Texas Football: Mack Brown Is Spot on in Opposition to Multi-Year Scholarships

The multi-year or four-year scholarship movement is one that has been on the minds of college football's decision makers for the last several months.

Some schools have stepped up and offered them across the board to their signees, while other schools have been adamantly opposed to the idea. Of course, after voting against the scholarships, Alabama's flip, most importantly Nick Saban's public side change, drew plenty of headlines.

Now a big time head coach steps to the plate, and he is not switching sides the way the Crimson Tide's head man did a few weeks ago. Mack Brown, Texas' long tenured head coach, is remaining steadfast in his opposition to the multi-year scholarship move sweeping college football. Good for Mack Brown, because the coach makes some excellent points.

Sure, Mack's spin of the same old "guys get complacent" is something that we've heard before, but ultimately the positive to Brown's comments are not about why he doesn't like the move. The most salient point that Mack Brown makes about the move to the multi-year deals is when he points out the true problem and the reason people are pushing for the four year deals:

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"But I think we need to be more careful with the schools that are running kids off."

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That's the issue here. Teams that are doing the right things—treating players fairly and not running kids off campus—are not the problem with the one-year renewable scholarship. The problem lies with teams, schools and coaches who treat the doors of their program like turnstiles.

Kid doesn't start or contribute by year two or three? Then find a way to get him out of the door. Player can't stay healthy? Slap a medical hardship on him so you get his scholarship back into your usable pool.

The thing about multi-year scholarships and the whole uproar is that people are acting as if players are having their scholarships pulled with the reasoning actually being listed as "he wasn't good so we didn't renew his scholarship." That is almost never the case in the college football world. Players aren't dismissed for the simple "he was not good enough" that the multi-year renewable scholarship would fix.

Instead, players are jettisoned off for the ambiguous "violation of team rules" or "academic issues." Transfers are forced through, making a kid's life miserable; moving him to scout team defensive line, cutting all of his reps in practice, or giving him every early morning lift that you can find until he just can't take being at the school any longer.

Four-year scholarships don't change this, and Mack Brown understands that. The issue is not slapping a bow on the one-year renewable to make it seem like the player has any sort of security. The issue is the standards and practices that accompany the one-year renewable and working to eliminate the shady proceedings that characterize the practice of dismissing players.

The multi-year scholarship is not a fix—it is a pretty bow that people can toss out there as a step towards advocating for players. It does not actually fix anything. Violation of team rules, academic issues, medical hardships and making a kid's life miserable are still out there as ways to reclaim those scholarships from players deemed to be "wastes" or "misses" by a staff.

Mack Brown hits the nail on the head: fix the actual problem, don't dangle a four-year deal out there like it holds anymore weight than the current deals players get.