This dude is the head coach at Texas. He can snap his fingers and get substantial, multi-million dollar renovations to the weight room, the locker room and the and the hallways in Moncrief
... just like that.
All it takes is walking around the facilities with Perrin and a few operations staff members and pointing things out here and there.
Not just have these upgrades being talked about. Actually being "full-steam ahead" with plans, at least according to what Tom Herman said Thursday when I followed up on his initial comments about making the renovations.
"Nothing that a multi-million dollar facelift can't fix," was Herman's reply to Scout.com's Taylor Gaspar when she asked Herman about what Texas was lacking facilities-wise, "we need to intertwine all the history and tradition here, but make this a place that is appealing to 17-year-old young men, and, we had a walk-through, quite literally on Tuesday. Myself, Fernando Lovo, my chief of staff, (AD) Mike Perrin and (AD Football Operations) Arthur Johnson, we went around, we took notes, we said 'alright, let's go.'"
Walk around the building, point out a few obscenely obvious things, shoot the shit with Perrin and bingo. You've got projects number one, two and three now underway. Texas needs a lot of renovating and you have to start somewhere; might as well be the places where the team spends the most time. Herman went on to say that, as an organization, Texas football must have similar capital projects underway at all times moving forward.
It's like he's the boss of the world or something. A wizard in a movie behind a curtain. Who on earth can tell the UT administration that multi-million dollar capital improvements will be occurring at all times moving forward?
The head coach of the Texas Longhorns football team can. It's what Charlie Strong must not have realized or simply didn't care to do for Texas.
I followed up by asking Coach Herman about what specifically needs to happen to get the deal done on these upgrades? I was so curious, 1) what the specific plan was for the first phases and 2) if he had to raise money from donors or if this was just paid for and offered willingly by the University.
"I don't know," Herman said of his having to ask donors for money for these upgrades, "that's kinda not my job, I'll probably ask at some point, but, my job is to tell President Fenves and Mike Perrin what we need to compete at a championship level. Obviously to me, the graphics in the hallways (referring to 'Fathead' life-size wall posters put up by the previous staff) we need to modernize a lot of that, we need to modernize our locker room - that's a place where our kids spend a big portion of their time and we need to update the weight room and reconfigure it a little bit. So, those are areas A, B and C and we are - again - full-steam ahead on all of this."
What Tom Herman realizes that Charlie Strong didn't is that, at Texas, you have to be a program-builder. Literally, in some ways.
Somebody go check on @winmal aka @g-class and make he hasn't died of a heart attack.
Facilities upgrades at Texas are full-steam ahead.
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