For those of you looking for Texas to make a change at head football coach, here’s the first (potential) big step in that direction.
According to Chip Brown of Orangebloods.com, and citing two well-placed sources, long-time UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds will step down from his post at the end of the year. Neither the 74-year-old Dodds nor the school, obviously, have responded to the report.
Dodds is expected to take on an consulting role at the university, Brown reported.
The news of Dodds’ possible retirement as AD comes just a couple of days after the he told Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman that “I don’t have any immediate plans” to leave a job he’s held for three decades. In that same conversation with Bohls, Dodds seemingly backed Mack Brown, saying the current Longhorns head coach “is fine.”
Dodds also added, given the amount of speculation swirling around the coach’s future with the program, that “Mack will know if he should be coaching (at Texas) or shouldn’t be.”
If Dodds is out at year’s end, it would be a significant blow to Brown’s chances of surviving beyond this season.
It’s hard to believe that, barring a promotion from within, a new athletic director from outside the system would retain Brown as his football coach. At the very least, ridding himself of the still-powerful Brown would allow the new AD -- again, if there is indeed one in place after this year -- to show Longhorn Nation that what’s happened on the field with the football program the past few years is simply unacceptable.
In his report, Brown mentioned former Stanford AD and current Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby as a potential replacement.
UPDATED 4:03 p.m. ET: For the record, a UT spokesperson told Bohls that the report of Dodds stepping down at year’s end is “absolutely not true. Period. It’s just not true.”
UPDATED 4:38 p.m. ET: Billionaire UT booster Red McCombs told the San Antonio Express-News that he’s heard “not a word” of any plans by Dodds to step down.
“I realize there’s a lot of talk out there, and I understand why,” McCombs told the paper. “But there’s no split in the leadership. Everyone is solidly behind the A.D. and the coaches.”