Not long after Mack Brown was hired at the University of Texas, he was saved from the first controversy of his young Longhorns career by the unlikeliest of allies.
In 1998, Brown and longtime Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum were guests at a public event in San Antonio along with former Texas A&M and Alabama coach Gene Stallings.
Both Slocum and Stallings were well-versed in the importance of hand signs in Texas college football. Brown, a Tennessee native who had just arrived from North Carolina, got a quick lesson.
"I didn't know much about the history of the two places, and a fan walked over and stood between the three of us and said, 'Let's take a picture,'" Brown recalled to ESPN recently.