Defensive posturing

For those of you ready to relegate Texas to a third-place position in the Big 12 South, you might need to reconsider. I agree with most that Oklahoma is the best choice to repeat as the conference champion, but in an effort to recognize how improved Texas Tech is going to be this year – and they will be – most prognosticators have mistakenly shoved Texas down into the wait-till-next-year category.

Because of a great coaching hire in the offseason, very similar to the one made prior to their 2005 national championship, I see the Longhorns not only remaining as one of the top-two teams in the conference but also having a very good chance of taking home the Big 12 crown.

By even their own standards, Texas had a very average season last year but still managed to go 10-3 for the second year in a row. The Longhorns have taken two out of the last three from Oklahoma and carry a five-game winning streak against Mike Leach's surging Red Raiders including last year's 59-point pounding of Tech's new-and-improved defense.

The point is, in the Big 12 conference, no one is in the same league with Texas and Oklahoma when it comes to NFL quality talent. According to college football expert Phil Steele in his 2008 preseason football magazine, Texas has more players (19) among his preseason all-conference selections than any other team – including Oklahoma.

Though much of the talent is yet to be tested, at Texas it will not be so much about having to find better people to put in the lineup, but rather finding someone who knows a better way of lining them up.

And nobody in the business knows how to line up defensive players better than new defensive coordinator Will Muschamp.

Going into 2005, the Longhorns had lost to Oklahoma five straight years and were perennial second-place finishers in the Big 12. Mack Brown then made the decision to bring in one of the top defensive coordinators in the country in Auburn's Gene Chizik. Of course, anyone who watched Texas beat Ohio State early in the season or Southern Cal in the title game knows that Vince Young was the absolute star of the football team. But I believe hiring the new defensive coordinator is what actually got them over the top. Texas has always been able to put points on the board under Brown, but you win championships with defense and that is exactly what Texas did immediately after hiring Chizik.

Muschamp brings the same impressive pedigree – if not more.

While serving as the defensive coordinator at LSU in 2003, the Tigers won the national championship and his defense finished ranked No.1 in total and scoring defense. These past two seasons, his defenses at Auburn also ranked among the very best in the country, finishing in the top 10 both years.

My knowledge of Muschamp's football instincts goes back much farther than that. I hired him as a graduate assistant fresh out of the University of Georgia in 1995. I could tell from day one that he was going to be a good one. He is a natural motivator and teacher, but most importantly he understands the game. He sees the big picture when running a defense.

Muschamp has always been a very good student of the game and I wish I could tell you that I was his main mentor. But I spent all my time tinkering with the offense when I coached and let the defensive coordinator handle the other side of the ball. My coordinator Bill "Brother" Oliver was one of the very best to ever coach and Muschamp received a strong foundation from him. Then Muschamp was lucky enough to work under two of the best "defensive" head coaches around in Nick Saban and Tommy Tuberville and to be quite honest, he would have had a hard time not being a success with all that good influence.

Muschamp is one of the best in the business at scheming the spread passing game. If you look at last year's statistics, improvement in that one area alone will make all the difference in the world. The Longhorns gave up 278 yards per game through the air and ranked in the bottom 10 in all of college football.

Muschamp gives Texas a chance to be much, much better on defense this year.

And that gives them as good a chance as anybody to win the Big 12 championship.