Texas Longhorns AD leaves door open for Mack Brown to remain with University in 2014

The biggest college football story this week isn’t the Heisman Trophy, which will be handed out on Saturday. Instead it’s the situation at the University of Texas and the Texas Longhorns football team. After numerous reports that head coach Mack Brown would resign this week or in the near future, the event at which he was expected to resign ended up adding to the confusion of the situation.

At the Longhorns banquet today, an event that many thought would signal the official end of the Mack Brown era at Texas, Longhorns AD Steve Patterson said he was excited to be working with Brown. Notice the present tense there, this wasn’t a goodbye statement from Patterson. Instead it sounded like it was a ‘it’s good to have you hear’ statement.

This doesn’t mean that Brown is going to be the head coach next year, as speaking in present tense about Brown being the coach of the Longhorns is a correct way to put things. Brown hasn’t stepped down, hasn’t been fired and is still the official head coach of the Texas Longhorns. This might not stay the case for long, but it certainly is true now.

One way people are reading into this quote is that Patterson is leaving the door open for Brown to remain with Texas in a different role. What the role would be is unknown but it’s something to consider. Patterson’s quote is cryptic indeed and it’s hard to decipher what it means, but it certainly doesn’t answer any of the million questions we have about the situation.