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HornsNation's Sean Adams takes a look at the state of the Texas football program. In this video, Sean looks at the hype surrounding the running back position and Johnathan Gray.

AUSTIN, Texas -- It’s odd, 17 years after he arrived, that Ricky Williams should be back again and this time inanimate, cast in bronze.

He had, after all, always been the ever-changing athlete. Ricky was not one who could be caught in a pose much less by his opponents. Instead Ricky was a subject tough to get a grip on. The dreads. The visor. The disappearance. The dress. Ricky was all those images. What he wasn’t and never will be is someone who can be captured by a single image or even an 8-foot, 1000-pound statue.

That’s not Ricky. Ricky evolves.

It seems everything these days, from Nick Saban to Tim Tebow’s teary speech after an LSU loss, has to be memorialized. Texas decided Ricky should be. He'll be the next to have his likeness placed outside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Right there next to Earl.

To be sure it’s a tribute and honor. Over the top? Sure, but college football must have its heroes. And Ricky, one of only two Heisman winners in Texas history, is the Longhorns.

“It was so funny … I had to take [Williams] down to the running backs meeting. They were just in awe,” Texas coach Mack Brown said. “Just bringing a rock star in and walking him into the running back room. They were sitting up front and I walked in and said, 'This is Ricky Williams.’ They couldn't move. They just sat there. They didn't say hello. They didn't shake his hand.”

Fourteen years removed from his playing days at Texas, and this is the response Ricky still elicits from people in and around the program. Maybe that is why the statue seems premature. Ricky, who briefly held the NCAA Division I-A career rushing record, is still a living breathing entity, still changing, still affecting people.

Even to Ricky, the statue seems a tad strange.

“It's going to be funny being a student walking past my statue,” Williams said.

Not that he is going to mind it too terribly much.

“I'm going to walk by it every day,” he joked.

Who wouldn’t?

On the other hand who, at age 35, with money and opportunity who said “I wake up and I say to myself, 'What grand and glorious adventure do I want to do today,” would decide that the adventure would be to go back to school?

Ricky would.

“I want to get a “T” ring,” Williams said. “It’s one of the things I wanted to do a long time ago.”

Despite wandering away from what the public perceived his goals should have been on the football field, Ricky is actually all about goals. Setting them and meeting them. It’s how he came to be at Texas. He wanted to have an impact on a program. He wanted to be a part of something.

In the process he became something.

“I remember when he broke the record, we knew he was going to do it in the Texas A&M game, we just didn’t know how he was going to do it,” ESPN broadcaster Brent Musburger, who called the game in 1998, said during the statue ceremony.

He should have known. Musburger had been watching Ricky for more than three years. By that time it was clear that nothing Ricky ever did was understated or subtle. So, when he went through three tackles for 60 yards and into the end zone, it should not have been shock to anyone.

Those are the types of memories David Demming has attempted to evoke with this statue. A Texas fan can now look at this piece of art and remember what Ricky did in those four years.

The fans gets a glimpse at the dreads -- not nearly as long as they would be, and the player -- really at the peak of what he would be -- and they are able to remember a few days and plays from the falls of the late 90s.

But not even Ricky believes this statue resembles who he is, or much less, who he might become now that football is over.

“Close enough,” he said.

Not really. Not at all.

AUSTIN, Texas - - ESPNU 150 athlete Daje Johnson (Pflugerville, Texas/Hendrickson) has finally committed to the Longhorns.

Johnson, the No. 14 athlete and No. 141 player overall, was offered a scholarship by Texas during his official visit on Saturday and accepted on the spot. In doing so, he became the 25th member of its 2012 class and the 18th with at least a four-star grade.

There appeared to at least be a chance of that happening when he scheduled his official visit to Austin last week. Johnson has always liked the Longhorns and even made the initial effort to see if they had any interest in him by asking Texas coach Mack Brown via text early during the 2011 season.

Then there didn't seem to be much a shot at all after he canceled his visit on Monday.

At that time, Johnson said that Texas had simply waited too long to get in the race and he had every intention on sticking with his commitment to TCU, where he had been committed since March 26.

But Texas stayed persistent. On Tuesday, Johnson received a phone call from Longhorns co-offensive coordinator Major Applewhite and a Facebook message from Mack Brown. That was enough to get Johnson to reschedule his visit for this weekend.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Mack Brown has his contract extension. The new deal could keep him on the 40 Acres until 2020.

The contract also affords Brown the opportunity to reach and surpass some coaching milestones if he were to stay the entire nine years.

Currently Brown has 141 wins at Texas, an average of 10 per year. Assuming he stays at or near that average -- a relatively safe assumption considering Brown has had one losing season since 1990 -- Brown could very soon surpass Texas icon Darrell Royal in wins. Royal had 167 wins in his tenure. So Brown could probably pass Royal sometime in the 2014 season.

As for other milestones, here are just a few that Brown could reach if he stays until the end of his contract:

300 wins: Currently there are 10 coaches with 300 career wins. Brown has 227 in his 28-year career. Again assuming he stays at his averages, Brown could hit the 300-win mark in the final season of his contract. Ten wins a season would put him at 317 wins, or eighth on the all-time list just behind Pop Warner and his 318 wins. Nine wins a season would give Brown 308 total victories and put him ninth on the list just ahead of Frosty Westerling.

23 seasons: Brown is currently the third-longest tenured coach in FBS. Larry Blakeney has been at Troy since 1991. Frank Beamer has been at Virginia Tech since 1987. In a few years Brown could take over the spot at the longest tenured coach. Blakeney is 64. He is an icon at Troy, but he did just suffer his first losing season since 2005, so it is tough to tell how long he will stay.

Beamer, who is 65, just received a contract extension through 2016. If that is his final contract Brown should surpass him, provided Brown stays past the 2016 season.

If Brown does stay for the next nine seasons he will became the longest-tenured Texas coach, surpassing the 20 years Royal spent on the sideline.

Winning percentage: Brown has a .667 win percentage over his first 28 years in coaching. Even if Brown were to average 10 wins over the next nine seasons to up his winning percentage to roughly 71 percent, he doesn’t stand a chance of cracking the all-time list of coaches with the top winning percentage.

From five to one those coaches are: Doyt Perry (.885), Bowling Green; Bob Reade (.862), Augustana College; Frank Leahy (.864), Notre Dame and Boston College; Knute Rockne (.891), Notre Dame; Larry Kehres (.926), Mount Union.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Whether Mack Brown was campaigning for it or not, he received four more years.

And to think, no one even got to vote. Not that a vote was needed. A few rumors that Brown might retire, and Texas' athletic director DeLoss Dodds got to work to make sure it wouldn't happen. The sage septuagenarian decided he wanted to keep his best asset for a bit longer, or at least until Dodds himself rides off into the burnt orange sunset. Dodds is 74, after all.

It was the wise and prudent move. Brown and his program have allowed Texas, and Dodds, to build the richest and most powerful athletic department in the country. Sure, there have been a few blips -- 5-7 and 8-5 immediately come to mind. Those two seasons, the worst of Brown's career, had some fans questioning whether the coach had become complacent or incompetent.

Brown will even own up to the complacency charge. He and his staff lived on the name brand they had built and neglected to develop talent, innovate and, most of all, win.

As for the incompetence, well, from the suites to the cheap seats just about everyone believes they are better than the guy on the sideline.

In this case, they're not.

For Carter Strickland's full column, click here.

Texas knew better than to go over the top with its celebration.

Sure a few carried-away words were said. That is to be expected, it is a young group after all. But, as a whole, it was a muted affair. That's because a win in the Holiday Bowl is not where Texas wanted to be or ever wants to be in the future. It is a steppingstone bowl. Pure and simple.

Mack Brown understands that. So too do his players.

But that they made the most of it might mean Texas is taking steps in the right direction. Not leaps. Not bounds. Texas has to crawl before it can walk and run back into the national college football scene.

After an 8-5 season in which the downs seemed to overshadow the ups, Texas has to figure out if it indeed has passed the crawling stage.

On the defensive side of the ball it most certainly has. Even with the loss of its backbone -- Keenan Robinson, Emmanuel Acho and Kheeston Randall -- there is full faith that the Texas defense will be back next year and quite possibly stronger than it was in 2011. Desmond Jackson, Calvin Howell, Chris Whaley, Jordan Hicks, and Demarco Cobbs all appear prepared to step up. The return of Kenny Vaccaro will give stability to what was once thought to be the weakest returning position -- safety.

There are few, if any, worries about the defense.

But the offense, oh the offense, it continued its angina-inducing play against Cal. With more than three weeks to prepare, a quarterback change, and somewhat healthy running backs, the offense still produced just 255 yards.

OK, maybe Cal's defense is decent.

But consider this: Texas’ average starting field position in the first quarter was its own 43. It was 0 for 4 on third down conversions and scored 0 points in that quarter. Furthermore, the Longhorns' defense handed the ball to the offense five times. The average starting field position on those drives was the Cal 40-yard line. Texas scored once. Granted the last turnover was inconsequential. But even without it, the average starting field position was the 50.

When it was over, quarterback David Ash thanked his teammates for hanging with him through the rough times. He meant against Cal, but it might as well have been a blanket statement for the season.

Ash and Case McCoy still have yet to prove that either can run a BCS-caliber offense. Both have shown flashes, but overall, it is clear neither has the arm strength required to make big throws in big games. Twice Ash missed wide open receivers more than 30-yards down the field against Cal.

Co-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin acknowledged Ash's mechanics need work. But he stopped short of stating that Ash was incapable of throwing the long play-action passes on which so much of his offensive scheme is based.

Really, Texas has no other choice than to stick with Ash. Because of the manner in which it has conducted this quarterback shuffle -- five different starters in 13 games -- Texas is at risk of losing players and another quarterback if it continues.

Jaxon Shipley, McCoy’s roommate and longtime friend, summed up some of the frustration: “Everybody knows that having one quarterback and not switching from one to the other definitely would help with the consistency.”

Shipley quickly couched that statement by saying “But we got to do what we got to do, and if we need to play both of them, we'll do that.”

But Shipley’s first statement is essentially correct. Texas now has to take the next step. To do that, it has to figure out if Ash is a viable quarterback or a stop-gap player until the next Vince Young or Colt McCoy comes along. The coaching staff has nine months to figure it out. Maybe if they do that, then there will be a real cause for celebration.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Back in July when the optimism was as high, Mack Brown took a look at his quarterbacks -- there were four back then -- and into the future.

What if there were not a clear starter by November the Texas coach was asked.

“I’ll probably be a truck driver,” he answered.

It’s November. There is no clear starter. And there is a sale on Rand McNally maps and John Deere caps. Texas continues to grind its gears at what Brown proclaimed "is the most important player probably on your football team.’’

It appears as if there is a change coming this week as Case McCoy has been listed ahead of David Ash on the depth chart. Always ones to hedge their bets, the Texas staff did keep the usual “or” between the two names.

Ash had been listed first the previous five games, and was pulled in favor of McCoy after throwing his second interception against Kansas State.

“David probably played too hard early, and pressed,” Brown said. “He needs to relax because he has done some great things for us this year.”

There hasn’t been anything too great about what Ash has done in several weeks. He has not thrown a touchdown pass since the Oklahoma game. He has not directed a touchdown drive since the Texas Tech game. Against Kansas he played two quarters and one drive in the third quarter and the offense had 111 yards.

McCoy came off the bench and rallied the team with a touchdown, a field goal and 199 yards of offense.

Still, McCoy, who has no interceptions to Ash’s eight, has not officially been named the starter.

“Because our quarterbacks, neither one of them has stepped up and taken over, we will look at both quarterbacks again this week,” Brown said. “We will just have to make a decision at the end of the week based on which one has practiced the best and what sequence of plays we will start the game with to see who starts.”

Bryan Harsin, Texas co-offensive coordinator, usually makes the call at QB, but was unavailable at Monday’s media session.

“We’ve just got to keep working with the two guys and try to find out what they do best,” Brown said.

Ten games into the season what they do best is still not clear. Brown did say the reason the staff went with Ash initially was because of his running ability.

McCoy, who is about 25 pounds lighter and an inch or two shorter than Ash, does not bring that to the game but is the better scrambler.

But it has been Brown and his staff who are scrambling to avoid the criticism of how Texas’ offense and quarterbacks have played. The coach said that is all part of the job.

“The head coach and the guy who coaches quarterbacks and calls plays and the quarterbacks around here, there is not much of a time for patience with them,” Brown said. “That learning curve has to go really, really fast.”

If the learning curve is slow and laborious speculation about the coach’s next job invariably comes up. Hey, and in some cases, it is even the coach that brings it up.

“There is no way I would have been stupid enough to say that,” he joked when reminded of his truck driver comment. “I don’t think I could drive a truck anyway.”