Charlie Broadway
Greg Ward Jr. SZN
Yeah I feel where you're coming from and I'm not trying to defend Mack by any means with what I'm about to say but looking back on the quarterbacks he took year by year you can kinda see where he was coming from. Again, the version of the story that I remember is the same as Klatt and Herman's version but even back then I don't remember the majority of people being upset about passing up Luck at the time. They wondered about it but weren't exactly upset. I remember there being a vocal minority on message boards preaching that Luck was an automatic take because he was the best qb in the state for his class and because a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, which was fitting because at the time it really was widely accepted that Mack did in fact have "two birds" ready to go for the next year. I think it's really as simple as Mack not totally learning from a previous mistake. I mean he thought he had but in reality that lesson didn't sink in all of the way.
That mistake I'm talking about was the qb recruiting that he botched in the 03 and 04 classes. There was VY in 02 (and you were totally correct that Tim Brewster finally convinced Mack to recruit VY as a qb after months of working on him to change his mind). I believe he only targeted the bluest of the blue chips in 03. I only know the longhorn versions of their recruitments but allegedly Kyle Wright and Chris Leak saw VY work out while they visited and wanted no parts of coming in behind him. 04 was the infamous all in on Bomar year. That might've been the first year in the recent explosion of top qbs being produced in the state of Texas and Mack blew it by focusing on Bomar. I forget who all came out that year but at the very least Bobby Reid and Kirby Freeman would've been solid backups to VY.
Colt/Perilloux was in 05 (low-key Colt sticking with UT after flirting with LSU late was one of the biggest recruiting battles Mack won). Mack tried to right his wrongs by taking two but Perilloux was being Perilloux. He did sign two the next season with Snead and Harris. He followed that up in 07 with two more in Chiles and Kinne.
At THAT point in time it looked like all was well and Mack had learned his lesson about committing a cardinal recruiting sin in back to back seasons without having to pay a significant price. He successfully transitioned from Vince to Colt and he had young backups that looked promising in Harris, Chiles, and I think Kinne was still around then.
To make things even better he was sitting pretty on the recruiting trail. Texas was at the very least pretty high on Luck's list and there were two enormously hyped young qbs coming up the year after that were not only considered potentially transcendent talents but both were also extremely high on Texas who was assumed to be the leader for both. You could totally understand Greg Davis telling Mack that he felt great about the qbs that he had on campus and about the young qbs that had yet to be juniors in hs. You could also understand it if they felt like taking Luck would've created a log jam at a position that had 4 guys in their soph years or younger.
So imo it was an understandable decision at the time. I don't remember many people banging the drum (or keyboard) that Luck was a can't miss. There were a few but not many. Most wanted him because it is a cardinal sin to not take a qb. Obviously we all know what happened with the group of young qbs on campus
tl;dr Mack fukked up by not going after Luck but hindsight makes the decision even dumber then it was at the time.
Side note, Mack could write a helluva book that only focuses on the qbs he recruited while at Texas. It's crazy looking back on some of the names I typed/alluded to. Sherrod Harris was that dude as a soph in hs. I can't remember if he dealt with injuries but his stock dropped by his senior year but there was a ton of hype about him at one point. Snead was supposed to come in and beat out noodle armed Colt. Russell Shepard was one of the most explosive players I've ever seen in hs. I still remember some of the words Gerry Hamilton used to describe him smh. Kinne is a forgotten man but if he never transferred he would've gotten his chance to contribute. He was pretty solid at Tulsa. I've wondered for a while if Kinne could've put together a better game vs Bama than Gilbert did.
He married to a Black Woman?
