"Secret" Is Out - Garret Gilbert Will Start At Quarterback For Texas

The Texas Longhorns have decided to go with junior quarterback Garrett Gilbert but shhhhhhhhh...don't tell anyone. Its a secret. According to Kirk Bohls of the Austin American Statesman coaches secretly told Gilbert that he would be the man this fall but wanted to keep the news on the down low. So how did Bohls find out? Well...he talked to a guy who talks to the guys on the team.

So if the coaches know it, the players know it, Kirk Bohls knows it and now the whole world knows it - exactly who is this supposed to be a secret from? Are they trying to keep Rice from game planning this far in advance? I'm sure that now the cat is out of the bag Rice will be working on returning interceptions the very first day of fall practice.

Seriously a secret? I can only imagine how that conversation went with the coaches and Gilbert. "Hey Garrett, you've really blossomed since that BCS championship game. You were only eight touchdowns away from having more touchdowns than interceptions last season. What really solidified it for us was the outstanding performance you gave us in the spring game. You really separated yourself from the sophomore and the two freshman you were competing against. Just don't tell anyone, okay." Mumbling under their breath while walking away, "we can't deal with the embarrassment all summer long."

You know, there's an old saying that goes - "friends don't make secrets and secrets don't make friends." If Mack Brown is going to stick with Gilbert then more power to him. I'm sure the rest of the Big 12 coaching staffs will support the decision while letting out a collective chuckle. So why the need for a secret?

Bohls says its so that the younger guys - David Ash, Case McCoy and Connor Wood don't get discouraged and stop working hard. I get it now, the school that can pull in the top recruits from anywhere in the nation has players who are only motivated to work hard when there's a position open. Outside of that they're just leaching off the university. Makes perfect sense to me.

The bottom line is that if this report is true then nothing has changed with Mack Brown. He's still picking out student-athletes to play mind games with. He's still deceiving other players. He's still operating as a CEO and not a head coach with the ability to motivate his players to get the best out of them. Now Brown has a new set of assistants eager to go along with him. There were clearly divisions on last year's team both among the players and in the coaching staff. The question is, are the secrets a result of that or were secrets the cause of the division?