40 Acres Sports

Vote early, vote often for Vince Young for NFL Rookie of the Year. Winner announced February 1st.

Mavs & Rockets games means no Horns basketball against Mizzou for fans in DFW & Houston areas.

[tag]Larry Mac Duff[/tag] is the new name but Duane Akina is Texas’ new defensive coordinator.

The biggest news related to the surprise hire of Mac Duff is that [tag]Duane Akina[/tag] will now be calling the plays for the Texas defense. Under the previous regime coach Gene Chizik was the one really in charge of the defense and was the one calling the shots on Saturdays. Even though Chizik and Akina shared the defensive coordinator title, Chizik was the one who received the hype and he was the one who was referred to as “the defensive coordinator.” Now Akina is 1A and Mac Duff is 1B.

What we do know about Akina is that despite this year’s performance he is an one of the nation’s top secondary coaches and a good recruiter. His promotion means no disruption to the current players or to recruiting. Akina is a guy who has loyalty to Mack Brown and to the University of Texas so unlike the last two guys we can expect him to stick around longer than a year or two.

The Alamo Bowl was Akina’s tryout for the job but I’m not sure if it was enough for us as fans to get a good idea of his coaching ability or style. He was working with Chizik’s guys and didn’t have enough time to get his scheme into place. After struggling mightily in the first half, Akina and the Texas defense stepped it up a little in the second half and came up with the big stops when needed. One game is not enough for us to draw any conclusions from. We don’t have any idea what kind of job he’ll do making defensive calls on gameday or how good he’ll be at making in game adjustments. Next year it’ll be trial by fire and I think Akina has earned that opportunity.

The Mac Duff hire will be great news for the Texas linebackers and special teams play. He’s got experience and success at every level with those two groups and those spots have been a weakness for the Longhorns in recent years. Texas has a lot of young talent at linebacker and all three starters returning at the position, but it still wouldn’t surprise me to see three new starters next year. Sergio Kindle, Roddrick Muckelroy, and Jared Norton are all big, fast and athletic and I think most Texas fans are excited about those guys being on the field a lot more in 2007.

Whoever Mack brought in to replace Chizik needed to be a compliment to Akina because it’s clear Brown likes him and the players do as well. Mac Duff fits perfectly. He’s got a solid relationship with Akina and unlike Chizik and Jerry Gray he’s a true linebackers coach. A bigger name hire might have made more of a splash nationally and made some fans happy, but it would’ve caused more of a disruption to the team and depending on the hire might have meant replacing Akina as well. Brown decided that the Akina and Mac Duff together could do a better job helping the Longhorns win games than any of the other big names would do.

Stewart Mandel’s early 2007 top 25 has Texas at #9. It should be another wide open year.

Can’t blame him now that Petrino is gone. Why not Rutgers?

Apparently the Florida Gators did take all the doubting of the media personally, because after Ginn ran back the opening kickoff of the game, the Gators absolutely dominated the Ohio State Buckeyes the rest of the way. Congratulations to the Gators, who now hold both the football and basketball championships down in Gainesville.

Honestly, it was almost sad to see how poorly the Ohio State offense was playing. They couldn’t do anything, and the Heisman Trophy winner was only able to complete 4 passes. And I better not ever again hear any comparisons of Troy Smith to Vince Young. They shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath.

Remember that feeling when we won last year? Hopefully we will get to experience it again in the near future. I forsee good things to come.

Was it just me or was [tag]Ohio State[/tag]’s band just playing “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic during the halftime show of the national title game? That may be more embarrassing than being down by 20 points at the half in a game you were favored to win big.

It’s probably equally embarrassing that I immediately recognized the song.

Didn’t see that coming. Could be bad news for Louisville.

Mack Brown has named former University of Arizona defensive coordinator and current 49ers’ special teams coach Larry Mac Duff as the new Texas co-defensive coordinator. Mac Duff will be the co-DC with Duane Akina and will be in charge of the linebackers, something he has extensive experience with unlike previous coordinator Gene Chizik. Akina is a longtime friend of Mac Duff when they both worked under former Texas coach Dick Tomey in Arizona. We should see immediate improvement from the linebacking corps and the special teams. Interestingly, Akina will handle the defensive play-calling on game days.

We’ll have more thoughts on this news later today.

Ramonce Taylor. Surprised to hear his name? Yeah, me too. But according to the ESPN Bottomline, [tag]Ramonce Taylor[/tag] has indeed decided to forgo his last two seasons of eligibility to enter the 2007 NFL Draft.

Is it just me, or does getting arrested for marijuana possession and then missing a whole year at Texas College due to academic eligibility not seem like what NFL scouts are looking for? Ramonce definitely has the athletic talent to play at the next level, I just hope that he can keep his head on his shoulders and forget about the past.