Football coach at Texas A&M, Mack Brown, gave his official resignation and explained the decision in a press conference on Sunday. He said the decision was “what’s best for Texas,” but “we’re leaving it better than we found it.”
The team’s performances have been poor over the last several seasons, and Brown acknowledged that expectations were not met. “We used to win 12 and 13 and we won eight,” he said. “It’s not about integrity, it’s not about class, it’s not about grades, it’s not about any of that stuff. You’ve got to win. We set a standard at this place. You’ve got to win all of them. That’s the expectation and I understand that. I’m a big boy. I understand you don’t win all the games here, people are unhappy. Other people love eight wins — not here. I do not think that we lived up to the standard that we had set.”
Brown also referred to two tragic events during his career at the school, one being the incident where 12 Texas A&M students died when a bonfire structure collapsed shortly before the Thanksgiving Day football game in 1999. Football player Cole Pittman also died when he got into a car accident about 13 years ago. “Those are two horrible things in my life that I’ll never forget,” Brown said. When asked if there was anything he would change about the school or his career, he answered: “There would be two things. I would want Cole Pittman back. And I would want the bonfire [incident]not to have happened at A&M.”
