Texas’ Mack Brown receives a potential Dreaded Vote of Confidence

Texas head coach Mack Brown is firmly bolted to the hottest seat in the country, outside possibly USC’s Lane Kiffin. The Longhorns are stuck in a multi-season malaise, and just got waxed by BYU 40-21 on Saturday, a game in which BYU’s usually under-powered offense rushed for 550 yards. That’s normally enough to get a coach fired at a program like Texas, but Brown may have not received his tenure’s death knell until Wednesday, when athletic director DeLoss Dodds may have given him the Dreaded Vote of Confidence:

“Mack’s fine,” Dodds told the American-Statesman on Wednesday morning. “I know we didn’t play well Saturday. Mack will know if he should be coaching (at Texas) or shouldn’t be. I know this is my responsibility, and I’m not shying away from it. The bottom line is I’m for the kids and the coaches.”

Dodds may not have explicitly said the words, but that sounds an awful lot like the Dreaded Vote of Confidence to me. By our count, six coaches received the Dreaded Vote of Confidence in 2012, meaning all of them were fired after being praised.

Brown is clearly desperate at this point, as he pulled the plug on defensive coordinator Manny Diaz after the BYU game. He might have shot himself in the foot again, though, as he replaced Diaz with former Texas defensive coordinator Greg Robinson. Yes, the same Greg Robinson who reduced Syracuse’s program to rubble and then led the worst Michigan defense in program history. Sounds like a guy with a plan.

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