bases are actually very similar. We are currently living your Shula years(minus 2005) and hoping the right hire will give us similar success as Bama has had in recent years regardless who the coach may be. With the resources available to Texas(money, location, facilities, education, etc.), we feel there is no reason we shouldn't have an endless stream of top recruits and coaches in all of our athletic programs. We feel the athletic department has been grossly mismanaged in recent years.
Again, I apologize for the novel as my first post but I figured it might help you guys if you had a fan viewpoint from the other side of things. This thread has been a wildly entertaining read and I'll continue to read it but probably won't be posting much as this is your board and I'm a Texas fan. I just came to lurk when the first rumblings of Saban to Texas popped up in January. I felt I could contribute a bit to this thread and I will chime in again if I feel I may be able to contribute something else.
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