More than a decade ago, hours before my annual Christmas party was set to begin, a very good friend of mine showed up at my house with a nervous look on his face that would have made a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs blush.
All week long, he'd been looking forward to the party, but as fate would have it, an opening at some exclusive poker game in Westlake had opened up, and he had landed the invitation he'd been craving.
The buy-in? Try $20,000.
In retrospect, it was an insanely stupid idea to take a massive portion of his family savings out of the bank without his wife knowing about it, simply because he'd seen Rounders too many times and felt the urge to dance with Austin's version of Teddy KGB, while armed guards stood at the door. Instead, I remember feeling excited for him, maybe even envious.
After all, it wasn't my money or my marriage at risk. At no point did I ever try to talk him out of it.
Many hours later, long after the white elephant exchange had ended and the belly dancers had finished their show, my poker-playing friend came walking in with the rest of the late-arriving 2 a.m. crowd.
"How did it go?" I asked.
He proceeded to explain that on a long list of ideas he'd had over the course of his life, this was likely among the worst. While he had brought his life savings to the poker table, all of the big fish could smell the guppy coming from a mile away. Although he had been playing very tight, his $20K had turned into roughly $10K over the course of a couple of hours.
He was honest in admitting that his nerves had gotten the better of him. Surrounded by guys with suitcases full of re-buy money, he found himself second-guessing his second-guessing. Should he just leave with his tail between his legs and go home down 10k? Should he call a divorce lawyer? Leave the country?
Before he could make a decision, he was dealt pocket aces.
For one of the few times all evening, he raised before the flop. His opponent re-raised. This other player had even dropped a racially insensitive remark towards my friend early in the game, which only made his decision-making more cloudy. He knew he needed to go all-in. He knew he was ahead. He knew in normal circumstances that he'd fire back with aggression.
But he was scared. Scared of losing it all and never getting it back. Scared that he'd make the right decision and still lose. Scared that luck wouldn't be on his side. Scared of giving the entire room the gratification of punishing someone that was in over his head. Scared of knowing that his entire life was about to change. S-c-a-r-e-d.
So, what did he do?
He went all-in, got a call, survived a possible backdoor flush on the river (final card) and got back to where he started. He then pretended that he still wanted to play for about 30 minutes and then got the hell out of there.
"My legs were shaking under the table," I remember him telling me. "I knew I couldn't fold. It was the scariest moment of life, but...I had gone too far to turn around."
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The University of Texas football program.
Too much has happened to turn around now, regardless of whether Urban Meyer takes the steering wheel of the Texas football program.
Yes, there are few guarantees for the Longhorns if Meyer declines the job. Yes, it will be risky. Yes, the Longhorns might not get it right.
Hell, as much of a guarantee on the box as Meyer represents, there's still risk associated in him coming to Austin, including a set of medical problems that might be a problem as soon as year one.
I can’t pretend to know what the right move is, but fear can’t be the motivating factor that pressures these decision-makers to make the wrong move.
Scared money don't make money.
No. 2 - Recruiting is in the abyss...
The single biggest reason that a change must be made is that Tom Herman's ability to recruit at a high level has bottomed out in an incredibly dangerous way.
When the 2021 recruiting class puts pen to paper in the coming weeks, the Longhorns will likely sign only three of the state's top 35 in-state prospects from the current Rivals rankings, with only one of the three ranking inside the state Top 15 (Oklahoma has three Top 15 commits).
That represents one of the single biggest in-state disasters I've covered in recruiting in my 26 years of covering the state. Off the top of my head, only the 2017 recruiting class, dubbed the “Shit-stain” by Sam Ehlinger, is in the same ballpark, mostly because recruiting that year was almost identical to now in that all of the state's top prospects basically stopped believing Charlie Strong's recruiting pitch after two failed seasons on the field.
Essentially, the same thing happened to Herman with the 2021 recruiting class, a truth that was discussed non-stop during the offseason. The Tommy Brockermeyers, Camar Wheatons and Bryce Fosters of the world stopped listening to the Texas sales pitch, and Herman and Co. could never completely get around the doubt that crept into the minds of the super blue-chip prospects around the state.
After the last six months, the problems with recruiting have only intensified.
What remains is a program that has had two of its least-impressive recruiting classes in a quarter century in the last five cycles and seems poised to make it three out of the last six. The 2022 recruiting class is going to take an even longer wait-and-see approach to Herman and his staff moving forward.
Unless Herman is given an inexplicable contract extension, how can the staff overcome the narrative that signing with the Longhorns means signing with a program that not only hasn't performed at a championship level, but has a leader that might not make it to December 15th, 2021.
It's an impossible set of recruiting circumstances, and if Texas continues to slide as it has with the 2021 recruiting class, the road to recovery for whomever is leading the program will take even longer. Outside of the true difference makers, it's probably unfair to expect most of the kids in the 2021 recruiting class to make a big impact for a year or two, which means that the impact from a lame-duck recruiting class in 2022 won't likely occur before the 2023 or 2024 season.
Texas needs help NOW. It needs difference-makers NOW. It needs to turn momentum around NOW.
A coaching change doesn’t guarantee success, but in the modern history of the sport, no new Texas head coach has ever failed to deliver a top nationally-ranked recruiting class in their first full year of recruiting.
Mack Brown turned in a No. 1 class in 1999. Charlie Strong turned in a borderline top-10 class in 2015. Herman's first class ranked No. 4 in the final Rivals.com rankings.
The single biggest band-aid the Longhorns can put on the 2022 recruiting class is to make a change and ride the wave of the "new coach bounce." If nothing else, it'll reset the messaging problems that Texas can't get away from right now.
Not making a change means not only risking the 2022 recruiting class, but it could set the program back with the 2023 recruiting class as well.
At some point, the bleeding has to stop, and that point needs to be as soon as possible.
No. 3 - A fan revolt ...
It goes without saying that the Texas fan base is an unhappy bunch for a variety of reasons.
As the program tries to emerge from a post-COVID world, whenever the hell that might be, Texas can’t risk creating the kind of apathy among the fan base that makes filling a 100,000+ seat stadium next to impossible.
Some of the most loyal, cash-spending consumers of Texas football are questioning whether to direct their time and money elsewhere. I'm talking about season ticket holders. I'm talking about big money donations. I'm talking about buying t-shirts at the Co-op. Hell, I'm talking about my ability to keep Orangebloods subscribers happy.
The trickle down effect of being afraid to make a change would affect the bottom line of the football program and university as a whole.
These people need an Urban-sized bone thrown their way, and if they don't get it, you can't tell them they aren't getting a bone at all.
No. 4 - About Herman's boss/bosses ...
Let's keep it real.
Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte has pretty much left Tom Herman hanging out to dry for the better part of the last six months.
We can say that matter of factly, right? Let's forget about "The Eyes of Texas" saga for a moment and just focus on the following truth ...
If Texas was actually going to keep Herman... check that... if Texas actually thought there was a morsel of possibility that Herman might be retained, why the hell has Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte left him hanging in the wind all season?
Why has Herman been left alone in public in front of every recruit and their parents to flop around like a fish in front of the media, while giving himself his own votes of confidence?
None of it makes sense.
If Texas was going to ever be in a position where Herman might stick around, Del Conte needed to protect his eight-figure asset by any means needed. With Herman and his staff struggling on multiple fronts, the last thing they needed was to be seen as the reason for the complications around the school song.
So, after everything that has happened, I'm supposed to believe that if Meyer turns Texas down, it'll be water under the bridge between Del Conte and his football coach?
Really?
Two things.
a. I find it impossible to believe that Del Conte would risk his own reputation, let alone the financial future of the program and the next two recruiting classes, in the name of keeping the coach he has distanced himself from for months. Impossible.
b. Del Conte gets paid seven figures annually to have backup plans. It doesn't matter that you and I might not be able to figure out who the second option is to replace Herman because we're not being paid six figures monthly to have that answer.
Whatever happens next will define Del Conte's entire career. That's not hyperbole. That is an acknowledgement of the stakes involved. A difficult task is exactly why the job pays millions. It comes with the territory.
No. 5 - If not Urban ...
Should the Longhorns miss out on Meyer, we'll all need to understand that there's no other option that can match what he brings to the table.
Nick and Dabo almost certainly won't happen.
It'll be up to Del Conte and the Texas power brokers to gauge what's available if it comes to that, which means dialing up the agents of coaches like Brian Kelly and Dan Mullen just to see if there's any interest.
If they don't want $10+ million from the Longhorns and if James Franklin (regarded as a national top-10 level coach coming into the season) and Mario Cristobal become off the table for their own failures in 2020, then maybe Del Conte needs to take a page out of the OU playbook and hire the next big thing before they became big things.
Find the 2020 version of a young Bob Stoops or Lincoln Riley.
No. 6 - One thing I'd like to say for the record ...
I think I like Tom Herman.
Of course, I can't say that I know that because I don't really know him very well on a personal level, even if he almost certainly loathes my Monday morning quarterbacking of his every move.
Yet, on a human level, I find him to be someone that occasionally makes mistakes, but more times than not, he seems to try to be a good person. Without knowing his motivations for his actions, all I can do is tip my cap to the guy for coming to the aid of Courtney Smith or standing by his players when there was little for him to gain by doing so.
It's not an easy thing to do what you believe is the right thing when it comes at the expense of friendships, tribal coaching codes or even political capital with your boss.
Also, for all of the grief he takes among the Texas fan base for his perceived arrogance, my eyes often see a guy that doesn't have a problem with being a bit self-deprecating and deep down really wants to be liked. If there was an alternate universe out there where the circumstances were slightly different, I think I'd be open-minded to a different end result.
But we are in the world that we've got, and in this particular reality, I just don't believe there can be any turning back from replacing Herman as the head coach at Texas.
We're beyond the point of no return.
No. 7 – BUY or SELL …
(Sell) A lame-duck situation is a lame-duck situation.
(Sell) I think it's pretty clear that he would need his crew of guys if he's going to make the move. I'm not sure he's at a point in his life where he can wing it with a bunch of new guys.
(Buy) By definition, no denial is a good thing. It just remains to be seen just how good.
(Sell) I think the Majors we watched yesterday likely isn't the Majors we would have seen in the first month of the season. I'm not sure what results change with 10 games of Majors as the starter.
(Buy) I said that last week and now that the Longhorns have had a slight outbreak, it feels very problematic.
(Sell) Those two dudes have been biased against Texas for years. I really don't pay any attention to either.
(Sell) That is open for debate.
(Buy) I feel very good about the upside of both players.
(Buy) I thought he was bald because he HAD to be bald. It's an insult to those of us with no hair that he can grow such a beautiful head of hair.
(Sell) Texas might still land a few more recruits, but I'm not sure they'll be high profile, which is probably what you meant, but didn't say.
(Buy) There's a part of me that wants to say it might be DeMarvion Overshown or Keondre Coburn, but Bijan is definitely the guy on offense.
(Sell) It's really, really close.
No. 8 - Captain Kerstetter...
Wow is all I can say.
No. 9 - Scattershooting on the world of sports...
... Villanova just executed better than Texas on Sunday, which is why the Longhorns deservingly took the L from the Wildcats, but a lot has happened in the last week to make me think this is going to be a very fun season if the Longhorns can stay healthy.
... My brain doesn't really know how to process Texas A&M being really good at football, mostly because the last time they were really good at football, I still had hair and didn't run a website.
... DeVonta Smith gets my Heisman vote if I had one.
... Everyone on this board is going to be Iowa State fans on the 19th.
... Indiana football is one hell of a story. I don't know how good Tom Allen really is, but my goodness, he's the National Coach of the Year.
... Coastal Carolina/BYU was all kinds of fun, but I personally find Coastal Carolina to be kind of bush league and trashy based just on how they acted toward the Cougars.
... Mike Gundy had just as disappointing of a season as Tom Herman.
... Colt McCoy beat a Russell Wilson-led football team in Seattle. Holy hell. Attaboy, Colt.
... I didn't see the Cleveland-Tennessee outcome coming from a mile away.
... What the hell kind of defense were the Jets playing at the end of that Oakland game? How does that happen?
... The Texans kind of make me feel better for being a Cowboys fan.
No.10 - And finally...
It's not too late to have your business profiled on the Orangebloods message board with a pinned post during the holidays.
Reach out to myself or @BlakeSkaggs for details!
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