Christmas came early for Audience Development Group's year-old FM Sports-Talk client in Austin, 104.9 The Horn. The talent there will tell you it started oddly enough when UCLA laid a whipping on the Longhorns back in September. That insurgency by an unlikely Bruins team spilled into a rare season of disappointment for Texas, revving up the phones and PPM numbers for the new FM sports brand. Ironically, we were meeting with our Austin cluster last week, amazed at the strange season's developments that ignited 104.9 The Horn's weekly sampling. First came the Longhorn's season of discontent, followed by the resignation of U-T's offensive coordinator the previous week, leading our staff to remark that if the Longhorns had to suffer, at least the sports talk contingent in this monument-to-college-sports city was on high alert to the benefit of 104.9. It wasn't over. Saturday night ESPN TV's crawl endlessly repeated the bulletin: the Longhorns' coach-in-waiting Will Muschamp would be the new head coach at Florida! Say what?

For those who don't covet sports, this may seem a somewhat vapid topic based on greater issues in the world around us. But take a close look at what this case study in broken management means to those of us outside the circle of major college football. Start with fall 2008 when revered Texas head coach Mac Brown made a command decision to appoint his defensive coordinator Will Muschamp head coach designate. In short, when Mac Brown hung up his burnt orange whistle, Muschamp was assured the position! Some said, "brilliant move; we'll keep Muschamp and the program will have an orderly progression if and when Mac retires." Others protested, "But what if we miss the chance to hire a more experienced head coach from a major program, or, what effect will this have on our other assistant coaches?" Well, we're about to find out.

Take this out of a sports context and envision this process in a corporation or an institution such as a large medical consortium or a university. Let's say Harvard announced that long before its president stepped down they were knighting the next president today, awarding the title-in-waiting to a provost years in advance of a changing of the guard. What message does this send partisans and faculty? How about, "no matter how successful, no matter how hard you try, you have no shot at the presidency here since we've already filled that position."

Doubtless this has been done before. To be fair to Mac Brown, he gambled on the assurance of permanence by pitching everything on one toss. Along the way, his decision appears to have created a divide within the coaching staff, which inevitably cost the Longhorns some yardage: five yards for illegal procedure. Last Saturday the gamble blew up with the coach-in-waiting humming the lyrics from the Kinks' immortal hit "so tired, tired of waiting for you..." last seen heading east for Gainesville.

Lesson learned: when we make a trade for tactical expediency, we may sacrifice strategic stability.

On this note, we put a personal ribbon on the column until after the holidays. 2010 has been a record year for Audience Development Group. We're extremely proud of our programming client partners coast to coast and salute their success!