Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The once and future successor

The big news around Austin these days is the announcement that Will Muschamp, the defensive coordinator for the University of Texas Longhorns who would make a great head coach anywhere from Clemson to Tennessee to Washington, has been named by the UT Athletic Department as the man who will replace Mack Brown. Not that that is happening anytime soon; Brown, who's won one national championship and will probably win some more during the eight years he has left on his contract, is not retiring early (or being asked to do so). Brown wanted to make the move to add stability at the defensive coordinator position, and shore up defensive recruiting. I don't know if that's worth paying someone $900,000 a year, but Brown does.

Anyway, back to grammar. The headline to this story on yesterday's online version of the Austin American-Statesman was "Muschamp named Brown's future successor". This begs the question whether there was once a past successor to Brown, which in turn makes one wonder (or makes me wonder, anyway) whether there will be any future predecessors named any time soon. I guess it made some editor at the A A-S wonder as well; the word "future" has been dropped from the new link today.