https://www.si.com/college-football/2018/04/09/texas-longhorns-tom-herman-chris-del-conte
AUSTIN, Texas — Chris Del Conte was about to leave the room as Tom Herman walked in. “Hey boss,” the second-year Texas football coach said to the new Texas athletic director last Tuesday. “Heck of a meeting this morning.” And then Herman flashed a huge grin.
Unbeknownst to Herman, Del Conte had just talked about that meeting during an interview with myself and former Colorado, UCLA and Washington coach Rick Neuheisel for a show that aired on SiriusXM last week (and is still available on demand on the SiriusXM app if you’d like to listen). “I had a head coaches meeting this morning to talk about what they would like us to be moving forward,” said Del Conte, who left TCU in December to move three hours south. “Then we will build our culture around their wants and wishes.”
In other words, Del Conte told his coaches that burnt orange and white would be the only school colors from this point forward. For the previous few years, the secondary color at Texas was tape red.
To understand why this would matter so much to coaches at Texas—and specifically to the football coach at Texas—consider the case of the unintended mud pit. On a small hill above the Texas practice fields is a covered area. This is where the players seek shade during breaks. It’s also where they drink copious amounts of water. When a hundred large men open water taps for a few minutes from an elevated position, that tends to lead to significant runoff. That runoff would pool at the bottom of the hill and turn part of one of the practice field sidelines into a mud pit. The solution Texas staffers devised was simple and cheap. They realized that if they covered the hill with artificial turf and created a small turf landing, the water would evaporate before it could mix with soil and create mud. For the nation’s wealthiest athletic department, this low-tech fix should have taken a few days.
It took months.
This is only one small example, but multiply that by several hundred and you’ll understand the aggravation of Texas football coaches relative to some of their peers who have dealt with less bureaucracy on a daily basis. We keep wondering why Texas hasn’t won big since the Longhorns won the Big 12 and reached the national title game in 2009, but perhaps we’re putting too much blame on the coaches and not enough blame on the place. We’re about to find out how much that matters—if at all—because Del Conte likely will streamline some of the issues that Mack Brown, Charlie Strong and Herman have faced.
Controlling for that factor should help provide a better answer for an intriguing question: Is it just difficult to win at football at Texas?
This sounds like a foolish question, because from the outside, there should be nothing easier than winning football games at Texas. The Longhorns have more money than anyone else. They have prime exposure in the form of their own cable network. They can offer an education from an Association of American Universities member that is considered one of the nation’s most prestigious public universities. They sit in the middle of one of America’s most fertile football recruiting grounds. Given these factors, mediocre seasons should never happen. Yet let’s examine what has happened since Darrell Royal retired after the 1976 season.
Fred Akers followed Royal by winning at least nine games in six of his first seven seasons, but after going 11–1 in 1983, Akers never won more than eight in a season again and left for Purdue after going 5–6 in ’86. David McWilliams went 10–2 in 1990 but went 21–24 in his other four seasons at Texas. John Mackovic went 10-2-1 in ’95 and coached a 7–4 team to an upset of Nebraska in the inaugural Big 12 title game in ’96, but he was fired after posting a 4–7 record in ’97.
In came Mack Brown, whose first 12 seasons created the current idea of what Texas football should be. Brown won nine games in each of his first three seasons and then won double-digit games for nine consecutive years. This included a national championship in 2005 and the aforementioned BCS title game after the ’09 season. During that period, Texas went 101–16. Since then, Texas has gone 53–48. That isn’t as good as the 92–68 record that included Akers’s final seasons and the two predecessors to Brown, but neither of those records is acceptable at a place with as many resources as Texas. This is why Herman continues to temper any talk of optimism following last year’s Texas Bowl win with a reminder that a season such as 2017 should be the floor. “I get that the bare minimum—or needs to be around here—is winning a bowl game,” Herman said.
Looking at the records over the years, two conclusions spring to mind:
• Maybe we don’t give Brown enough credit for winning so consistently. While it was happening, the immense resources at Texas got a healthy chunk of the credit.
• Maybe the place has as much to do with the lack of consistent winning as the coaches.
But if Del Conte can change the place, will that make it easier for Herman to win in the manner that has become expected? This isn’t to say that Nick Saban has gotten everything he’s wanted immediately at Alabama, but generally, if he brings a sensible idea to the administration, the administration makes it happen relatively quickly. Everyone in Tuscaloosa is pulling in the same direction, and that direction leads toward national titles. Texas has had four different athletic directors and two different presidents since 2014. Closer to home for Texas, Oklahoma won a national title and won or shared 10 Big 12 titles in the 18-year period in which the Sooners had the same coach (Bob Stoops), athletic director (Joe Castiglione) and president (David Boren) working in near-perfect alignment. It probably isn’t a coincidence that Brown’s best years came with then Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds at the height of his powers.
The University of Texas is a behemoth of an organization that is routinely the focus of the legislators who work in the state capitol a mile away, and its athletic department suffers from much of the same paralysis by bureaucracy. Steve Patterson, the second of those four athletic directors, attempted to cut through that bureaucracy and take decisive action, but he acted like a slash-and-burn turnaround specialist instead of the steward of an iconic brand that has plenty of money but needs to be pointed in the proper direction. “A lot of it when you're this big is that you become silo-driven not because you want to but because of the size,” Del Conte said. “It’s like the federal government.”
The stagnation also may have some of its roots in arrogance. Texas won so much in the first decade of this century that the people in charge stopped evolving because they didn’t think it would ever end. The Joneses, as Dodds once famously called the Longhorns, stopped keeping up with everyone else in just about every category except ticket prices. Del Conte intends to change that, and one of his first priorities is the Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletic Center, which houses the football team. The Longhorns got a new locker room last year, but the rest of the building is showing its age compared to the palaces in Norman, College Station and Manhattan. (That’s Manhattan, Kans., by the way.) Strong wanted them improved but couldn’t make much progress. By the time Herman arrived last year, it had begun to dawn on Texas officials that they had fallen behind. The locker room was a start, but Del Conte wants to ensure facilities don’t cost the Longhorns when they’re trying to recruit against Texas A&M or Oklahoma or Alabama.
“Our facilities used to be the greatest facilities in the ’90s and early 2000s,” Del Conte said. “If you go down Rodeo Drive or you go around Beverly Hills, it’s that one house. Everyone said, ‘That was my dream house.’ Then everyone built around it. And that used to be some kind of house. We’ve got to fix our facilities.”
Del Conte’s specialty is raising money and building. At TCU, he rebuilt Amon G. Carter Stadium from scratch using cash during one of the worst economic downturns in U.S. history. He rebuilt the football facilities and the basketball arena. He renovated the baseball stadium. And then one day he looked around and there was nothing left to build. Del Conte jokes that TCU football coach Gary Patterson grows weeds to pull them, but Del Conte had entered that mode as well. “I was manufacturing projects just to keep myself busy,” he said.
So when Texas president Greg Fenves offered Del Conte the job, Del Conte saw a place that needed more fundraising and more building. He also saw a place that needed to serve its customers better. While Del Conte spends much of his time trying to wrangle $10 million donation checks, he’ll also answer a question from someone wondering if they can bring a diaper bag into the spring game.
One of the things that needed to be done was hire an experienced athletic director who can make the Longhorns the Joneses again. Texas has done that. Now Del Conte has to work to give Herman everything he needs to win. If he does, we’ll have a much better idea in the next few years whether the Longhorns’ recent problems stemmed from the coaches or from the place itself.
AUSTIN, Texas — Chris Del Conte was about to leave the room as Tom Herman walked in. “Hey boss,” the second-year Texas football coach said to the new Texas athletic director last Tuesday. “Heck of a meeting this morning.” And then Herman flashed a huge grin.
Unbeknownst to Herman, Del Conte had just talked about that meeting during an interview with myself and former Colorado, UCLA and Washington coach Rick Neuheisel for a show that aired on SiriusXM last week (and is still available on demand on the SiriusXM app if you’d like to listen). “I had a head coaches meeting this morning to talk about what they would like us to be moving forward,” said Del Conte, who left TCU in December to move three hours south. “Then we will build our culture around their wants and wishes.”
In other words, Del Conte told his coaches that burnt orange and white would be the only school colors from this point forward. For the previous few years, the secondary color at Texas was tape red.
To understand why this would matter so much to coaches at Texas—and specifically to the football coach at Texas—consider the case of the unintended mud pit. On a small hill above the Texas practice fields is a covered area. This is where the players seek shade during breaks. It’s also where they drink copious amounts of water. When a hundred large men open water taps for a few minutes from an elevated position, that tends to lead to significant runoff. That runoff would pool at the bottom of the hill and turn part of one of the practice field sidelines into a mud pit. The solution Texas staffers devised was simple and cheap. They realized that if they covered the hill with artificial turf and created a small turf landing, the water would evaporate before it could mix with soil and create mud. For the nation’s wealthiest athletic department, this low-tech fix should have taken a few days.
It took months.
This is only one small example, but multiply that by several hundred and you’ll understand the aggravation of Texas football coaches relative to some of their peers who have dealt with less bureaucracy on a daily basis. We keep wondering why Texas hasn’t won big since the Longhorns won the Big 12 and reached the national title game in 2009, but perhaps we’re putting too much blame on the coaches and not enough blame on the place. We’re about to find out how much that matters—if at all—because Del Conte likely will streamline some of the issues that Mack Brown, Charlie Strong and Herman have faced.
Controlling for that factor should help provide a better answer for an intriguing question: Is it just difficult to win at football at Texas?
This sounds like a foolish question, because from the outside, there should be nothing easier than winning football games at Texas. The Longhorns have more money than anyone else. They have prime exposure in the form of their own cable network. They can offer an education from an Association of American Universities member that is considered one of the nation’s most prestigious public universities. They sit in the middle of one of America’s most fertile football recruiting grounds. Given these factors, mediocre seasons should never happen. Yet let’s examine what has happened since Darrell Royal retired after the 1976 season.
Fred Akers followed Royal by winning at least nine games in six of his first seven seasons, but after going 11–1 in 1983, Akers never won more than eight in a season again and left for Purdue after going 5–6 in ’86. David McWilliams went 10–2 in 1990 but went 21–24 in his other four seasons at Texas. John Mackovic went 10-2-1 in ’95 and coached a 7–4 team to an upset of Nebraska in the inaugural Big 12 title game in ’96, but he was fired after posting a 4–7 record in ’97.
In came Mack Brown, whose first 12 seasons created the current idea of what Texas football should be. Brown won nine games in each of his first three seasons and then won double-digit games for nine consecutive years. This included a national championship in 2005 and the aforementioned BCS title game after the ’09 season. During that period, Texas went 101–16. Since then, Texas has gone 53–48. That isn’t as good as the 92–68 record that included Akers’s final seasons and the two predecessors to Brown, but neither of those records is acceptable at a place with as many resources as Texas. This is why Herman continues to temper any talk of optimism following last year’s Texas Bowl win with a reminder that a season such as 2017 should be the floor. “I get that the bare minimum—or needs to be around here—is winning a bowl game,” Herman said.
Looking at the records over the years, two conclusions spring to mind:
• Maybe we don’t give Brown enough credit for winning so consistently. While it was happening, the immense resources at Texas got a healthy chunk of the credit.
• Maybe the place has as much to do with the lack of consistent winning as the coaches.
But if Del Conte can change the place, will that make it easier for Herman to win in the manner that has become expected? This isn’t to say that Nick Saban has gotten everything he’s wanted immediately at Alabama, but generally, if he brings a sensible idea to the administration, the administration makes it happen relatively quickly. Everyone in Tuscaloosa is pulling in the same direction, and that direction leads toward national titles. Texas has had four different athletic directors and two different presidents since 2014. Closer to home for Texas, Oklahoma won a national title and won or shared 10 Big 12 titles in the 18-year period in which the Sooners had the same coach (Bob Stoops), athletic director (Joe Castiglione) and president (David Boren) working in near-perfect alignment. It probably isn’t a coincidence that Brown’s best years came with then Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds at the height of his powers.
The University of Texas is a behemoth of an organization that is routinely the focus of the legislators who work in the state capitol a mile away, and its athletic department suffers from much of the same paralysis by bureaucracy. Steve Patterson, the second of those four athletic directors, attempted to cut through that bureaucracy and take decisive action, but he acted like a slash-and-burn turnaround specialist instead of the steward of an iconic brand that has plenty of money but needs to be pointed in the proper direction. “A lot of it when you're this big is that you become silo-driven not because you want to but because of the size,” Del Conte said. “It’s like the federal government.”
The stagnation also may have some of its roots in arrogance. Texas won so much in the first decade of this century that the people in charge stopped evolving because they didn’t think it would ever end. The Joneses, as Dodds once famously called the Longhorns, stopped keeping up with everyone else in just about every category except ticket prices. Del Conte intends to change that, and one of his first priorities is the Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletic Center, which houses the football team. The Longhorns got a new locker room last year, but the rest of the building is showing its age compared to the palaces in Norman, College Station and Manhattan. (That’s Manhattan, Kans., by the way.) Strong wanted them improved but couldn’t make much progress. By the time Herman arrived last year, it had begun to dawn on Texas officials that they had fallen behind. The locker room was a start, but Del Conte wants to ensure facilities don’t cost the Longhorns when they’re trying to recruit against Texas A&M or Oklahoma or Alabama.
“Our facilities used to be the greatest facilities in the ’90s and early 2000s,” Del Conte said. “If you go down Rodeo Drive or you go around Beverly Hills, it’s that one house. Everyone said, ‘That was my dream house.’ Then everyone built around it. And that used to be some kind of house. We’ve got to fix our facilities.”
Del Conte’s specialty is raising money and building. At TCU, he rebuilt Amon G. Carter Stadium from scratch using cash during one of the worst economic downturns in U.S. history. He rebuilt the football facilities and the basketball arena. He renovated the baseball stadium. And then one day he looked around and there was nothing left to build. Del Conte jokes that TCU football coach Gary Patterson grows weeds to pull them, but Del Conte had entered that mode as well. “I was manufacturing projects just to keep myself busy,” he said.
So when Texas president Greg Fenves offered Del Conte the job, Del Conte saw a place that needed more fundraising and more building. He also saw a place that needed to serve its customers better. While Del Conte spends much of his time trying to wrangle $10 million donation checks, he’ll also answer a question from someone wondering if they can bring a diaper bag into the spring game.
One of the things that needed to be done was hire an experienced athletic director who can make the Longhorns the Joneses again. Texas has done that. Now Del Conte has to work to give Herman everything he needs to win. If he does, we’ll have a much better idea in the next few years whether the Longhorns’ recent problems stemmed from the coaches or from the place itself.
