Three things Mack Brown values: Security, predictability, efficiency. A man needs to know where his next meal is coming from. One thing Mack Brown can't truck: Procrastination. This is a system, people.

That reminds him: Has Texas wrapped up its 2010 recruiting class yet? What's the holdup?

In what is becoming an almost ridiculous scenario, the Longhorns received seven commitments over the weekend and continue to get whomever they target for the class of 2010.

The Longhorns might be able to add four or five more recruits to that class, but Texas, through March 1, is almost finished with its class.

Such are the luxuries of an unmatched machine in a state that can singlehandedly supply at least three elite programs' worth of talent: Eleven months out from signing day, and Mack's largely free to resume conducting interviews for his long-delayed biography of Georgia O'Keeffe or something. Fast and furious hoarding is the way a modern mega-program should be run, and our friends at Burnt Orange Nation are more or less giddy about streamlining the assembly, in a big-picture sort of way:

For years we heard over and over the same two things about Mack: (1) his supposed poor game day and "big game" coaching abilities (translation: Not a genius!) and (2) that his strength was "merely" in the areas related to building Texas to a consistent Top 10 program. That bit of conventional wisdom was all jumbled up -- Mack Brown was as strong a college candidate to win lots of big games, including a national title, precisely because of the supreme job he was doing putting together a monstrous machine (system). A supposed genius who doesn't build a truly elite system won't achieve anything; a coach supposedly lacking in game day mental gymnastics but who builds a masterful system will win and win big.

Yes -- and this year, with the system rotating all the pieces into place for the mythical championship run that took everyone by surprise last year, winning big (without Vince Young) is the only way to make the haters appreciate it.

By the way, are the 'Horns still waiting on Lache Seastrunk? You're missing the ship, son. The ship is sailing.