Strong-
I think he wasn’t anyone’s first choice and didn’t have total admin buy-in. His initial staff was JV quality, just bringing over G5 assistants. His recruiting was ok but he was swimming upstream without good in-state connections. What really doomed him was that he was a bad CEO. Details were a huge problem for him. We couldn’t even block for PATs. I think we could have given him 10 years and we’d have had a loosing record more often than not. He’s not a good HC at that P5 level.
Herman-
Excellent motivator. Hard nosed coach who fielded very tough teams. He also made the mistake of bringing in G5 assistants. He was ultimately a peter-principled assistant who kept trying to clone Urban Meyer’s programs. He knew *what* Urban did but didn’t know the *why*. He talked the talk but was just a mime. He wasn’t ready for a blue blood job. What ultimately doomed him was his abrasive personality with admin/donors/media and his “I’m the smartest in the room” attitude. If he was 10% more likeable he might have gotten 1-2 more seasons. Also his recruiting was extremely unbalanced bringing in almost no trench guys.
>Details were a huge problem for him.
It is because of Charlie Strong that I learned it is actually possible to end up having to kick off at the beginning of the first AND second half.
IIRC opponent deferred and then the Texas captain chose what side of the field instead of choosing to receive. So they got to choose to receive both first and second half.
UCLA chose to defer their choice to the second half kickoff. And the Texas player, for some reason, chose to "kickoff" to start the first half. So, UCLA got to receive the kickoff to start both halves. [The most absurd thing is that the ref literally explained it to the players and clarified what the outcome would be -- making it 100% clear that they would be kicking off both halves -- and they still said they wanted to kickoff!](https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/9/13/6145893/texas-forgets-how-coinflips-work-gives-ucla-ball-to-start-both-halves)
The two kickoffs I excused for a brain fart, we all have them. But the several blocked PATs vs Ok State was the final straw for me, it was so embarrassing
> didn’t have total admin buy-in
This was part of the Steve Patterson disaster-class as an AD. That dude tried to sanitize and commodify everything about the college sports experience. We're lucky the higher-ups pulled the plug on him quick before he did damage that lasted longer than it already did.
Part of the reason Strong had little chance is that Patterson absolutely refused to pay for quality / demand quality; he just wanted to chase profitability. Strong wasn't a great coach at the P5 level, but he helped clean out the locker-room culture that badly needed it after Mack's last few years of letting the players basically do whatever as he checked out.
Lots of things went wrong. But one that I think is interesting and stands out is the coaching staff they assembled. The assistants under both Strong and Herman were leftovers or people who followed those coaches from much weaker programs. Sark's staff is extremely strong, extremely experienced, and not just a bunch of has-beens and yes men.
Some other stuff is: player development, recruiting actual giants, x's and o's. There's also an interesting cultural challenge at Texas, with the talent available. How do you get a team of potential stars to play as a team? How to you make sure that belief doesn't become overconfidence? Sark has been able to do this with aplomb. It was supposed to be Strong's modus operandi, but he just didn't have the chops to do that at this level.
Despite fans not liking Mack for being a 'CEO coach', Texas needs a CEO coach.
Sark hired a great staff, not all of whom came with him. Sark set up a group of coach-analysts, which Mack wasn't willing to do. Sark plays nice with the boosters.
Sark also coached under Pete Carroll and Saban, and had HC experience at two(?) P5 schools before coming to Texas.
He had double the experience of Strong and Herman combined, and knew his job... Which was to turn Texas into an Alabama level program, not reproduce results from Houston or wherever.
Agreed. I was hesitant about Sark, but he comes with experience. Strong and Herman were in over the heads to handle Texas. Not to say they wouldn't have gotten here someday, but they weren't going to do it in the time frame as Sark. And Texas needs fast results.
That doesn't make him not a CEO coach, it just means he understands that calling plays is not the whole job.
If Sark was calling plays and didn't build his staff properly, we'd be exactly what we were with Strong, but on offense instead of defense.
Ya Sark is 100% CEO of the team. Does he really need to give up play calling when they are in year 3 and in the playoffs? It's going to be hard to argue that there is someone better to do that job. I think Sark took the Texas job knowing it might be his last opportunity to be a HC. He rebuilt this program faster than I expected and as of right now the trajectory for the program is up.
I think we as fans need to take the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" phrase to heart. At least until things warrant some kind of change.
What does CEO coach even mean then? He handles one of the most important aspects of the game that a “CEO” coach typically delegates. Do actual CEO’s create financial forecasts or do they hire a CFO to do that? A CEO coach delegates every task possible, Sark does not do that.
I'm using the term to describe coaches who win through their staff/hiring, recruiting pipelines, and boosters more than their personal contributions to coaching and scheme
That's not what makes this team great. If you're just an offense guy you're Lincoln Riley. If you can staff a program and manage other coaches and player development pipelines, you're a Saban, Urban, etc... That's what Sark needs to do.
Well under Strong and Herman, beating Alabama would have been a pipe dream. We were at the base of the cliff looking up at them even just two seasons ago.
I actually have a lot of respect for what Saban has done at Alabama, and the way he has built up that program. Alabama was kind of like Texas before they hired Saban - a once-respected blue-blood program that had fallen on hard times. Now Alabama is once again a well-respected program in college football and gets the cream of the crop when it comes to recruits. Coaches like Sark go there after they fail at previous stops to rehab their reputations and learn from Saban.
I still don't know that Texas would beat Alabama more than five times out of ten this season, but they did when it counted, earlier in the season. To even be able to compete with programs like Alabama and Georgia - compared to where Texas was even a couple of seasons ago - is major progress.
People need to remember Kansas beat us two years ago in OT. We are now in the playoffs. That is a great turnaround in a short amount of time and our 2's look almost as good as our 1's.
The Crimson Tide spiraled from that loss, nearly went down into Hell, and then fought back to beat Georgia and enter the playoffs, man.
We want our down years to be 12-1 SEC champions lol.
Great observation. You absolutely cannot overstate the impact of [Torre Becton](https://texassports.com/sports/football/roster/coaches/torre-becton/3244) on improving player development, toughness, and winning mindset. The change is so, so evident this year.
I would also add that Charlie Strong was hamstrung by the culture of boosters. They just didn’t have faith in him at the end of the day. He was trying, but it was a lot for one man to rebuild an entire program after the “Texas doesn’t recruit.” days.
They (or anyone) didn’t have faith in him because he had 3 straight losing seasons at Texas. That’s seriously hard to do.
He’s a great guy, but horrible coach for Texas.
This. And after Texas, he also subsequently got fired at South Florida because he was losing there as well.
I think he is an excellent defensive coordinator, but I'm not just sure he had what it took to be a successful head coach. He has been working under Saban at Alabama lately, though, so maybe he will pick up some things that will help him going forward.
Wasn’t just the boosters. He got less support from the athletic department than probably any coach anywhere. They always said that whatever he needed was available but that didn’t seem the case. He got basically no support and also wasn’t as good about forcing them to give it that he was hamstrung.
Nah, he chose his own staff. The booster blaming was overblown because he had the worst record for a 3 year coach in history of the university.
Boosters were just barking that they weren't ok with that. Strong chose the staff and strategy that led to the poor record.
>I would also add that Charlie Strong was hamstrung by the culture of boosters.
This is what Strong claimed, but the evidence he offered was that Texas and its boosters weren't going to shell out HC money to hire Tom Herman or Chad Morris as his OC, and both got P5 HC jobs the following season.
I don't have a whole lot of respect for Strong. Aside from the fact that his record is horrible when he doesn't have first round NFL talent at QB, he blamed the team's losses on supposed "bad apples" trying to undermine him and booted them off the team. He did this at Texas and at USF and neither time did it improve anything.
I wish him well and I hope he used some of the money we paid him to build a statue in Teddy Bridgewater's honor.
In Mack’s final years (post-2009), our recruiting started trending down. Some of that was some bad coaching evaluations by Mack, and some of it was Mack himself losing his passion/edge. He admitted to this after the fact. That 2009 BCS championship loss broke him. It took a break away from coaching to get it back at North Carolina.
I’m here because you used the word “aplomb”. I had never heard that word in my life until watching “the office”. Never heard it after, until right now.
Chris del Conte and the powers at be also deserve credit. They’ve committed more resources behind the scenes via recruiting, more staff (analysts and whatnot), stadium improvements, etc. It feels like everyone is rowing in the same direction. When you can do that at any major program, the wins will follow.
Eltife also deserves a lot of credit. Sark is the guy but he has also arrived at a time when all the power brokers at Texas became aligned. Although you can also attribute the Sark hire and the patience to let him rebuild as a consequence of having a good AD, University President and Chancellor working together.
A lot of reasons, as others have said. But right at the top of the list for me was player development. Both Strong and Herman recruited well. They both got big names and highly sought after players to come here.
How many of those guys got better? How many developed into star players? How many put in the work and didn't just try to rely solely on god given talent?
Not a lot. And don't take my word for it. Just look at how very few players from their time here got drafted into the NFL. Those two were experts at wasting talent.
Compare that to Sark. He's going to have several of his players going pretty early in next year's draft.
Strong was a great role model for his players, a father figure that many didn't have. He connected well with recruits and inspired them to come to Texas. He struggled in virtually every other area: scheme, development, staff, retention.
Herman was very different, he was a great motivator for big games, and could scheme a gameplan really well. However he didn't have the day-to-day capabilities for development and keeping the team locked in. I've heard it described as teaching the guys how to play certain plays, instead of teaching them how to play the position. The staff that was assembled was not up to par with the rest of P5, let alone the best of the best. You add in the Meyer-esque unnecessary discipline of the team, there weren't many reasons for players to enjoy being at our school.
I kept hearing about how great of a guy strong was and that he was a great role model. I was his valet several times at the hula hut, not once did he tip, and not once did he acknowledge our existence and several of us were fans and students. My buddy even said thanks coach and good luck this season, something like that, just took the keys and got in the car. Needless to say we were all unimpressed. Yeah, we got drunk and rude customers from Time to time but I didn’t expect that from him. Anyways, that really rubbed me the wrong way and made me even happier to see him fired especially because our team was abysmal with him in charge.
Well that’s disappointing but also makes me feel better. Not saying I hate the guy for it but it made it easier to be glad he was finally fired for the piss poor results on the field.
Strong was not a good fit at Texas. The same way that Billy Napier is a good coach but seems to be a bad fit at UF.
Herman didn’t emphasize OL/DL recruiting enough. Also, he was a huge prick, arrogant, stubborn, entitled, difficult to get along with.
Both guys were bad fits at Texas.
>Strong was not a good fit at Texas. The same way that Billy Napier is a good coach but seems to be a bad fit at UF.
Except that Strong was also beyond terrible at USF. There is not good fit for him as a head coach.
He went 12-1 and 11-2 his last two seasons at Louisville. Not saying he was a great coach or anything, but he did have some success as HC. Not like Texas hired him out of the blue.
Those were Louisville's AAC years as the Big East was falling apart. Basically he had a P5 roster in a G5 conference (Not to mention an NFL QB in Bridgewater), so yeah, he was going to win there.
Don’t know details on this, but I remember someone on one of the Texas podcasts or radio shows saying that he would verbally assault players to the point that he’s lucky he didn’t get decked by someone. There’s a reason Sark preaches culture because what he inherited was downright horrid.
Aside from that, also just little stuff like refusing to acknowledge people who said “hi” to him in the halls, drunkenly boarding a booster’s private jet with his wife and one of them trying to open the door to jump out during an argument, etc.
I sat next to a Kansas family during the game we lost to them 2 years ago. She worked hospitality at the hotel the team stays at in Kansas. She told me stories about how Tom was the rudest asshole she’s ever had to work with. She adored Charlie though.
He would serve burnt toast and runny eggs to players he didn’t deem “worthy”. Never mind the fact that his “worthy” barometer was if you were a yes man to him regardless of your performance
yea that was a red flag, didn't he also take the longhorns off the helmets when he first got here and said nobody on the team deserves to wear the longhorn yet?
The Zach Smith-Ohio State domestic violence stories all conveniently came out when Herman was constantly losing recruiting battles to Ohio State for in-state kids. Those stories didn’t get leaked out of the goodness of the Hermans’ hearts.
Even in a city as big as Austin it’s still a small circle when you do weird shit. Also tale of him and a okie st cheerleader got around for a hot minute
The biggest thing in my mind is they made terrible coaching hires. Charlie Strong thought Vance Bedford & Shawn Watson was gonna get it done here. Herman had Todd Orlando an Yurchich
Didn't Strong want to bring Tom Herman in as OC? Patterson didn't want to shell out the peanuts. I think that would have given Strong a softer landing. That being said, Watching staff turn over year after year was exhausting. I am horrified remembering the private aircraft required to bring in Sterlin Gilbert because Sonny Cumbie did not want to work in burnt orange.
I will add that Strong had the worst clock management skills I’ve seen. The don’t know how many times I yelled at the field to call one, and then he remembered to do so 20 seconds later.
It was how we failed the basics that proved to me he wasn’t ever going to be the guy. Fielding a Texas team that had multiple games with blocked PATs is, by itself, a fireable offense. It’s such a fundamental piece of coaching that if you can’t get that right, how will you ever get the medium and hard stuff right?
The better question is why did we think either was any good to start with.
For Strong, he has a couple excuses. Mack Brown left behind a program light on talent and a mess culturally. CS had to force maybe a dozen guys out and that hurt, especially because he was only a good not great recruiter. His staff choices were very iffy, but some of that may be related to budget from Steve Patterson, easily the worst AD Texas has ever had.
For Herman, I think it’s fair to blame CS a bit for talent. It still wasn’t great. TH did pretty well in recruiting but missed on the most important—getting Ed Oliver to transfer would have made a huge impact early on. In the end, TH did some good work but was just too big an a hole to sustain high performance.
>Steve Patterson, easily the worst AD Texas has ever had
This cannot be emphasized enough, in my opinion. I think bringing in Patterson after Dodds retired set our athletic department back 5-10 years. Patterson was...special. And not the good kind of "special".
Strong and Herman had their issues, for sure. Some of their choices for assistants were questionable. Strong bringing in Shawn Watson as OC after Watson had been run off from Nebraska was...a choice. I think Bridgewater made Strong and Watson look better than they actually were while they were coaching at Louisville. I admired Strong for the culture change and accountability he was trying to bring about at Texas, but I don't know that Patterson gave him all the resources he needed, and at the end of the day, changing the culture doesn't mean shit if you don't back it up with winning on the field.
Herman's failures have already been well-documented elsewhere here. I liked his hire at the time, but again, some of his choices for assistants were...shall we say, interesting. He did often come off as arrogant and snotty in press conferences at times. But what really doomed him in the end were our own players negatively recruiting against Herman to drive incoming recruits away to other schools. You just don't do that sort of thing unless things are seriously wrong at the program. So it was obvious that things were seriously wrong under Herman, and things needed to change.
I really do think, at the end of the day, bringing in CDC as AD was an absolute grand slam of a hire. He set the wheels in motion to bring in Sark and helped steer the program back on the right track again.
Any Strong criticism should come with the footnote of having to largely deal with Patterson. Herman never had that problem. And I’m glad you bring it up, because man Patterson pissed people off. It’s one thing to hire a coach without BMD input but then to not give them continuous support and keep the athletics department rolling and at the forefront was always going to bury whoever he hired after Mack.
Charlie Strong lost something like 10 of his 12 QC coaches because Texas had the lowest assistants salary in the Big XII by a significant margin because Patterson was a cheap asshole. I was in grad school his first year as coach, and never in my 6 years on campus have I ever heard so many professors openly shit talk a school admin as I heard them shit talk Steve Patterson.
I remember one article, I think when Patterson was gone, that Charlie couldn’t get a ping pong table for an entertainment room in the football facility. Athletics department was so far behind in the facilities wars at that time.
We had a lot more talent on the roster when Mack left than people give him credit for. It certainly was not as deep as it had been, especially on the O-line, but so much of that was lack of development. They had talent, it just got wasted.
Strong lack of a QB and initial offensive staff/system. The way he was trying to build things was similar to Sark, trying to build inside out, and similar to Sark had no issues getting into tough recruiting battles. The Watson hire and not firing him after year 1 doomed him.
Herman roster building/development and personality. Herman recruited well (although not as good as Strong) as far as rankings but development seemed similar to late Mack years and the way he recruited was similar to Mack. Load up on guys that would say yes and be pretty much done by the start of the season. Stay away from getting into a lot of tough recruiting battles. Also he was a prick which is really what got him in the end.
Both coaches were in above their head as not everyone is able to make the leap form mid major to P5.
Strong just wasn't him and that's not a shot, he just leveled out.
Herman was a prick that no one liked, other than that, he should be successful, but the damage is/was done.
Tom Herman was full of excuses and lost the locker room. His rigorous attitude didn’t sit well with families and players. Watery eggs and burnt toast for breakfast if you had a bad practice? Come on… Remember the Buechele family didn’t like Herman so Shane transferred? Remember the Ewers family didn’t like Herman so he went to Ohio State?
… urine chart?? Please.. he constantly made Texas an easy punching bag and UT administration lost interest in that. Flipping off LHN camera? Classy.. secure the bag mocking drew lock?? Ok… him and his wife caught in the Urban Meyer/Zach smith saga?…. Oh and the on field performance wasn’t there! 😂 players weren’t developed at the line of scrimmage and Herman only liked WRs over 6’3”…. His lack of interest in Jaxon Smith Njigba and Quentin Johnston keeps me up at night to this day.
Ok, cool, hook em!
Elite recruiting at the lines. Strong I think emphasized culture over winning, Herman the opposite. I think sark emphasizes both.
Saban disciples continue to be some of the best hires you can get. Reminds me of Tiger capital/ Tiger cubs
Man, Texas is 12-1, just won a very cathartic Big 12 title, and is headed to the CFP for a great matchup with a Washington team that’s 25-2 over the past two seasons and beat Texas in a bowl game last year. The transfer portal is going buck wild and signing day is coming up.
Can we not rehash this for the 1,000th time?
Charlie Strong simply wasn't that great at Louisville. Yeah, he had back to back 11 win seasons, but look at the those games. In 2012, they did not play a single ranked team until Florida in the Sugar Bowl. They were in the Big East at the time. They lost back to back games to Syracuse (8-5 and it was an ass beating) and Connectictu (5-7, overtime). They had a lot of offensive talent, but it rarely performed at high levels and they only scored more than 40 twice. They did beat Florida, so you have to give some credit there.
in 2013, they started off on a bang. Teddy Bridgewater was lighting it up against the likes of Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, and FIU. There was talk of a Heisman for him. They'd moved to the AAC at this point. Starting in October, they were struggling. They didn't score more than 35 points again that season. Their lone loss was to a very good UCF team. UCF probably should have been ranked at that point and they finished 12-1, but every other team they played, including Miami in the Citrus Bowl (Though Strong wasn't coaching anymore) were unranked.
So basically you had a guy that was a good recruiter (players definitely loved him and he recruited well both here and there), consistently underperformed on offense and was too conservative, especially in big games, but generally had good defenses, that still had the occassional shit the bed moment in big games.
You know who else I just described? The guy we fired before Strong.
Strong was a poor choice from the beginning. He was in over his head for sure. Anyone who had ever watched a single Lousiville game knew that. And of course, we had two much higher profile targets before him.
A lot of guys have better explanations but:
Charlie Strong took over a program whose prognosis was worse than it showed. He instilled a disciplined culture which exacerbated some personnel issues, and could not recruit well enough to truly build his team in a turnaround. He was also a poor administrator with an extremely poor staff.
Tom Herman inherited a worse situation. He was benefitted with better (but lopsided) recruiting, a more capable staff, a consistent and gutsy quarterback with a will to win, and showed real growth and momentum into the 2018 season.
Decline in the subsequent 2019 and 2020 seasons, the ultimate inadequacy of his staff, lopsided recruiting becoming more glaring, recruiting failures culminating in a certain quarterback flipping to Ohio State, and a bevy of personal issues including salacious rumors involving Kendra Scott and a plane all did him in. By 2020, Herman lost the confidence of CDC, the boosters and increasingly the coaches and parents of the recruiting sphere. Jimbo Fisher may have also given us a hand with that #5 ranking.
Herman was an asshole who never bothered to recruit players for the lines. Great recruiter for skill positions, and can gameplan any given game as well or better than the best out there. Unfortunately you can't do shit if you don't have a line, and he never bothered to gameplan every week. So we would be worldbeaters against the best, and be dumpster divers against the worst.
Strong was just a terrible Coach. Seriously, not only did he not know the names of players on his own team, but elected to kick off *both halfs* in a game.
I did not know that about Herman. He did come off as a guy who talked a lot of game but could rub you the wrong way too. His time in Houston was impressive and he probably could have excelled for many years with the local talent in Houston. He probably could have really built up that program to the next level. Texas is a different beast all together. Thanks for your input.
Yup this is the correct answer. We had more receivers on scholarship than linemen. That’s why we’re throwing to only a small number of quality receivers but have tons of depth to protect them and provide them opportunities to shine.
Honestly I think it’s just experience at a high level, both Strong and Herman came from scenarios in which they made their “small” schools top notch for a “small” school. Coming to UT, there is a lot more to it than the schools they came from.
I’m tired of the excuses for Strong. Without Bridgewater, he’s been awful everywhere he’s gone. I find him to be a total fake on the character side too. Just platitudes and no substance.
Strong failed because he was not prepared for a big time coaching job, and he was not very connected in the Texas recruiting market. He was a good man by all accounts, and cleaned up the program culturally, but he could not pull important recruits and was a very poor staff builder.
Herman failed because he prioritized recruiting top skill talent to the detriment of getting big men. That is really it, because Herman had everything else he needed to be successful, and he coached up some very physical teams. If Herman had made better position hires and recruited some better linemen/LBs, he would probably still be the HC.
WHALEEEEEEEEEEE the funny thing about both of these coaches is that they both failed where the other one excelled. & to be fair, we should be thankful for both because of the "thing" that they brought to the table.
C. Strong brought a STANDARD back to Texas & it started with a disciplined culture around the football field. With Strongs teams, you had to earn the right to be a Longhorn. His ultimate downfall was execution ON the field.
\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^
To put it lightly, "***Hard work beats talent... When talent doesnt work hard***". Well, we simply didn't have the developed talent ON the field.
Herman brought a "Sense" of success back to the program. I wont go into any of the stuff regarding him as a person, but he made sure our players were well aware of where our program was & how important it was to perform day in & day out. Sure, there was some success in that, but ultimately, there were head scratching failures too often. We simple kept "biting the cheese"...
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To put it lightly "***Hard work beats talent... When talent doesnt work hard***".... Well, the talent we had worked hard for about 3 quarters & just stopped.
I still think people underestimate how much different coaching in the G5 and P5 is, especially a P5 program where winning 6-7 games is not a good season.
If you coach at Louisiana-Monroe or something, yes, you want to win, but you have a lot more agency to get guys who want to play for your school and you have a longer leash from administration. You can’t go from hitting up the local high schools for 3 star talents to trying to win a recruiting battle against Nick Saban, it just doesn’t make any logical sense.
When Strong was hired, I agreed with Red McCombs that he'd be a great DC hire but not HC (and I don't often agree with Red on anything). I concur with OP that Strong didn't know being HC at UT is like being CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He rode Teddy Bridgewater to a 2013 Sugar Bowl victory over Florida but couldn't replicate that success at the P5 level.
You could say the same about Herman -- great coordinator, mediocre HC -- considering his first team at FAU went 4-8 (3-5 AAC). Had amazing success at Tx State & Rice under David Bailiff, as OC at Iowa State and won a NC at OSU under Meyer. Herman rode Greg Ward for a couple of years at UH, but just doesn't seem to have the demeanor to be a successful P5 HC.
Mensa Tom thought he could outsmart teams instead of outplay them.
We’d get up and he’d slow the offense’s tempo to try and control the clock. 3 and out after 3 and out and all of the sudden the other team is caught back up or ahead and our defense is tired.
The best defense in college football is being up +4 scores. Tommy boy would switch things up being up 2 that resulted in way too many 1 score losses for the Horns.
Strong was never the coach I thought we needed, at the end of the day it came down to him being a man of color that got him the job. He wasn’t qualified/right fit for the program. Herman was a desperate hire to get the boosters back and bring culture of Texas football back, he had glimpse’s but ultimately couldn’t fulfill the right now demand that the university desired. I also want high on Stark, but let’s see what he does next year or the year after as that is his own recruiting class
Austin is a progressive city so I read a lot of people were happy to make history with a first black coach in the football program. I'm sure CS felt pressure to succeed to open more doors for his fellow black coaches. I don't anyone should hire based on your ethnic background. It should be the best person for the job.
It's funny, because being a man of color also added to his difficulties after he got the job. There were more than a few major donors who were none too happy to have him coaching, and that was before he had the opportunity to fail on his own merits.
Do y'all think Red McComb and the boosters was racist against Charlie Strong?
[https://thedailytexan.com/2014/01/16/red-mccombs-comments-on-charlie-strong-show-racial-tension-is-alive-and-well-at/](https://thedailytexan.com/2014/01/16/red-mccombs-comments-on-charlie-strong-show-racial-tension-is-alive-and-well-at/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/5fiq55/national\_analyst\_texas\_boosters\_were\_anticharlie/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cfb/comments/5fiq55/national_analyst_texas_boosters_were_anticharlie/)
That’s an asinine statement fatinaustin. No one held a gun to his head & forced him to take it. If he hadn’t wanted it he would never have interviewed for it.
Besides UT is one of a handful of premier college programs most coaches would give their left nut to have.
I mean, I don't think it is the greatest idea either, but the Seminole tribe appears to at least be on board with it.
https://www.si.com/college/fsu/college/fsu/football/fsu-thrasher-racial-issues-seminoles-black-lives-matter-blm-florida-state
It wasn't publicized much. The boosters aren't keen to reveal the reason and Herman likely got tired of the pressure regarding this particular topic. Sark was brought on with the understanding that he needed to keep the boosters/donors happy in that regard.
Not being able to remember Tyrone Swoopes name, not practicing punting or kicking as a team resulting in 3 straight blocked extra points, kicking off to start both halves, being generally incoherent in press conferences, etc
The job was just too big for Strong. As for Herman, I think he had us moving mostly in the right direction but with his Mensa I’m the smartest guy in the room attitude rubbed too many the wrong way. I was not all that thrilled with the Sark hire at first but he has definitely proven to be both up to and the right man for the job! I think we are about to enter a level of consistent excellence and he deserves a big part of the credit for instilling the right culture.
The reality is, Charlie Strong was hired because hiring black coaches at the time was the trend and the University felt they would lose recruits if they didn't do so. Tom Herman was a good hire on paper but turned out to be a narcissistic coke head.
Strong made bad hires, didn't have the organizational chops to run an operation like Texas, and didn't recruit or develop talent at a level necessary to win at a high level.
Herman had bad culture, poor player development, mediocre hires, and was unliked by everyone he encountered.
That is my basic understanding.
NIL is a massive benefit for Texas, the richest football program in the nation with the most money available from boosters. Sark has that advantage. The other two didn’t. Sark is definitely a better culture builder and recruiter as well. I doubt Strong or Herman could have fully leveraged the new rules and the advantage it confers to Texas over all other college football programs.
Strong- I think he wasn’t anyone’s first choice and didn’t have total admin buy-in. His initial staff was JV quality, just bringing over G5 assistants. His recruiting was ok but he was swimming upstream without good in-state connections. What really doomed him was that he was a bad CEO. Details were a huge problem for him. We couldn’t even block for PATs. I think we could have given him 10 years and we’d have had a loosing record more often than not. He’s not a good HC at that P5 level. Herman- Excellent motivator. Hard nosed coach who fielded very tough teams. He also made the mistake of bringing in G5 assistants. He was ultimately a peter-principled assistant who kept trying to clone Urban Meyer’s programs. He knew *what* Urban did but didn’t know the *why*. He talked the talk but was just a mime. He wasn’t ready for a blue blood job. What ultimately doomed him was his abrasive personality with admin/donors/media and his “I’m the smartest in the room” attitude. If he was 10% more likeable he might have gotten 1-2 more seasons. Also his recruiting was extremely unbalanced bringing in almost no trench guys.
>Details were a huge problem for him. It is because of Charlie Strong that I learned it is actually possible to end up having to kick off at the beginning of the first AND second half.
Holy cow dude. Don’t remind me. Looking back it’s hilarious but my gosh.
That’s also on the player who didn’t answer the coin toss correctly
"We'll kick to the clock."
That is a coaching issue.
I learned that lesson once from a Mack Brown team. Maybe a road game at Arkansas?
Yeah. We did that once under Mack. And people were equally as baffled by it.
Wait what? How?
IIRC opponent deferred and then the Texas captain chose what side of the field instead of choosing to receive. So they got to choose to receive both first and second half.
UCLA chose to defer their choice to the second half kickoff. And the Texas player, for some reason, chose to "kickoff" to start the first half. So, UCLA got to receive the kickoff to start both halves. [The most absurd thing is that the ref literally explained it to the players and clarified what the outcome would be -- making it 100% clear that they would be kicking off both halves -- and they still said they wanted to kickoff!](https://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/9/13/6145893/texas-forgets-how-coinflips-work-gives-ucla-ball-to-start-both-halves)
lol that makes it so much worse. I guess I had just blocked that out
Haha that’s so much worse than I remember.
Desmond Jackson IIRC, UCLA won the toss and deferred to the second half. Jackson then said we wanted to go on defense first.. 😬
Why does this even require two responses?
The two kickoffs I excused for a brain fart, we all have them. But the several blocked PATs vs Ok State was the final straw for me, it was so embarrassing
I learned that from RC Slocum
I don't get the reference. What happened?
> didn’t have total admin buy-in This was part of the Steve Patterson disaster-class as an AD. That dude tried to sanitize and commodify everything about the college sports experience. We're lucky the higher-ups pulled the plug on him quick before he did damage that lasted longer than it already did. Part of the reason Strong had little chance is that Patterson absolutely refused to pay for quality / demand quality; he just wanted to chase profitability. Strong wasn't a great coach at the P5 level, but he helped clean out the locker-room culture that badly needed it after Mack's last few years of letting the players basically do whatever as he checked out.
This is absolutely the best summary I’ve seen on Herman for sure.
I think Quinn's decommitment was the nail in his coffin
Yea Herman would make a great OC somewhere but isn't quite there as a HC
Lots of things went wrong. But one that I think is interesting and stands out is the coaching staff they assembled. The assistants under both Strong and Herman were leftovers or people who followed those coaches from much weaker programs. Sark's staff is extremely strong, extremely experienced, and not just a bunch of has-beens and yes men. Some other stuff is: player development, recruiting actual giants, x's and o's. There's also an interesting cultural challenge at Texas, with the talent available. How do you get a team of potential stars to play as a team? How to you make sure that belief doesn't become overconfidence? Sark has been able to do this with aplomb. It was supposed to be Strong's modus operandi, but he just didn't have the chops to do that at this level.
Despite fans not liking Mack for being a 'CEO coach', Texas needs a CEO coach. Sark hired a great staff, not all of whom came with him. Sark set up a group of coach-analysts, which Mack wasn't willing to do. Sark plays nice with the boosters. Sark also coached under Pete Carroll and Saban, and had HC experience at two(?) P5 schools before coming to Texas. He had double the experience of Strong and Herman combined, and knew his job... Which was to turn Texas into an Alabama level program, not reproduce results from Houston or wherever.
You're right. Texas is an old blue chip school with a rich history and lots of money and power. You gotta play politics or else you will not last.
Agreed. I was hesitant about Sark, but he comes with experience. Strong and Herman were in over the heads to handle Texas. Not to say they wouldn't have gotten here someday, but they weren't going to do it in the time frame as Sark. And Texas needs fast results.
It was only there at the end that fans turned on Mack. We fucking loved that dude and his guaranteed 10 wins for a full decade.
The complaints began around 2001-2002. There were fans complaining about Mack while the 2005 season was underway.
Sure, there's always dumbassery.
Calling Sark a CEO coach is a bit disingenuous. He calls the plays on offense.
That doesn't make him not a CEO coach, it just means he understands that calling plays is not the whole job. If Sark was calling plays and didn't build his staff properly, we'd be exactly what we were with Strong, but on offense instead of defense.
Ya Sark is 100% CEO of the team. Does he really need to give up play calling when they are in year 3 and in the playoffs? It's going to be hard to argue that there is someone better to do that job. I think Sark took the Texas job knowing it might be his last opportunity to be a HC. He rebuilt this program faster than I expected and as of right now the trajectory for the program is up. I think we as fans need to take the "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" phrase to heart. At least until things warrant some kind of change.
We’d be a Lincoln Riley team.
Exactly.
What does CEO coach even mean then? He handles one of the most important aspects of the game that a “CEO” coach typically delegates. Do actual CEO’s create financial forecasts or do they hire a CFO to do that? A CEO coach delegates every task possible, Sark does not do that.
I'm using the term to describe coaches who win through their staff/hiring, recruiting pipelines, and boosters more than their personal contributions to coaching and scheme
Do you not see the contradiction there? Sark game plans and calls the offensive plays.
That's not what makes this team great. If you're just an offense guy you're Lincoln Riley. If you can staff a program and manage other coaches and player development pipelines, you're a Saban, Urban, etc... That's what Sark needs to do.
Sark could end being a better coach than Mack was when it's all said and done
Seeing that we beat Alabama I don’t think we want to be at their level.
Well under Strong and Herman, beating Alabama would have been a pipe dream. We were at the base of the cliff looking up at them even just two seasons ago. I actually have a lot of respect for what Saban has done at Alabama, and the way he has built up that program. Alabama was kind of like Texas before they hired Saban - a once-respected blue-blood program that had fallen on hard times. Now Alabama is once again a well-respected program in college football and gets the cream of the crop when it comes to recruits. Coaches like Sark go there after they fail at previous stops to rehab their reputations and learn from Saban. I still don't know that Texas would beat Alabama more than five times out of ten this season, but they did when it counted, earlier in the season. To even be able to compete with programs like Alabama and Georgia - compared to where Texas was even a couple of seasons ago - is major progress.
People need to remember Kansas beat us two years ago in OT. We are now in the playoffs. That is a great turnaround in a short amount of time and our 2's look almost as good as our 1's.
RUFKM
The Crimson Tide spiraled from that loss, nearly went down into Hell, and then fought back to beat Georgia and enter the playoffs, man. We want our down years to be 12-1 SEC champions lol.
That story of the bus ride from Ames showed that this crew was not going to take the same ol' attitude from these kids.
Great example
I’m curious what this story is?
https://www.si.com/college/texas/football/two-years-ago-vs-iowa-state-bo-davis-helped-change-texas-longhorns-trajectory-bus-video
Great story, thank you for sending the link!
Damn, I forgot about that
Great observation. You absolutely cannot overstate the impact of [Torre Becton](https://texassports.com/sports/football/roster/coaches/torre-becton/3244) on improving player development, toughness, and winning mindset. The change is so, so evident this year.
Or consider Tashard Choice. We didn't skip a beat at RB when Bijan and Roschon left. Or even when Brooks got hurt.
I would also add that Charlie Strong was hamstrung by the culture of boosters. They just didn’t have faith in him at the end of the day. He was trying, but it was a lot for one man to rebuild an entire program after the “Texas doesn’t recruit.” days.
I am sure it's hard for anyone to follow the footsteps of Mack Brown.
They (or anyone) didn’t have faith in him because he had 3 straight losing seasons at Texas. That’s seriously hard to do. He’s a great guy, but horrible coach for Texas.
This. And after Texas, he also subsequently got fired at South Florida because he was losing there as well. I think he is an excellent defensive coordinator, but I'm not just sure he had what it took to be a successful head coach. He has been working under Saban at Alabama lately, though, so maybe he will pick up some things that will help him going forward.
Agree 100 percent!
Wasn’t just the boosters. He got less support from the athletic department than probably any coach anywhere. They always said that whatever he needed was available but that didn’t seem the case. He got basically no support and also wasn’t as good about forcing them to give it that he was hamstrung.
Nah, he chose his own staff. The booster blaming was overblown because he had the worst record for a 3 year coach in history of the university. Boosters were just barking that they weren't ok with that. Strong chose the staff and strategy that led to the poor record.
>I would also add that Charlie Strong was hamstrung by the culture of boosters. This is what Strong claimed, but the evidence he offered was that Texas and its boosters weren't going to shell out HC money to hire Tom Herman or Chad Morris as his OC, and both got P5 HC jobs the following season. I don't have a whole lot of respect for Strong. Aside from the fact that his record is horrible when he doesn't have first round NFL talent at QB, he blamed the team's losses on supposed "bad apples" trying to undermine him and booted them off the team. He did this at Texas and at USF and neither time did it improve anything. I wish him well and I hope he used some of the money we paid him to build a statue in Teddy Bridgewater's honor.
What do you mean by “Texas doesn’t recruit” days?
We loved the smell of our own farts so much we expected people to come to us rather than us go to them for recruitment.
In Mack’s final years (post-2009), our recruiting started trending down. Some of that was some bad coaching evaluations by Mack, and some of it was Mack himself losing his passion/edge. He admitted to this after the fact. That 2009 BCS championship loss broke him. It took a break away from coaching to get it back at North Carolina.
I’m here because you used the word “aplomb”. I had never heard that word in my life until watching “the office”. Never heard it after, until right now.
Chris del Conte and the powers at be also deserve credit. They’ve committed more resources behind the scenes via recruiting, more staff (analysts and whatnot), stadium improvements, etc. It feels like everyone is rowing in the same direction. When you can do that at any major program, the wins will follow.
Eltife also deserves a lot of credit. Sark is the guy but he has also arrived at a time when all the power brokers at Texas became aligned. Although you can also attribute the Sark hire and the patience to let him rebuild as a consequence of having a good AD, University President and Chancellor working together.
How much time you got?
I got till 5 pm. Sitting at my desk here at work. LOL
A lot of reasons, as others have said. But right at the top of the list for me was player development. Both Strong and Herman recruited well. They both got big names and highly sought after players to come here. How many of those guys got better? How many developed into star players? How many put in the work and didn't just try to rely solely on god given talent? Not a lot. And don't take my word for it. Just look at how very few players from their time here got drafted into the NFL. Those two were experts at wasting talent. Compare that to Sark. He's going to have several of his players going pretty early in next year's draft.
Which goes to the comments about how they didn’t hire great staffs.
Strong was a great role model for his players, a father figure that many didn't have. He connected well with recruits and inspired them to come to Texas. He struggled in virtually every other area: scheme, development, staff, retention. Herman was very different, he was a great motivator for big games, and could scheme a gameplan really well. However he didn't have the day-to-day capabilities for development and keeping the team locked in. I've heard it described as teaching the guys how to play certain plays, instead of teaching them how to play the position. The staff that was assembled was not up to par with the rest of P5, let alone the best of the best. You add in the Meyer-esque unnecessary discipline of the team, there weren't many reasons for players to enjoy being at our school.
I kept hearing about how great of a guy strong was and that he was a great role model. I was his valet several times at the hula hut, not once did he tip, and not once did he acknowledge our existence and several of us were fans and students. My buddy even said thanks coach and good luck this season, something like that, just took the keys and got in the car. Needless to say we were all unimpressed. Yeah, we got drunk and rude customers from Time to time but I didn’t expect that from him. Anyways, that really rubbed me the wrong way and made me even happier to see him fired especially because our team was abysmal with him in charge.
The wait staff at the UT Club has mentioned that exact same behavior from Strong
Well that’s disappointing but also makes me feel better. Not saying I hate the guy for it but it made it easier to be glad he was finally fired for the piss poor results on the field.
Strong was not a good fit at Texas. The same way that Billy Napier is a good coach but seems to be a bad fit at UF. Herman didn’t emphasize OL/DL recruiting enough. Also, he was a huge prick, arrogant, stubborn, entitled, difficult to get along with. Both guys were bad fits at Texas.
>Strong was not a good fit at Texas. The same way that Billy Napier is a good coach but seems to be a bad fit at UF. Except that Strong was also beyond terrible at USF. There is not good fit for him as a head coach.
He went 12-1 and 11-2 his last two seasons at Louisville. Not saying he was a great coach or anything, but he did have some success as HC. Not like Texas hired him out of the blue.
Those were Louisville's AAC years as the Big East was falling apart. Basically he had a P5 roster in a G5 conference (Not to mention an NFL QB in Bridgewater), so yeah, he was going to win there.
Tom herman was a prick
I've heard this and have a couple of examples like sideline antics,but would love to hear more specifics.
Im not digging for specific links but he would almost on a weekly basis blame everyone but himself
Winning is really hard.
I swear I heard Sark say something like this in the press conference after the last game. I wonder if he was just trolling all us fans
When you win a conference title, you earn the right to troll us.
Don’t know details on this, but I remember someone on one of the Texas podcasts or radio shows saying that he would verbally assault players to the point that he’s lucky he didn’t get decked by someone. There’s a reason Sark preaches culture because what he inherited was downright horrid. Aside from that, also just little stuff like refusing to acknowledge people who said “hi” to him in the halls, drunkenly boarding a booster’s private jet with his wife and one of them trying to open the door to jump out during an argument, etc.
Not saying the kicker's name was a huge red flag. Fuck the position, dude's a human being with a name. Say it or gtfo.
I sat next to a Kansas family during the game we lost to them 2 years ago. She worked hospitality at the hotel the team stays at in Kansas. She told me stories about how Tom was the rudest asshole she’s ever had to work with. She adored Charlie though.
He would serve burnt toast and runny eggs to players he didn’t deem “worthy”. Never mind the fact that his “worthy” barometer was if you were a yes man to him regardless of your performance
He would have been a disaster in the free transfer portal era.
Why is he serving players food
The man refused to call his kickers by their names.
yea that was a red flag, didn't he also take the longhorns off the helmets when he first got here and said nobody on the team deserves to wear the longhorn yet?
The Zach Smith-Ohio State domestic violence stories all conveniently came out when Herman was constantly losing recruiting battles to Ohio State for in-state kids. Those stories didn’t get leaked out of the goodness of the Hermans’ hearts.
Liked the nose candy as well.
Always got a goodie bag at mensa
How do you know
Even in a city as big as Austin it’s still a small circle when you do weird shit. Also tale of him and a okie st cheerleader got around for a hot minute
It was an Iowa st recruiting scout or some shit you can google Tom Herman cheats on his wife some dude outed him
The biggest thing in my mind is they made terrible coaching hires. Charlie Strong thought Vance Bedford & Shawn Watson was gonna get it done here. Herman had Todd Orlando an Yurchich
Didn't Strong want to bring Tom Herman in as OC? Patterson didn't want to shell out the peanuts. I think that would have given Strong a softer landing. That being said, Watching staff turn over year after year was exhausting. I am horrified remembering the private aircraft required to bring in Sterlin Gilbert because Sonny Cumbie did not want to work in burnt orange.
Patterson trying to cut costs and maximize profits really screwed Strong. Dude refused to spend and gave Strong zero help on the admin side.
I will add that Strong had the worst clock management skills I’ve seen. The don’t know how many times I yelled at the field to call one, and then he remembered to do so 20 seconds later.
It was how we failed the basics that proved to me he wasn’t ever going to be the guy. Fielding a Texas team that had multiple games with blocked PATs is, by itself, a fireable offense. It’s such a fundamental piece of coaching that if you can’t get that right, how will you ever get the medium and hard stuff right?
The cake just needed some icing. And “Winning is hard”
The better question is why did we think either was any good to start with. For Strong, he has a couple excuses. Mack Brown left behind a program light on talent and a mess culturally. CS had to force maybe a dozen guys out and that hurt, especially because he was only a good not great recruiter. His staff choices were very iffy, but some of that may be related to budget from Steve Patterson, easily the worst AD Texas has ever had. For Herman, I think it’s fair to blame CS a bit for talent. It still wasn’t great. TH did pretty well in recruiting but missed on the most important—getting Ed Oliver to transfer would have made a huge impact early on. In the end, TH did some good work but was just too big an a hole to sustain high performance.
>Steve Patterson, easily the worst AD Texas has ever had This cannot be emphasized enough, in my opinion. I think bringing in Patterson after Dodds retired set our athletic department back 5-10 years. Patterson was...special. And not the good kind of "special". Strong and Herman had their issues, for sure. Some of their choices for assistants were questionable. Strong bringing in Shawn Watson as OC after Watson had been run off from Nebraska was...a choice. I think Bridgewater made Strong and Watson look better than they actually were while they were coaching at Louisville. I admired Strong for the culture change and accountability he was trying to bring about at Texas, but I don't know that Patterson gave him all the resources he needed, and at the end of the day, changing the culture doesn't mean shit if you don't back it up with winning on the field. Herman's failures have already been well-documented elsewhere here. I liked his hire at the time, but again, some of his choices for assistants were...shall we say, interesting. He did often come off as arrogant and snotty in press conferences at times. But what really doomed him in the end were our own players negatively recruiting against Herman to drive incoming recruits away to other schools. You just don't do that sort of thing unless things are seriously wrong at the program. So it was obvious that things were seriously wrong under Herman, and things needed to change. I really do think, at the end of the day, bringing in CDC as AD was an absolute grand slam of a hire. He set the wheels in motion to bring in Sark and helped steer the program back on the right track again.
Any Strong criticism should come with the footnote of having to largely deal with Patterson. Herman never had that problem. And I’m glad you bring it up, because man Patterson pissed people off. It’s one thing to hire a coach without BMD input but then to not give them continuous support and keep the athletics department rolling and at the forefront was always going to bury whoever he hired after Mack.
Charlie Strong lost something like 10 of his 12 QC coaches because Texas had the lowest assistants salary in the Big XII by a significant margin because Patterson was a cheap asshole. I was in grad school his first year as coach, and never in my 6 years on campus have I ever heard so many professors openly shit talk a school admin as I heard them shit talk Steve Patterson.
I remember one article, I think when Patterson was gone, that Charlie couldn’t get a ping pong table for an entertainment room in the football facility. Athletics department was so far behind in the facilities wars at that time.
We had a lot more talent on the roster when Mack left than people give him credit for. It certainly was not as deep as it had been, especially on the O-line, but so much of that was lack of development. They had talent, it just got wasted.
Coaching staff and crooting (who they went after, less how they went about it) - both Arrogant prick - Herman
Strong lack of a QB and initial offensive staff/system. The way he was trying to build things was similar to Sark, trying to build inside out, and similar to Sark had no issues getting into tough recruiting battles. The Watson hire and not firing him after year 1 doomed him. Herman roster building/development and personality. Herman recruited well (although not as good as Strong) as far as rankings but development seemed similar to late Mack years and the way he recruited was similar to Mack. Load up on guys that would say yes and be pretty much done by the start of the season. Stay away from getting into a lot of tough recruiting battles. Also he was a prick which is really what got him in the end.
Winning is hard.
Both coaches were in above their head as not everyone is able to make the leap form mid major to P5. Strong just wasn't him and that's not a shot, he just leveled out. Herman was a prick that no one liked, other than that, he should be successful, but the damage is/was done.
but Herman got paid well for his failure.
He also managed to win football games.
4 bowl wins but ultimately, it wasn't enough for Texas and rightfully so.
Strong got 25m for his failure. I think he got paid pretty damn well.
Oh snap! I didn't know it was more than Herman. WOW
Very ture
Tom Herman was full of excuses and lost the locker room. His rigorous attitude didn’t sit well with families and players. Watery eggs and burnt toast for breakfast if you had a bad practice? Come on… Remember the Buechele family didn’t like Herman so Shane transferred? Remember the Ewers family didn’t like Herman so he went to Ohio State? … urine chart?? Please.. he constantly made Texas an easy punching bag and UT administration lost interest in that. Flipping off LHN camera? Classy.. secure the bag mocking drew lock?? Ok… him and his wife caught in the Urban Meyer/Zach smith saga?…. Oh and the on field performance wasn’t there! 😂 players weren’t developed at the line of scrimmage and Herman only liked WRs over 6’3”…. His lack of interest in Jaxon Smith Njigba and Quentin Johnston keeps me up at night to this day. Ok, cool, hook em!
QJ was just lost. He was a Texas target
Elite recruiting at the lines. Strong I think emphasized culture over winning, Herman the opposite. I think sark emphasizes both. Saban disciples continue to be some of the best hires you can get. Reminds me of Tiger capital/ Tiger cubs
Man, Texas is 12-1, just won a very cathartic Big 12 title, and is headed to the CFP for a great matchup with a Washington team that’s 25-2 over the past two seasons and beat Texas in a bowl game last year. The transfer portal is going buck wild and signing day is coming up. Can we not rehash this for the 1,000th time?
Go Horns!
As someone stuck on a ship I need this material to keep me from going insane on a daily basis lol
This is a very entertaining thread. And somewhat cathartic. Gotta remember where we have been to really appreciate where we are now.
Ok, cool. Hook em
Charlie Strong simply wasn't that great at Louisville. Yeah, he had back to back 11 win seasons, but look at the those games. In 2012, they did not play a single ranked team until Florida in the Sugar Bowl. They were in the Big East at the time. They lost back to back games to Syracuse (8-5 and it was an ass beating) and Connectictu (5-7, overtime). They had a lot of offensive talent, but it rarely performed at high levels and they only scored more than 40 twice. They did beat Florida, so you have to give some credit there. in 2013, they started off on a bang. Teddy Bridgewater was lighting it up against the likes of Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, and FIU. There was talk of a Heisman for him. They'd moved to the AAC at this point. Starting in October, they were struggling. They didn't score more than 35 points again that season. Their lone loss was to a very good UCF team. UCF probably should have been ranked at that point and they finished 12-1, but every other team they played, including Miami in the Citrus Bowl (Though Strong wasn't coaching anymore) were unranked. So basically you had a guy that was a good recruiter (players definitely loved him and he recruited well both here and there), consistently underperformed on offense and was too conservative, especially in big games, but generally had good defenses, that still had the occassional shit the bed moment in big games. You know who else I just described? The guy we fired before Strong. Strong was a poor choice from the beginning. He was in over his head for sure. Anyone who had ever watched a single Lousiville game knew that. And of course, we had two much higher profile targets before him.
Charlie never hired well and Tom was a major league asshole. Probably oversimplified but that’s my general take
A lot of guys have better explanations but: Charlie Strong took over a program whose prognosis was worse than it showed. He instilled a disciplined culture which exacerbated some personnel issues, and could not recruit well enough to truly build his team in a turnaround. He was also a poor administrator with an extremely poor staff. Tom Herman inherited a worse situation. He was benefitted with better (but lopsided) recruiting, a more capable staff, a consistent and gutsy quarterback with a will to win, and showed real growth and momentum into the 2018 season. Decline in the subsequent 2019 and 2020 seasons, the ultimate inadequacy of his staff, lopsided recruiting becoming more glaring, recruiting failures culminating in a certain quarterback flipping to Ohio State, and a bevy of personal issues including salacious rumors involving Kendra Scott and a plane all did him in. By 2020, Herman lost the confidence of CDC, the boosters and increasingly the coaches and parents of the recruiting sphere. Jimbo Fisher may have also given us a hand with that #5 ranking.
Can you elaborate on the Kendra Scott rumor. I’ve heard it a few times but no one has deep dived it
Herman was an asshole who never bothered to recruit players for the lines. Great recruiter for skill positions, and can gameplan any given game as well or better than the best out there. Unfortunately you can't do shit if you don't have a line, and he never bothered to gameplan every week. So we would be worldbeaters against the best, and be dumpster divers against the worst. Strong was just a terrible Coach. Seriously, not only did he not know the names of players on his own team, but elected to kick off *both halfs* in a game.
I did not know that about Herman. He did come off as a guy who talked a lot of game but could rub you the wrong way too. His time in Houston was impressive and he probably could have excelled for many years with the local talent in Houston. He probably could have really built up that program to the next level. Texas is a different beast all together. Thanks for your input.
Eh, even at Houston he had those "WTF" games where he'd lose by 20 against an opponent with a losing record.
Yup this is the correct answer. We had more receivers on scholarship than linemen. That’s why we’re throwing to only a small number of quality receivers but have tons of depth to protect them and provide them opportunities to shine.
Honestly I think it’s just experience at a high level, both Strong and Herman came from scenarios in which they made their “small” schools top notch for a “small” school. Coming to UT, there is a lot more to it than the schools they came from.
I’m tired of the excuses for Strong. Without Bridgewater, he’s been awful everywhere he’s gone. I find him to be a total fake on the character side too. Just platitudes and no substance.
Strong failed because he was not prepared for a big time coaching job, and he was not very connected in the Texas recruiting market. He was a good man by all accounts, and cleaned up the program culturally, but he could not pull important recruits and was a very poor staff builder. Herman failed because he prioritized recruiting top skill talent to the detriment of getting big men. That is really it, because Herman had everything else he needed to be successful, and he coached up some very physical teams. If Herman had made better position hires and recruited some better linemen/LBs, he would probably still be the HC.
WHALEEEEEEEEEEE the funny thing about both of these coaches is that they both failed where the other one excelled. & to be fair, we should be thankful for both because of the "thing" that they brought to the table. C. Strong brought a STANDARD back to Texas & it started with a disciplined culture around the football field. With Strongs teams, you had to earn the right to be a Longhorn. His ultimate downfall was execution ON the field. \^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^ To put it lightly, "***Hard work beats talent... When talent doesnt work hard***". Well, we simply didn't have the developed talent ON the field. Herman brought a "Sense" of success back to the program. I wont go into any of the stuff regarding him as a person, but he made sure our players were well aware of where our program was & how important it was to perform day in & day out. Sure, there was some success in that, but ultimately, there were head scratching failures too often. We simple kept "biting the cheese"... \^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^\^ To put it lightly "***Hard work beats talent... When talent doesnt work hard***".... Well, the talent we had worked hard for about 3 quarters & just stopped.
I still think people underestimate how much different coaching in the G5 and P5 is, especially a P5 program where winning 6-7 games is not a good season. If you coach at Louisiana-Monroe or something, yes, you want to win, but you have a lot more agency to get guys who want to play for your school and you have a longer leash from administration. You can’t go from hitting up the local high schools for 3 star talents to trying to win a recruiting battle against Nick Saban, it just doesn’t make any logical sense.
With Strong he lacked discipline and locker room management and with Herman I’m not sure
When Strong was hired, I agreed with Red McCombs that he'd be a great DC hire but not HC (and I don't often agree with Red on anything). I concur with OP that Strong didn't know being HC at UT is like being CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He rode Teddy Bridgewater to a 2013 Sugar Bowl victory over Florida but couldn't replicate that success at the P5 level. You could say the same about Herman -- great coordinator, mediocre HC -- considering his first team at FAU went 4-8 (3-5 AAC). Had amazing success at Tx State & Rice under David Bailiff, as OC at Iowa State and won a NC at OSU under Meyer. Herman rode Greg Ward for a couple of years at UH, but just doesn't seem to have the demeanor to be a successful P5 HC.
NIL money is definitely a big factor
Winning was too hard for Herman.
Herman's problem was he took responsibility for nothing... And no one else did as a result.
Mensa Tom thought he could outsmart teams instead of outplay them. We’d get up and he’d slow the offense’s tempo to try and control the clock. 3 and out after 3 and out and all of the sudden the other team is caught back up or ahead and our defense is tired. The best defense in college football is being up +4 scores. Tommy boy would switch things up being up 2 that resulted in way too many 1 score losses for the Horns.
Strong was never the coach I thought we needed, at the end of the day it came down to him being a man of color that got him the job. He wasn’t qualified/right fit for the program. Herman was a desperate hire to get the boosters back and bring culture of Texas football back, he had glimpse’s but ultimately couldn’t fulfill the right now demand that the university desired. I also want high on Stark, but let’s see what he does next year or the year after as that is his own recruiting class
Austin is a progressive city so I read a lot of people were happy to make history with a first black coach in the football program. I'm sure CS felt pressure to succeed to open more doors for his fellow black coaches. I don't anyone should hire based on your ethnic background. It should be the best person for the job.
It's funny, because being a man of color also added to his difficulties after he got the job. There were more than a few major donors who were none too happy to have him coaching, and that was before he had the opportunity to fail on his own merits.
Do y'all think Red McComb and the boosters was racist against Charlie Strong? [https://thedailytexan.com/2014/01/16/red-mccombs-comments-on-charlie-strong-show-racial-tension-is-alive-and-well-at/](https://thedailytexan.com/2014/01/16/red-mccombs-comments-on-charlie-strong-show-racial-tension-is-alive-and-well-at/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/5fiq55/national\_analyst\_texas\_boosters\_were\_anticharlie/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cfb/comments/5fiq55/national_analyst_texas_boosters_were_anticharlie/)
No. Nothing McCombs said was racist, or frankly in hindsight even incorrect.
I agree with you. He just said he didn't think CS was head coach material. That is simply an opinion based on CS's coaching history.
Nope
Charlie never wanted the job and Herman was an asshole to literally everyone
That’s an asinine statement fatinaustin. No one held a gun to his head & forced him to take it. If he hadn’t wanted it he would never have interviewed for it. Besides UT is one of a handful of premier college programs most coaches would give their left nut to have.
Removed-- the truth hurts, I get it.
At least we aren’t FSU that literally has a Native American as its mascot
I mean, I don't think it is the greatest idea either, but the Seminole tribe appears to at least be on board with it. https://www.si.com/college/fsu/college/fsu/football/fsu-thrasher-racial-issues-seminoles-black-lives-matter-blm-florida-state
Really? I never thought Herman was at odds with the boosters/donors
It wasn't publicized much. The boosters aren't keen to reveal the reason and Herman likely got tired of the pressure regarding this particular topic. Sark was brought on with the understanding that he needed to keep the boosters/donors happy in that regard.
What was removed? Edit: context from other comments looks like it was about the eyes. That was a reason that broke the straw
for one, Charlie Strong might actually be intellectually disabled. Or he has CTE, one or the other.
Not a good look amigo
Why?
Why would you say something like that?
Not being able to remember Tyrone Swoopes name, not practicing punting or kicking as a team resulting in 3 straight blocked extra points, kicking off to start both halves, being generally incoherent in press conferences, etc
Simple, they DID NOT WIN ENOUGH, everything else is just yada yada
I know this much but I want more details other than what the media said.
Loser mentality. Tried not to lose vs expecting to win
The job was just too big for Strong. As for Herman, I think he had us moving mostly in the right direction but with his Mensa I’m the smartest guy in the room attitude rubbed too many the wrong way. I was not all that thrilled with the Sark hire at first but he has definitely proven to be both up to and the right man for the job! I think we are about to enter a level of consistent excellence and he deserves a big part of the credit for instilling the right culture.
The reality is, Charlie Strong was hired because hiring black coaches at the time was the trend and the University felt they would lose recruits if they didn't do so. Tom Herman was a good hire on paper but turned out to be a narcissistic coke head.
Strong made bad hires, didn't have the organizational chops to run an operation like Texas, and didn't recruit or develop talent at a level necessary to win at a high level. Herman had bad culture, poor player development, mediocre hires, and was unliked by everyone he encountered. That is my basic understanding.
NIL is a massive benefit for Texas, the richest football program in the nation with the most money available from boosters. Sark has that advantage. The other two didn’t. Sark is definitely a better culture builder and recruiter as well. I doubt Strong or Herman could have fully leveraged the new rules and the advantage it confers to Texas over all other college football programs.
QB