MEDIA DAY
By Danny Reagan / Abilene, Texas
During Mack Brown's Q&A Wednesday at Media Day in San Antonio, Colt McCoy interrupted his coach with a question of his own: "What do you think about small-town guys? Are they good guys?"
Mack started to respond with "Well, some of them are ..." and then he was interrupted by laughter from the assembled press corps. After a few seconds he said, "Ones that stay healthy."
That, of course, was met with more laughter.
Here is a quote from Mack related to Colt on the very next question from the press:
"Last year at this time we didn't even know who would be the quarterback, very honestly. So, obviously Colt didn't know, and our team didn't know. And a team without an established quarterback is usually a team that's got some question marks because you're just not sure how it's all going to work.
"We knew what Colt did in high school. We knew he was as good as anybody we had seen ... and he won - he went to a state championship, basketball, football. He did everything we wanted, we just didn't know how soon he could take it to the big stage.
"So one of the reasons that we went no huddle offense as much as we did last year was we wanted to take some of the pressure off of him of being the youngest guy in the huddle with a bunch of guys that just won the national championship."
Here are a couple of quotes from Colt:
-- "I've dreamed of being here. Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted to play quarterback at the University of Texas. Now that I'm here, I not only want to play, I want to be great. The team wants to be great, they want to win. That's the most important thing about this position, putting a 'W' on the board. I'm going to do everything in my power to do that."
-- "The last thing he (Vince Young) told me was, 'Look, man, there's going to be pressure, there's going to be everything you can think of. The most important thing is for you to have fun.'"
And here's what Mack said about backup quarterbacks John Chiles and Sherrod Harris:
"It's a real question mark for us, partly because it changed the direction of our season last year. And it's a little bit more on our minds right now, because when Colt got hurt we didn't play as well. It wasn't anyone's fault. We probably needed to play him more.
"We have to figure out how to get the other guy in the game more. It's hard to get three guys in, much less two. So, we've really got to see which of those two guys is separated the most from the other one over the summer, and just see which one can throw the ball the best and run the huddle the best.
"Both guys have great running ability. But it will be the guy that can get the ball to the right guys in the air and protect the ball. Because your back-up quarterback needs to make some plays, but he's got to be able to protect the football. Both are talented, both are nice young men. Both are driven. But it will be the chemistry with the team, and it will be fun to watch."