If you want to grasp part of the impact Mack Brown had on the University of Texas football program it's this – as the Longhorns look for his successor, most of the names currently being bantered about carry résumés that are a far cry from the one they hired 16 years ago.

Mack Brown was 80-69-1 overall when then-Longhorns athletic director DeLoss Dodds brought him in from North Carolina in 1997. Brown had finished in the top 10 exactly twice in 13 seasons as a head coach. His Tar Heels were known for their improvement, yes, but also their inability to beat elite Florida State. They were good. They weren't truly great.

Some of the numbers, of course, don't tell the story – Brown inherited bottomed-out programs at Tulane and UNC and built them up. There was little doubt he was a strong coach, as his time at UT, including a BCS national title in 2005, would prove.

Yet this wasn't the present-day Nick Saban with four BCS titles, seen as the birthright hire for so many Texas alums, fans, regents, politicians, professors, oil barons and unaware ne'er-do-wells who think they are running this job search.

No, Mack Brown was an inspired choice, but hardly a no-brainer. He was a Tennessee native who arrived from the ACC with almost no connections in the Lone Star State. In 16 seasons he rallied the power of the program, established a tight connection to in-state recruits, raised prodigious amounts of money and used his folksy charm to make it all look easy.

So easy that you wonder if the hiring of the Mack Brown of 2014 would even be tolerated this time around.

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Picking the next Longhorns coach shouldn't be nearly as complicated as it's going to be made out to be. Well, at least if Texas operates with appropriate swiftness from a small decision-making circle (preferably of one) that can avoid political infighting. In a statement announcing his resignation on Saturday, Brown noted, in clear and obvious ways, that the tumult that existed before he got to Austin is back.

Division and debates, partisanship and perceived power, are about the only thing that can mess this up.

Texas is a great job. It's the kind of job that almost can't be screwed up. The Longhorns now have every imaginable resource: money, facilities, media attention, fan interest, institutional commitment, a beautiful campus, renowned academics, the charisma of Austin and, most importantly, all those Texas high schools that churn out talent.

You can slip about 25 different guys in there, and if they are supported, work hard and don't self-destruct under the pressure, the victories will come. Maybe that results in more national titles, maybe it doesn't. Winning it all is always a bit of crapshoot – Texas has won just a single title since 1970. If Colt McCoy doesn't get injured on the fifth offensive play of the 2009 title game against Alabama, however, the Longhorns might have two.

That's about what you can aspire a program to achieve however. Be in the mix and see what happens. Mack Brown got the Longhorns there. Eventually, as these things tend to do, it fell apart.

No one will recall Mack Brown as some X-and-O innovator. He won't go down as an iron-willed disciplinarian. He was never hailed for his rah-rah Rockne-type speeches to the team.

He was certainly a heck of a recruiter, but much of that was his ability to connect with whomever he was speaking and project a calm amid the chaos of college football. Players, parents, high school coaches all understood that Texas was organized, safe, secure and strong. After that, the place sold itself. So they went there.

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