William Mack Brown (born August 27, 1951) is the former head coach of the University of Texas Longhorn football team. During his tenure, the Texas Longhorns football team under Mack Brown had a winning record in 15 of 16 seasons.

Brown's Longhorns won the 2005 National Championship and seven of their ten bowl games. In 2006, he was awarded the Paul "Bear" Bryant Award for "Coach of the Year".

Prior to coaching at Texas, Brown coached at Appalachian State, Tulane, and North Carolina. (Notably, he coached North Carolina again following his time at Texas.)

Brown is credited with revitalizing North Carolina football program, and his tenure at Texas is the most successful for a head coach at the school in the 21st century to date.

Brown's move to Texas While Brown informed his North Carolina team and the media that he had no plans to leave North Carolina for the recently vacated job at the University of Texas, he was soon identified (over the objections of Longhorn Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds) by the Texas search committee as one of only two men they were interested in hiring. At the time, the Tar Heels had just completed their most successful season in years. The 1997 Tar Heels notched a 10–1 record—only the third 10-win regular season in school history. They were slated to appear in the Gator Bowl for the second year in a row—only their second (or third) New Year's Day bowl game since the Justice era. They were also all but assured of their highest final ranking in the AP Poll in half a century.

On December 2, 1997, Brown was contacted while at the ACC's football banquet in Atlanta. He agreed to meet with the hiring committee, which included Dodds, Texas coaching legend Darrell Royal, several former Texas players, and several important boosters, most notably Tom Hicks (owner of the Dallas Stars and Texas Rangers), who donated time, energy and the use of his private jet corps to the coaching search that also included an exploratory meeting with Northwestern's Gary Barnett in Chicago.

Brown met the committee on December 3 in the Four Seasons hotel in Atlanta.

The committee was impressed with Brown and Dodds offered him the job on the spot. The offer included a sizable pay raise to about $750,000 a year (which could climb to as high as $1 million with incentives), and a similar amount to recruit assistant coaches.

Brown tentatively accepted, but wanted to speak with North Carolina athletics director Dick Baddour and the North Carolina football team before making an official decision. The following day Brown met with Baddour, who had been told by the Chancellor to offer Brown a ten-year contract, as Brown relates in his autobiography:

[Baddour] came over to our house... The university offered me [a salary equal to the basketball head coach's], but Baddour made it clear that it would create a real hardship on the department if I took it. He also said, "If you want football to be equal to basketball, you should go to Texas." ... [Baddour] told us the chancellor had said to offer a ten-year contract.... He did add that he didn't feel the Board of Trustees would approve the long-term deal.Brown, Mack – One Heartbeat II (p.45).

Brown called Deloss Dodds to officially accept the head coaching position at the University of Texas on December 4, 1997, at 2:30 PM, then informed Dick Baddour of his decision fifteen minutes later. At 3:00 PM, Brown held a meeting with the Tar Heel players to inform them of his decision.

That Thursday night, Brown flew to Austin. He was introduced to an enthusiastic Longhorn crowd on Friday.

As a consequence of taking the Texas post, Brown was not on the sidelines during the Tar Heels' 42–3 rout of Virginia Tech in the 1998 Gator Bowl, having been replaced as head coach by defensive coordinator Carl Torbush. North Carolina credits the 1997 regular season to Brown and the Gator Bowl to Torbush.

Early seasons In his early years at UT, Mack Brown was sometimes referred to as "Coach February", a nickname that indicated he performed well during the important recruiting season, but failed to follow up with equally impressive wins on the field. His detractors felt that with all the resources at his disposal at Texas, combined with the talent he was recruiting from high school programs, that he should have more to show for it than appearances in the Holiday Bowl or Cotton Bowl Classic. They felt that he should be playing for Big 12 titles or even National Championships instead.

In five of the first eight seasons under Brown, the Longhorns were all but eliminated from either of these two goals due to losses in October to Big 12 rival Oklahoma. Since the two teams played in the same division of the Big 12, a loss by Texas to Oklahoma means that Texas could not win the south half of the conference unless Oklahoma lost at least two conference games. Brown did however lead the University of Texas to its second Big 12 Conference Championship game only to lose to a higher ranked Nebraska team which they had beaten earlier in the year. He also took the Longhorns to the 2001 Big 12 title game. In that year's campaign, the Longhorns lost to the Sooners but were given another chance when the Sooners lost to both Nebraska and Oklahoma State. Texas made it to the Big 12 Conference Championship Game, losing to Colorado, a school they had beaten by a substantial margin earlier in the year. Many felt that Texas would have played in the BCS Championship game had they beaten Colorado. A similar opportunity presented itself in 2002. After Oklahoma beat Texas, they lost to Texas A&M and Oklahoma State. However, Texas had suffered a loss to Texas Tech so they did not make the championship game.

In 2003, Texas finished the regular season with a 10–2 regular season record and most observers felt they had the resume to reach their first BCS bowl under Brown. However, when South Champion (and #1 ranked) Oklahoma lost to North Champion Kansas State in the Big 12 championship game, Kansas State received the Big 12 conference's automatic BCS bid as conference champion and joined Oklahoma in the BCS. The BCS rules specified that no more than 2 teams from a single conference could go. Texas was frozen out.

Although Brown consistently led the Longhorns to a bowl game to cap off each season, his first six years he was not able to lead them to a Bowl Championship Series game, having to settle each year for the Holiday Bowl or Cotton Bowl Classic. His record in these games was 3 and 3, with two of the 3 losses coming at the hands of supposedly inferior teams as judged by the rankings headed into the games.

2004 season

In 2004, the Longhorns began the season with a #7 ranking nationally and started out with a 65–0 blowout of North Texas, setting several UT school records in the process. This was followed by a narrow 22–20 win against unranked Arkansas. They defeated Rice and Baylor 35–13 and 44–14 respectively.

This left them ranked fifth coming into the annual matchup with then #2 Oklahoma in the Red River Shootout. Oklahoma shut-out the Longhorns 12–0. Texas dropped to #9, before rebounding with wins over #24 Missouri 28–20, at #24 Texas Tech 51–21, and at Colorado 31–7.

Then Texas set a record for the largest come from-behind-win in school history, beating #19 Oklahoma State 56–35 after falling behind 7–35. After this performance, Texas again fell behind against Kansas but squeaked out a win 27–23. Kansas head coach Mark Mangino stirred up controversy by claiming that the officials were biased in favor of Texas.

The series of victories brought Texas back up to #5 in the rankings as they welcomed arch-rival Texas A&M to Austin and won 26–13. However, Oklahoma stood undefeated, which meant the Sooners would represent the Big 12 South in the Championship game against a much lower ranked team from the North Division. Once again, the loss to Oklahoma had kept Texas out of playing for a National or Conference Title, and had seemingly destined them to non-Bowl Championship Series bowl as well.

However, Brown began lobbying the voters in the two polls based on human voters (one on college football coaches, the other on Associated Press writers) to place the Longhorns high enough in the rankings to ensure they received a Bowl Championship Series (BCS) bowl-bid. The arcane rules of the BCS were such that Texas might get left out of the 8 chosen teams even though they ranked 5th nationally. Lobbying by Brown and his brother, et al., gave the Longhorns the sufficient swing votes they needed to make it into the Rose Bowl, one of the four BCS bowls. This lobbying effort and ensuing result led to criticism of Brown for playing politics to get his team into a top bowl. The appearance in the "Grand-daddy" of all bowl games was the first visit by the Longhorns, due mainly to the fact that the Rose Bowl traditionally pitted the winner of the Pac-10 against the winner of the Big Ten. Texas' opponent was Michigan, whom Texas was playing for the very first time. Texas won the game 38–37 on a last second field goal kick by Longhorn Dusty Mangum in what had been called one of the greatest Rose Bowl games of all time."Kicked into Legend: Rose-winning boot elevated Mangum from a footnote", Austin American-Statesman, January 9, 2005"Mangum's game-winning field goal caps instant classic", The Daily Texan, January 18, 2005"Texas coach receives unexpected phone call from President", The Daily Texan, January 6, 2005"Senate pays homage to Horns; Sen. Barrientos, a Texas alum, cites 'Rose Bowl win for the ages,'" Austin American-Statesman, April 28, 2005

Ironically, Brown followed up a strong 2004 season on the field with a less successful 2005 recruiting season. Brown, who long had been criticized for recruiting top talent but not achieving the highest possible results, began to receive criticism for missing out on top recruits, especially for missing out on quarterback Ryan Perrilloux, who ended up not following through on his verbal commitment to sign with Texas.

Despite the success of the 2004 season, Coach Brown's resume was still lacking a conference championship, let alone a national championship. The 2005 season offered an opportunity to add those credentials.

2005 season

Save for redshirt Junior Quarterback Vince Young, many of Texas' key players from the previous season, including running back Cedric Benson, linebacker Derrick Johnson and tight end Bo Scaife, did not return for the 2005 season. However, Texas was given a pre-season #2 ranking (behind defending National Champions University of Southern California) by Sports Illustrated magazine, and was also ranked second in the AP and USA Today coaches pre-season polls.

Texas scored a decisive 45–12 victory over Oklahoma. That marked the 6th time the Longhorns have entered the contest ranked 2nd nationally, and they have won all six times. With the win, Texas started the season 5–0 for the first time since 1983. That was the last time UT had national title hopes, ending the regular season 11–0 before losing to Georgia in the Cotton Bowl Classic.

After the win over previously undefeated Texas Tech, Texas moved into first place in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) standings for the first time since the BCS creation. The BCS formula, which takes into account strength of schedule, allowed Texas to advance in the rankings since they defeated a previously unbeaten team, while University of Southern California beat Washington, a 1–6 team.