While much of the Longhorn Nation has become livid over the recent results of the Texas football program, Texas benefactor and billionaire attorney Joe Jamail remains firmly in Mack Brown's corner and told the American-Statesman on Friday morning that the Longhorn head coach believes he can still turn around this season.
"Mack's still enthusiastic and thinks we've still got a good chance to win this conference," Jamail told the American-Statesman on Friday morning. "I watched about five minutes of the Tech-TCU game last night, and they couldn't beat my (bleeping) grade school."
Jamail, who's still alert as 87 as a man several decades younger and still goes to work every single day, acknowledges the poor performance in the 40-21 loss to BYU last weekend but expects better results against Ole Miss this Saturday. Jamail still attends Texas' home football games and will be on hand Saturday at the stadium whose field bears his name.
"I've never seen it worse," Jamail said of the BYU loss. "(Texas) it's a better football team than that."
Nor does Jamail think Brown is under pressure to step down. He has a contract through 2020, a contract Jamail prepared.
"I thought the year before last he was getting tired of it," Jamail said of the 8-5 season, "but he has never suggested at any time that he was going to leave. He's never mentioned to me or even hinted that he'd think about leaving. He tells me what he believes. There's no fake to him."
Jamail, who talks to Brown every day, said the coach hasn't lost his enthusiasm or his faith in this 1-1 Texas team. The firing of defensive coordinator Manny Diaz two games into his third season in Austin didn't surprise Jamail.
"I wasn't surprised," Jamail said. "God, Mack was disappointed, but he's still enthusiastic. "We don't talk that much about football. The first time I met him, president (Larry) Faulkner and Darrell Royal came to see me. I told Mack, 'If you don't try to practice law with me, I won't try to practice football with you.' Darrell looked at Mack and said, 'Mack, you don't have 500,000 Texas alumni. You've got 500,000 coaches in the stands and everywhere else criticizing everything you do.
"If you look around, we've got a clean program and one of the most successful programs in the country if you took away the last three years. But heck, 9-4 (last year) ain't too bad. Now it's not too good for Texas. Yeah, it's not going that well right now, but look at what I'm reading about Oklahoma State (and its severe allegations of illegal payments, drug use and academic wrongdoing by Sports Illustrated) and Alabama (whose former offensive lineman D.J. Fluker said he took money while in college). Mack would fix this in a heartbeat if he could."