Chances are if you are on the Internet and watch college football you have become familiar with the joke poking fun at the inability of Texas to find a stable and productive quarterback. The joke stems from the idea that Texas head coach Mack Brown recruited Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, but wanted him to play safety for the Longhorns. Brown went on the record Friday on The Dan Patrick Show to say that exaggeration of the truth may have gone a little too far.
“We never offered Johnny, and we sure didn’t offer him as a safety,” Brown said. “That’s been blown out of proportion.”
Manziel, of course, stormed on the scene in 2012 by running Texas A&M’s offense successfully in the SEC to lead him to a Heisman Trophy. Texas A&M’s recent surge in the national conversation came at a poor time for the Longhorns, who have struggled to find a place in the same conversation in recent years and are off to a troubling start in 2013.
Hindsight is always 20/20 of course, but it is not as if Brown is the only coach who missed n Manziel. According to Rivals, Manziel received a number of offers but mostly from non-elite programs. Oregon and Stanford each placed a scholarship offer in Manziel’s hands, as did Baylor. Texas was one of many top programs to not extend an offer, along with the likes of Alabama, Florida, LSU, Ohio State, USC, and so on.
Brown also addressed the talk about another Heisman Trophy quarterback Brown is perceived to have missed out on. The Longhorns coach told Patrick Texas never really had a chance to recruit Robert Griffin III, who chose to play at Baylor.
“[Griffin] was not interested because we had Colt McCoy, and [Griffin] wanted to start,” Brown said. “So he committed to Art Briles at Houston. Then when Art when to Baylor, he took him with him.”
The critics could probably look at that and suggest Texas was out-recruited by Houston and Baylor, but sometimes a player just does not want to play for a certain school because a relationship with another coach is pretty special. That always appeared to be the case with Griffin and Briles.
This is probably why Briles would appear to make the most suitable replacement for Brown if and when that decision needs to be made.