Brown's Muschamp Scam Makes 2009 Glow Burnt-Orange Bright

Forget the Texas Longhorns' win over Kansas last Saturday. The bigger win came Monday, and it portends great things in 2009. Let's call it The Big Bluff. Mack Brown, the master recruiter, found a way, the only way, to keep red-hot defensive coach Will Muschamp for another year. It will take Muschamp that long at least to figure this hustle out. How to keep a young coach who's hungry for a head coaching gig with schools just as starving for gridiron success circling the campus?

Meet my successor, Brown says. I'll train him, then hand him the crown. Of course, I don't plan on leaving for a long, long, long, long time. Did I mention I'm not going anywhere? Oh, and coach-to-be Muschamp, here's some extra cash …. It's a plan that just might work. Muschamp is Conan O'Brien to Brown's Jay Leno. Only Leno's contract has a firm date. Muschamp's not so much.

Here's betting the Champ will be coaching elsewhere come 2010. But judging by the 35-7 pasting of Kansas, in a game that many pundits figured would be close, Texas will be lucky to get that one year. The Muschamp-coaching-impact moment was when tough guy Blake Gideon got hammered by a Jayhawk player so viciously that Gideon had to head to the sidelines, and, on the next play, his backup Christian Scott hammered the same player back head-to-head.

Kansas managed only 305 yards and a gimme seven points that required a freakish catch by Dezmon Briscoe on the side of his helmet. Meanwhile Muschamp's Madmen gobbled up most of Kansas' ill-advised fourth down tries, despite having a dinged-up Brian Orakpo in for only a handful of plays and having to make do with a backup center.

One game to go against the Aggies, who are, to put it mildly, ready for someone to put their fetid season out of its misery. Texas meanwhile is soaring like Jordan Shipley vaulted across the line on a fake field goal attempt Saturday. The Horns are flying and should reach even higher ground next year with Muschamp safely in the fold for another season. Next year. We'll be hearing a lot about next year after the Horns dismantle A&M, with the slant dependent on the outcome of the Texas Tech-OU matchup this weekend. I'm betting on OU, but Horn fans might be better off going for Tech and hoping someone knocks off Alabama and Florida.