Coach's Corner

I tucked my head deep inside a winter jacket, like a turtle, trying to avoid the cold November wind and rain. I was walking across the parking lot to Scholz Garten with a queasy stomach. I knew a lynch mob was in attendance, whose hostile attitude I had, through written and spoken words, helped to create. The sports-talk show I was a guest on did live shows from Scholz. We had our best crowds when things were going badly for the Longhorn football program. 1995 had been a bad fall for Coach Mackovic. There was an ugly feel in the air. It was nasty. It was personal. We looked, uncomfortably, out at the gathering (this must be what crowds were like when citizens were publicly executed), anxious to express the most vile and virulent opinions about the football coach. The host nodded and said, yeah, it's getting a little out of hand. I've lived in Texas for most of 30 years now, but I still don't understand, not even a little bit, this excessive personal involvement of Texas and football.

It's not just a UT phenomena. On the front page of the Dallas Morning News, allegedly one of the country's most respected newspapers, a headline reads: "Jones denies he thought about removing Switzer." This, sportsfans, is your basic, garden variety sports page news. This is why newspapers have sports sections. Not in Dallas, though. This Cowboy minutia is front page.

I've lived in a lot of places, but I've never seen anything like this weird personal attachment to a football team. Take, for example, Chicago. The Bears own Chicago. They can do no wrong. The Bears have fairly consistently, for over a half a century, put nothing except dreck and worse dreck on the football field. It's a Chicago tradition... mediocrity, that is. It doesn't matter. You can't get a ticket for a Bears game. Never could. Chicago loves their Bears.

At about the same time UT was hiring Mackovic, the Bears were hiring -- with the same bright-eyed hope for the future that Orangebloods had in Austin -- Dave Wannstedt, the Dallas defensive coordinator, to coach the Bears back to glory. Wannstedt's done a horrible job. Terrible. The Bears, like the Longhorns, are worse now than the day Wannstedt took over. He should be fired. The sooner the better. Your basic Bears fanatic -- who potties on his Bears toilet seat, talks on his Bears helmet telephone (I've got one of those), drinks out of his favorite Bears glass (got one of those, too), keeps his Old Style cold in his Bears coozie, and sleeps on his Bears sheets -- wants Wannstedt gone too. Just like here in Texas with Mackovic or Switzer. The difference is this. The Bear fan understands that Wannstedt is just, in the end, a football coach; da Bears, alas, only a football team. Stories of what Bears management thinks about what the coach thought today won't show up on the front page of The Tribune. In fact, on a recent Sunday when the Bears were playing Minnesota, they were bumped off the front page of the sports section entirely, by horse racing, college football, and the Bulls.

I'm not implying that Chicago sportsfans are more sophisticated than those in Texas, only confessing my own puzzlement over this matter. Chicago media, which gives away nothing in its over-coverage of hometown teams, accurately reflects the views of its readership. Sports are a game. Games to be taken seriously to be sure, but still, a game. The lives of the citizens in the Land of Lincoln will proceed along, on course, whether or not Wannstedt gets the axe.

Mackovic has done a poor job at UT. He deserves to be fired. That said, Mackovic's not the antichrist. He's a football coach. The demise of the Cowboys has little to do with Barry Switzer. A great team has grown old. That's the way the NFL is geared to run. Parity and the salary cap will bring down the greatest. Switzer's not Judas, though you wouldn't know it from the personal attacks he suffers every day in the media. He's a football coach.

If someone can cogently explain why UT fans would drive all the way up to Waco to yell nasty things at the coach and the team, if you can clarify why the Dallas Morning News, again and again, puts Jerry Jones on the front page, I'll be glad to print it.

Until then, I'll have to put this with mysteries like how the light comes on and why the wind blows. Add it to the long list of things I don't understand.

Parting Shots: A symptom of this malady -- not a cause -- is media driven, batty expectations. Case in point: the basketball team. All the national publications have Texas ranked in the Top 25 in their pre-season polls. Why? You got me. Last year, when Reggie Freeman left a game, Texas couldn't score. He wasn't a hog, just the only player capable of consistently scoring. Reggie's gone. How are the Horns gonna score points? A huge question mark. Texas is, at this point, a combination of hopes and what ifs, but even Mark Rosner at the Statesman, who should know better, put them in his Top 25. Already expectations are set unrealistically high. If they don't perform... well, let's fire that bum Penders.