Hallelujah, game week is here at last, the season is upon us, the slate is clean and anything is possible. This may not be the most promising season of the Mack Brown era in terms of wins and losses, but I’m nonetheless as excited and intrigued by the future as I’ve ever been — including, by the way, 2009, a season set up for a title run, but which for all its promise felt as though it was setting up to be an exercise in survival. And indeed it was, as Texas’ sputtering coaching staff was fortunate to survive a rocky season and a near-calamitous Big 12 Championship Game.

But five plays into the national title game, their luck ran out. Texas lost Colt McCoy to injury, lost the game to Alabama, lost its entire (two-man) offense to graduation, and then lost one, two, three, four… seven games in 2010. Not even Greg Davis could survive such spectacular failure. Will Muschamp could have, but decided not to stick around for the aftermath.

As ugly as it all was, a 5-7 catastrophe was exactly what Texas and Mack Brown needed. After 13 mostly successful years at Texas, Mack Brown was forced to hit program reset. Out with the old, in with the new, including two fresh coordinators and six new coaches in total, all of them young, impressive, and hungry.

Given the state of the program in December, it’s tempting to look at the 2011 season narrative through that which was done in the months that immediately followed. Whether Mack Brown would respond well to the challenges facing him and the program was critically important, and without question his unqualified success in that regard has shaped the definition of the 2011 season.

Nevertheless, the 2011 season narrative is about more than what Mack Brown did in resetting the program. The 2011 season narrative is about what has to happen next — about what is required for all this exciting potential to become actualized, maximized, and sustained on-field success. The 2011 season narrative is about process.

In connection with that broad theme, after the jump are four big points on process that I’m looking at to define the 2011 season.

source:www.burntorangenation.com