Not enough people are disciplined enough to think like you. Human nature is to pick up the newest and shiniest option on the table, which is what got us into this mess in the first place. In other words, don’t make a 6 year financial decision (4 years + buyout) based on the last three games.
Ketch's 10 Thoughts From The Weekend (Beyond the point of no return...)
- Thread starter Ketchum
- Start date
I don’t know how you can say that Herman didn’t screw up the Eyes situation. Maybe CDC shared blame in the beginning but once he absorbed major blowback he adjusted. Herman never did and in fact lied to the public about CDC’s updated policy. Both men share blame for misunderstanding the donor reaction and not refocusing the players on present day social justice solutions rather than a symbolic issue from the distant past.
a. There's no maybe about sharing the blame. CDC simply didn't act with authority and swiftness.
b. It never needed to reach the blowback stage if he had been proactive. You letting him off the hook for finally addressing this only after the TCU game is fascinating to me.
c. How do you know he "lied"? CDC has never had the balls to say that. He';s never dared talk about any o this in the last five months? He planted three head coaches to release statements, most of whom have zero to few Black players (let alone dozens of them) and had them make comments without any context or follow-up or appreciation for the complexity of Herman's situation.
My goodness, hold him 1/4 as accountable as you would Herman.
@Ketchum Maybe Urban simply doesn't like Herman and although he has no problem being courted and all, He also has no problem seeing Herman squirm?
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We’re Texas - What starts here just kinda peters out and never amounts to a mound of shit.
I think it could catch on as the University’s new slogan.
I think it could catch on as the University’s new slogan.
Totally agree with your take on liking Tom Herman @Ketchum .
I read all the hate on here, and kinda get it, at times, but for the most part, I think he is just another guy trying to figure out how to grow into a role that is 2x bigger than he is ready for. Is that his fault? No.
I still feel like the problem is UT doesn't really know how to hire football coaches.
I read all the hate on here, and kinda get it, at times, but for the most part, I think he is just another guy trying to figure out how to grow into a role that is 2x bigger than he is ready for. Is that his fault? No.
I still feel like the problem is UT doesn't really know how to hire football coaches.
The darkest days lay ahead. How no one pays for this is mind bottling.
As a recovering alcoholic, it is very hard to function at a high level and continue to drink. Especially being the coach at Texas. Must focus on the task at hand. No distractions.
The lack of outrage compared to 2013 is likely based on apathy and desensitization to incompetence the last decade has fostered in this fan base.
There's still time. I have to believe common sense wins out. They just need to regroup.
- Jan 14, 2011
- 31,996
- 82,670
- 113
Did you listen to your own podcast?
What gives you any idea that common sense is all that common in the Texas AD, or admin for that matter?
Question is...are they capable of putting their big boy pants on and going after a Dabo to atleast give it a shot...that Thamel tweet wasn’t without substance...
Wont be able to hire a good staff, will bring his boys, will fail
"Texas AD Chris Del Conte’s play here appears to be shopping for Herman’s replacement and attempting to arrange something before having to make a public decision on Herman. This is a common tactic, but rarely do these shadow searches unfold under such scrutiny. The question will be if Texas strikes out — and Del Conte will aim Dabo-level high if Meyer passes as expected — how will everybody sputter forward and force smiles for Herman returning for a plank-walk season in 2021?"
I'm starting to think hiring James Franklin and giving him $$ to hire the absolute best coaching staff possible is the best option now. I dont know what has happened at PSU this season, but he has previously had that team playing really good ball.
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!
10TFTW and it doesn't include any solid mention of a Texas beat down of KSU, in Manhattan. Sign of the times with the current sports media.
@Ketchum I’ve been stewing on this with everyone else for several days. It just doesn’t make any sense. I worked in a management capacity for a major O&G company and retired after 35 years. In our business development profession, I saw lots of negotiations and upper level decision making, including my own. One observation I take away from my career, is that when seemingly intelligent people make a decision that looks completely wrong, they likely had more/better information than I had.
I am more and more believing that CDC and UM are still a thing. I cannot for the life of me think the first question asked of UM by CDC or emissaries was about health as it relates to coaching. Every major deal we did involved a major strategy conversation, outlining options and actions based on those points. Any strategy session that Hartzell, CDC and the successful BMD’s had, needed to include all of the outcomes and options. Impossible to believe that the outcome we seemingly have, did not show up on their whiteboard ahead of time. The optics of a lame duck coach burned by their early unsuccessful search is too obvious and would never have been unplanned.
I think the early conversations set the stage, and timing for CDC and UM involved waiting until UM (and potential assts) was free from Fox and OSU or Texas playoff implications, if any. Fox was a known date and wasn’t really a logistics issue, money maybe but not logistics. Two weeks until signing day would have been perfect to get recruiting bump, if OSU and Texas were both out of playoff conversations, However, This past week it became apparent that OSU and his potential staff were potentially (6 games?) going to be engaged longer, even thoughTexas chances were extinguished and they were done, so they needed some more time to let it all sort out. Too much media digging and fan rumor mongering, both building fires caused issues. This lead to the non-official, “He told us no” story. They needed to quench the increasingly loud speculation and media presence for a much longer period. The conversations that had once been held tight, were starting to spring leaks and it was becoming somewhat unmanageable. Health is any easy one to use, neither said actually had to formally say it, they could just leak it as a reason. The words “leaning towards not coaching” in first reports were the best way to handle the inquiries issue. Leakers who made it seem definite were adding their own spin (my 2 cents) to try to stop additional inquiries.
Thus here we are, CTH is indeed toast after the season, but UM is still in play, but waiting on his guys to finish their season. I choose to believe this, over the fact that Hartzell, CDC and our BMD’s are idiots when it comes to high-level negation planning. My opinion only...I don’t have a ranch/jet or suite.
I literally wrote a couple thousand words on the game 24 hours earlier.
My column was more focused on the discussion of the moment and that game had passed as the moment,
i don't see Patterson leaving now. he's had tons of offers to leave TCU and hasn't. you could argue Patterson has done more with less given TCU is a private school and with UT's clear edge in resources it should be easier to win at UT.
i wanted Patterson given serious consideration when Brown was forced out. don't recall if he was seriously pursued or not. now i don't think he'd leave TCU for Texas or anywhere for that matter because of the win now mentality he'd be in.
while i think Meyer turned down Texas mainly over his ongoing health concerns i think even he'd be wary of the win now expectations. and this is a guy who knows all about that from UF and Ohio State. remember that Ohio State was his dream job and he had to let it go due to his health.
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