OPINION

By Matt Hayes

updated 4:42 p.m. ET Feb. 12, 2008

Matt Hayes

There's a theory floating around Austin that Mack Brown has eased off the accelerator, that the national championship his Texas team won in 2005 has left him in quasi-retirement mode.

Well, here's what has happened since the end of the 2007 season, Brown's seventh straight with at least 10 wins:

• He fired one co-defensive coordinator and demoted the other.
• He approved raises for his four offensive assistant coaches but didn't give a dime to his defensive staff.
• He hired the best defensive coordinator in the country by stealing him from an SEC powerhouse — a bold statement to begin an offseason of change.

This is not a guy heading for the shuffleboard courts.

When Brown hired defensive coordinator Will Muschamp away from Auburn, he underscored a growing trend this decade: Coordinators are becoming every bit as accountable as head coaches.

"There's a reason Auburn won 20 games the last two years," says one SEC coach. "It sure as hell wasn't the offense."

So after Texas dropped from No. 3 in total defense during its national championship season to No. 52 in 2007, when the Longhorns had the seventh-worst defense (371.2 yards per game) in school history, Brown went out and got Muschamp.

Numbers only begin to tell the story of Muschamp's impact. In his last five seasons at LSU (2002-04) and Auburn (2006-07), his defenses finished in the top 10 nationally four times while banging heads in the toughest conference in the country.

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Muschamp's units play with attitude and emotion and force turnovers; his energetic and charismatic style fuels the entire team. Other than the Vince Young-infused seasons of 2004-05, Texas hasn't exactly been bubbling with moxie.

Watch what happens this fall. During LSU's national title season in 2003, the defense ranked No. 1 in the nation and was so dialed in that Muschamp used nearly 50 different blitz schemes.

"We're going to get after it," Muschamp says.

So much for easing off the accelerator.

Four other hires with impact:

• Norm Chow, offensive coordinator, UCLA. He becomes the third coordinator for onetime megarecruit Ben Olson, who hasn't lived up to his hype. Watch how Olson develops under Chow, one of the best quarterbacks coaches in the game.
• Jon Tenuta, assistant head coach/ defense, Notre Dame. Forget about the unit's improvement under first-year coordinator Corwin Brown. If a creative, successful coach like Tenuta is available, you can't pass him up.
• Ron English, defensive coordinator, Louisville. He took too much criticism for Michigan's struggles early last season. His philosophy: Line up and find the ball. Which is much different from the defense last season at Louisville: Kick over a rock and watch the ants scatter.
• David Clawson, offensive coordinator, Tennessee. Don't think Vols coach Phillip Fulmer isn't feeling heat. A Division I head coach-in-waiting, Clawson left Richmond because Fulmer gave him complete control of the offense. Next up in Knoxville: the spread option.

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