Mack Brown on February 5, 2003

If there's anyone qualified to serve as a historian of the Mack Brown era at Texas, it's probably yours truly, and although I'm not sure that I can give you an exact date when the Texas Longhorns changed as a program, this is the date I've always remembered.

Sure, you can point to the arrival of Vince Young as one date or the departure of the Big Three as another. Personally, I've always pointed towards National Signing Day in 2003 as the moment when the program truly turned a page.

At that time the Longhorns were mired in a three-game losing streak to Oklahoma, which wouldn't end for another 32 months, but the program was stocked from top to bottom with as much young talent in the country. After years of mediocrity, the Longhorns had moved back into the national discussion with a string of four straight recruiting classes that ranked among the top five in the nation.

In fact, a strong case can be made that Mack's 2002 recruiting class is one of the strongest in the modern history of college football. In addition to the six all-Americans, nine NFL players and 10 all-Big 12 players that eventually emerged from the group, it also featured a several guys with checkered pasts, shaky academics and a whole lot of drama.

Former tight ends coach Tim Brewster landed a five-star receiver from Illinois named Marquise Johnson, who ripped his ACL after a car accident that could have killed him and left him in legal limbo, only to not make it to Texas on time because his test score was arbitrarily red flagged by the NCAA. The nation's No. 3 wide receiver never made it to Austin.

There was also the case of fellow-five star cornerback Edorian McCulloch, who was talented enough as a player that he contributed for a top-10 program as a true freshman, but poor enough of a student that he didn't last two semesters on the 40 Acres.

And then there's the case of Robert Timmons. Outside of Young, he might have been the most talented of the entire bunch. We're talking about a guy with sure-fire NFL talent, but more baggage off the field than Love Field. In fact, Timmons had so much baggage that few schools were willing to take him, but Mack didn't see a problem kid - he saw a young man who had never been given a chance. Timmons had been homeless at one point and had very little direction. Mack hoped by giving him a chance, he could help save a life.

Within a year Timmons was gone and Mack took a hard right turn in his philosophy in recruiting. Never again … well, almost never again … would the Longhorn coaching staff completely overlook character because of elite talent. Guys like McCulloch and Timmons weren't college students - they were football mercenaries and Mack Brown had enough.

Perhaps he would never beat Oklahoma or win a national championship, but he was tired of fielding a team that was so completely wrapped up in individuals and bad attitude that it couldn't ever get over the hump. Hell, if he needed proof to prove his point that having the most highly-ranked recruits isn't necessarily the ticket to success, he could simply point a few hundred miles north to Norman. The Sooners didn't have nearly the amount of elite recruits that Texas had possessed, but they had found a way to whip Texas' butt each year.

It was Bob Stoops that gave Mack the blue-print to success, even if Mack didn't know it. When Oklahoma beat Florida State for the national championship in 2000, it wasn't the most talented team in the country, but it took the talent that it did have and maximized it with heart, passion and a togetherness that hadn't been seen in Mack's program.

So, there he was in February of 2003, sitting in front of the media and introducing his newest recruiting class, which didn't have a lot of snap to it. It wasn't a top-10 class, it featured only one five-star prospect (instead of six like the previous season) and it was full of players that Texas might not have gone after in previous seasons.

While detailing each recruit that day, Brown emphasized character, the ability to stay eligible and each prospect's inherent love for the school as much as talent. While others, including myself, doubted whether his approach would survive over the long-term, Mack began to dig in his feet.

Fast-forward 80 months later and look who's enjoying the last laugh. With a national championship ring on his finger, and thereby the clout to pretty much do whatever he wants until he retires, Mack has finally built the program into the image of which he's dreamed.

The Longhorns might never be the most talented team in the nation ever again, but by God they were never going to labeled soft on Mack's watch again. They would never quit on him again. The best way to nip bad attitude is to stay away from it in the first place.

He always knew that he'd have enough talent, but he wanted guys that would come out of a street fight alive and he needed them to be honor roll students at the same time.

"The coaches that we hire look at our talent when they come in and say, 'I'm surprised. It's not as good as I thought,'" Brown recently said in an article on ESPN.com. "I say, 'Well, you're going to be surprised on Saturday. They're going to play better than they are.' Since we've got good kids, they play hard every Saturday. They're not flat much. We may not play good, but we're not going to blow games any more because our kids have pride and they are going to play."

Translation - Texas used to blow games by coming out too flat, too often and because the players didn't have enough pride. Never again.

Perhaps the most ironic aspect of a story that is full of ironies is the fact that at the same time Mack was starting to build a team in an image that the 2000 version of Bob Stoops would have embraced with wildly open arms, Stoops' own recruiting philosophy was starting to morph into something different as well.

Just like Mack, the 2002 Longhorn recruiting class ended up being the straw that broke Stoops' back, but for completely different reasons. Despite riding a three-game winning streak over the Longhorns and owning a national championship ring, Stoops couldn't touch Texas with a 10-foot pole when it came to recruiting and it drove his staff up a tree.

It didn't matter that the Longhorns were soft and that the Sooners were the kings of college football, he couldn't close the deal with the likes of Justin Blalock, Aaron Harris, Garnet Smith and a large majority of players that Texas coveted.

The player that ended up serving as the true dagger in Stoops' heart that year was former Jersey Village star Selvin Young. The Longhorns had a freshman by the name of Cedric Benson starring in their backfield in the 2002 season and senior Quentin Griffin was set to depart. Oklahoma offered the chance for a starting position in year one, while the prospect loomed that he might sit No. 2 behind Benson until 2005 if he joined the Longhorns.

So, what happens? Young joined the Longhorns and the entire Oklahoma staff flipped its lid. In fact, if you listen closely, I think you can still hear the OU staff's screams from that day in the distance.

If it was Timmons that changed everything for Mack, it might have been Young that changed everything for Stoops. Frankly, you could pick any of the dozens of head-to-head recruiting victories that Mack enjoyed over "Big-game Bob" during a five-year losing streak. The thing that few understood at the time is that Stoops might have had a championship ring on his finger, but he was consumed with something that Mack had - talent. Lots of it.

Stoops had reached the mountaintop by being a great coach that won without elite talent and now he wanted to cash in. In his mind, the Oklahoma program was a dynasty waiting to happen. If he could ever bring in the kind of talent that Mack Brown had, nothing could stop the Sooners from winning a string of national championships.

Stoops was already beating his top rival with lesser talent, so once he could swing the talent edge in his direction, he'd never have to worry about the Longhorns while Mack was in charge. Of course, the problem with the whole plan was that he would never have more talent than Mack if he kept trying to break through Texas' clutch of top in-state talent.

A decision had to be made and just like the Nazi's in Raiders of the Lost Arc, Stoops coveted Ark of the Covenant. At the same exact time that Mack was pulling back the reins a little in his own pursuit of every five-star player on the planet, Stoops was ramping up an aggressive nationwide search for the kind of talent that could match anyone in the nation.

Beginning in 2002 and building steam each following year, the Sooners started to recruit just about every state in the nation. Despite its history of building championship teams around kids from Oklahoma and Texas, Stoops went nationwide with his approach.

Within three recruiting cycles, Stoops had changed the fabric of his program by making the decision to stop making the state of Texas his most important target. Suddenly, the Sooners were sniffing around New Jersey, Florida and California for players.

In 2005 when the Sooners landed the nation's No. 3 recruiting class according to Rivals.com, only 33 percent of the class was comprised of kids from the state of Texas. Meanwhile, that same year the Longhorns brought in the nation's No. 20 class and it was almost exclusively (87 percent) comprised of home-grown, in-state talent.

The very next year the Sooners signed 28 more prospects and only 10 (37 percent) were from Texas, while others hailed from Virginia, California, Utah and Kansas. The bottom line was that Bob Stoops wanted as much talent as possible and he was tired of waiting around for it.

He's never blinked at taking JUCO players or transfers with checkered pasts or high school prospects with serious off-field baggage. You don't have to look any further than the last 12 months for proof that you'll never see Stoops have a press conference where he talks about the importance of "having good kids that graduate." If you need evidence, look into the tales of Nevada freshman defensive end Justin Chaisson or offensive line transfer Jarvis Jones.

It's about talent and the idea that the guy with the most at his disposal wins out in the end.

So, here we are in September of 2009 and both Mack Brown and Bob Stoops finally have the programs they've been waiting to control for the last decade. Perhaps the biggest irony in the history of college football ironies is that both coaches have morphed into the other's old image.

Mack Brown's program is tough, scrappy and never quits. He has a team full of players that will bleed for the honor of the Texas football program. Outside of crazy, old Uncle Howard Schnellenberger, you won't find many people questioning Texas' toughness these days.

Meanwhile, the Sooners have become the Glass Joe of college football. When BYU lineman Jan Jorgensen remarked last week that his team needed only to punch the Sooners in the mouth if they wanted to win the game, most of the nation laughed.

He was right. Oklahoma is soft. They are the 2000-03 Texas Longhorns in 2009. If you punch them in the mouth, there's a great chance they will crater. The evidence of that was on display against the Cougars in Dallas over the weekend. Despite holding a halftime lead over the BYU, the Sooners were a defeated team as soon as the Cougars landed a hard right hook before the bell that sent starting quarterback Sam Bradford to the canvas.

"It was a total morgue," Oklahoma offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson told the Oklahoma media on Tuesday. "It was a concern. I was a cheerleader for 10 minutes: 'We're winning. Open your eyes. Get a little spunk here. Let's go! This is why we practice hard, for great games. Let's go!"

As it turns out, the loss to the Cougars was the continuation of a terrible trend for the Sooners. Since the 2006 season, Oklahoma is 7-7 in games that are decided by 10 points or less, including four straight losses. You have to go all the way back to the middle part of the 2007 season against Iowa State to find a close game that the Sooners were able to win.

The good news is that they have blown most of their opponents out of the water. The bad news is that if they find themselves in a close game, they aren't finishing. By contrast, the Sooners were 16-7 in games decided by 10 points or less from 2000-05.

Of course, that what was back when Oklahoma was winning BCS bowl games.

Meanwhile, since 2004 the Longhorns own a 16-5 record in games decided by 10 points or less. In the four years prior to 2004, the Longhorns were a below-average 6-7 in close games.

Oh yeah, they've also been winning all of their BCS games and if they beat Oklahoma in October, they'll have won four of their last five against Stoops in Dallas.

After all of these years, the facts point out the obvious. Even if the rest of the nation hasn't caught on, Mack has become Stoops and Stoops has become Mack, or at least they've become each other's old images.

The only constant is that after all of these years, Stoops almost certainly still looks down to Austin and wishes he had the team that Mack Brown has. It was true back in 2002 and it appears that it might stay true for several more years at a minimum.