[This post was originally published on The Living Room Tumblr.]
Texas head coach Mack Brown is reportedly retiring. (I like to imagine Governor Rick Perry thanking him for “a phenomenal 16 years, including three Big 12 championships: 2005, 2009, and… uh… oops.”)
Brown’s retirement has been long-rumored, particularly since the Longhorns’ BYU debacle – and all season, those rumors have been accompanied by loud whispers that Texas should make a run at Alabama’s Nick Saban… and that Saban might just say yes, Texas being perhaps the one and only job worthy of his consideration as superior to the Alabama job.
Now, of course, with Brown’s retirement becoming official, it’s open season the Saban-to-Texas rumor mill. Which got me thinking:
If Saban takes the Texas job, it would elevate the unprecedented 109-yard field-goal return for a walk-off touchdown by Auburn’s Chris Davis to beat Alabama in the Iron Bowl ten days ago – already the greatest play, arguably, in college football history – to even more legendary status.
Why? Think about it.
If Alabama wins that game, and goes on to beat Missouri in the SEC title game the following week, there’s no way Saban leaves Alabama right now, in December, on the precipice of a third straight national championship (and fourth in five years). And Texas probably can’t afford to wait until January to replace Brown. So, in such a scenario, the ‘Horns and their most prized coaching candidate would, most likely, be like two ships passing in the night, and the deal wouldn’t happen.
(The obvious parallel here is Les Miles, who almost certainly would have become Michigan’s coach in 2007, replacing Lloyd Carr, if LSU hadn’t improbably backed into the BCS title game at the last minute, making it effectively impossible for Miles to leave. The same thing would have applied to Saban, except with even greater force, given the historic three-peat chance.)
But instead, thanks to Davis’s miracle 109-yard touchdown for Auburn, Saban is very much in a position to listen, if Texas has anything to say. A looming Sugar Bowl matchup with Oklahoma ain’t gonna keep him from leaving Tuscaloosa if he otherwise wants to.
So, by defeating Alabama on that unbelievably epic play – which would have been talked about forever even if it had happened in a game between 5-4 rivals, like the Stanford Band play did – Auburn not only 1) defeated its archrival (in one of sports’ most heated rivalries), 2) denied said archrival a shot at an historic three-beat, and 3) won the division in the process, thus positioning itself to 4) win the SEC and 5) go to the BCS championship game (thanks to Sparty and the hand of fate), and 6) perhaps win a national title, but ALSO, it just might, maybe, have 7) directly facilitated the departure of Alabama’s greatest coach since Bear Bryant.
If so: Amazing!!
War Damn Longhorns?