"This is where they fought the battle of Gettysburg. Fifty thousand men died right here on this field, fighting the same fight that we are still fighting among ourselves today. This green field right here, painted red, bubblin' with the blood of young boys. Smoke and hot lead pouring right through their bodies. Listen to their souls, men. I killed my brother with malice in my heart. Hatred destroyed my family. You listen, and you take a lesson from the dead. If we don't come together right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were. I don't care if you like each other of not, but you will respect each other. And maybe... I don't know, maybe we'll learn to play this game like men."
Herman Boone in Remember the Titans
Let me start out by saying that this is not a pick-me-up speech, as none of this is designed to blow smoke up your hind-parts.
What this is designed to do is bring a cold dose of reality to where the Texas Longhorns football program is heading into third game of Charlie Strong's first season in Austin, while inserting some damn common sense into some of the discussion that is taking place all over OB Land and beyond.
Without turning this speech into a 10,000 word-opus, there are five very critical points I want to make about the state of the 40 Acres going into the UCLA game because there's no telling what's awaiting this program on the other side of Jerry World's walls on Saturday. As I've watched the mood of this message board go from unstable to volatile over the span of six days, it occurred to me that if I didn't take a moment to at least attempt to clear some of the clutter in a few brains out there, there's no telling what the atmosphere on the 40 Acres will look like by the time Thanksgiving rolls around.
OK, let's have a talk.
Important Point No. 1: Mack Brown left the Texas program in absolute shambles
Once upon a time, Mack Brown was an elite-level, Hall of Fame college football coach … once upon a time.
However, slowly but surely over the course of a near-decade, Mack Brown started to lose his edge, his hunger to grind and outwork the competition, and eventually the capacity to turn back time and recapture all that was lost. Many folks like to point to the 2010 season as the moment when things started to go south, but the truth of the matter is that the program started to slip in the three or four seasons before 2010, but the unexpected greatness of Colt McCoy and the band of upperclassmen that created the 2008-09 seasons provided cover for the fact that the foundation of the program had already started to rot from the inside-out.
By the time 2010 rolled around, the issues slammed to the forefront and it was too late to turn back, which meant that every season that Mack was allowed to stick around in an effort to "fix it" was actually another year of digging deeper into the wasteland that suddenly became home.
If you need a refresher course on the inept level of CEO work that Mack provided in those years, just re-read what I wrote more than eight months before Mack's final season began. It's all there …
One of the reasons why I wrote a column last December calling for the Longhorns to go for an earth-shaking, eye-opening splash hire is that the complicated nuance in which the new guy would enter is so tricky that a case can be made that anything less than someone that could change a few dynamics with his mere presence (see recruiting especially) alone might be accepting a job that can't be won.
Nothing about this job allows for a quick fix, as the roster has glaring holes all over the place (especially quarterback and wide receiver), the strength and conditioning program has been under-performing for years, recruiting was at Mackovician levels and the overall soul of the program needed serious therapy.
None of this should be a shock to anyone.
Important Point No. 2: It's going to take time and by time I mean more than 12 months
I dig Charlie Strong, but he was not an earth-shaking, eye-opening splash hire.
That means that the rebuild process is exactly that … a rebuild process. Not reload, bur rebuild, which is a point that gets lost on way too many, which is ironic because I can't think of an area of the program that was actually in good standing order when Strong arrived.
Can you?
Therefore, I'm not sure what to tell some of you who are freaking out over the idea that the 2014 season might be a hell of a painful experience, other than, "What the hell could you possibly have been expecting?"
With personnel issues and a tricky schedule that features a daunting first half of the season, this house of cards was always in danger of falling to the ground if any of the key areas on the team with personnel issues took any hits and that's exactly what has happened. If you're sitting around speculating on what another coach might have done with this group of players, I'm not sure that you're giving the issues throughout the program that have needed to be addressed all at the same time enough consideration.
On some level, everyone is going to have to take a deep breath and let Charlie Strong do his job, because judging him nine months into the task is an absolute joke. It's like evaluating Norman Dale's performance in Hoosiers after he sent four players onto the court instead of five to prove a point.
Speaking of Norman Dale, I wrote this in February
Like Dale's job in Hickory, the only way for Strong to achieve the type of bottom line results that will ultimately define success or failure is to completely change a culture that needs a little convincing that changing the culture means more than simply switching up a few Xs and Os and changing the pregame speech on game days. This isn't about asking a group of young men to play zone or man-to-man defense, as much as it's about breaking the colts and forcing them to embrace a way of life that is completely different than any they've ever known.
Culture change isn't easy and if it was, Strong wouldn't be here right now. Hell, if it was easy, Mack Brown might still have a job in Austin that includes a working whistle.
The hard truth of the matter for those that live around these parts is that the Texas Longhorn way is broken and Strong was hired to fix it. The players that remain don't really have any idea what it takes to be great. Oh, they think they do … they think they've got it right … and some of them probably think this new guy from Louisville (of all places) is out of his mind. Again, if these lost football souls truly knew what level of commitment it took to be great, Strong wouldn't be here.
Of course, culture change doesn't begin with seven-on-seven drills or film study as much as it begins with the basics, which in this case includes treating every class, every workout and every facet in life like it's October in Dallas. It sounds like so much of a movie script because there's a corny truth to the principles that guide Strong's ethos, so much so that the members of the local barbershop gossip group probably believe his intentions are a little misguided. Just coach the damn team, right?
Except that's just not Strong's way. It might be the way of a number of other coaches in the college game, but Strong's way is woven into his core beliefs as a human being. It's about his program being built by his principles in life and that means his approach is unbreakable because asking him to do otherwise would compromise him. Actually, I'm fairly certain that the word compromise isn't one that exists very much in Strong's vernacular.
Get your ass to class. Work your ass off in the weight room and on the field. Keep your ass out of trouble.
That doesn't mean that you go to class when you want. That doesn't mean that you coast in workouts on Friday because you went out on Thursday night. That doesn't mean that not getting caught is staying out of trouble.
What exactly is there to compromise? If you believe as Strong does that the only way to be a champion on the field is to perform like one on the other six days of the week, there's really not any reason to spend a lot of time worrying about those that can't apply themselves or feel like they can cheat the process. Strong wants a team full of junkyard dogs and in his mind you're either a junkyard dog all the time in all areas of life or you're just a pretender that hopes the switch can be found.
If that means that you've got to kick Buddy and Whit out of the gym because they fight against the change, well, so be it.
Nothing has changed.
Look, I can't tell you that Strong is going to pull this thing off, but you have to give the man time to implement his program and you're going to have to live through the growing pains that occur along the way.
There are no short-cuts, no magic beanstalks or miracles on the horizon, which means that if you ignore the fact that this was never going to be a quick-fix under Strong and that it was always going to take at least two off-seasons to have his program truly in place, you're just being unreasonable.
Important Point No. 3: The Texas fan-base is fractured
Let's address one of the elephants in the room, which centers on the truth that the greatest irony of the Mack Brown era is that he both united and destroyed the Longhorn fan-base as the coach at Texas.
The man can't receive enough credit for what he did in bringing Texas fans together after a disjointed and ugly period of time from the mid-80s into the mid-90s, but by the time he left last December, I'm not sure the Longhorn Nation has ever been more splintered.
By the time the Red Banquet had rolled around, numerous factions within the base had emerged and by the time that night was over, a mutiny was starting to occur that only ended when Brown stepped down less than 24 hours after Nick Saban's contract extension had been announced right about the time that Robb Stark … nevermind … can't give away spoilers to the show.
Since the time of the Red Banquet, the fan-base simply hasn't been reunited and it has created a difficult situation because so little of the conversation taking place is based in any kind of reality.
I'm not sure how this happens because a true chicken and the egg situation is in front of us, but the Texas fan-base must find a way to unite itself and get on the same page, and it must do so without the drug of winning providing the easy path.
Important Point No. 4: The Texas fan-base is no different than anyone else
What is happening right now to the Longhorns program isn't some sort of anomaly in college football.
Alabama has gone through it. USC has gone through it. Michigan is going through it right now. Hell, let's not even bring Notre Dame into the discussion because it's never-ending at that place.
There seems to be a feeling that when the Longhorns lose, Texas fans (especially those on Orangebloods.com) somehow act in a way that makes them unique in the art-form known as college fan-base meltdowns.
Those of you on this board are here because of your passion for Longhorn football and you've been put through an absolute ringer the last five years, starting with the Colt McCoy injury in the national title game, and what you see in terms of meltdowns is exactly what would happen if it occurred at any other program with expectations for greatness at all times.
Orangeloods doesn't have the worst board and you guys aren't the worst fans.
This is just what it looks like when a program of this magnitude goes through more than a half-decade of hoping for a drink while wandering in the desert.
Cut yourself some slack because you guys really do deserve a huge and some free therapy.
Important Point No. 5: Understand what the rest of this season is … a step in the process
You notice my lack of meltdowns over the Dallas Cowboys lately?
It's because my expectations for right now are so low that nothing that team fails to do on the field can surprise me. It's just not a good team and playing 2/7 off-suit in every hand of a high stakes game of poker is going to leave you some nights without a smile.
This Texas team is playing football right now with two hands tied behind its back, which is what happens when you have one of the worst quarterback and offensive line situations in the entire nation.
Winning a lot of games should not be expected at this point, which means the focus should probably be on growth taking place in small doses. What needs to happen from here is that this team needs to be taking strides and steps forward in the areas of concern. By the end of the season, if a number of young, returning players start to emerge and see the light, the season will not be for not.
Every single piece of your thought process in my mind should be focused on 2015 because I don't think you can judge the Strong program until he's had two full off-seasons and a recruiting class of his own with which he can start to rebuild.
Also, just a piece of advice …
If game-day meltdowns, especially those in the wee hours of the night, drive you crazy, just follow my tried and true experience.
Just stay away from the board until noon on Sunday because that's usually the time that folks start to sober up and common sense starts to kick in at least a little.
Ok, I'm done.
This post was edited on 9/12 9:16 PM by Suchomel
Herman Boone in Remember the Titans
Let me start out by saying that this is not a pick-me-up speech, as none of this is designed to blow smoke up your hind-parts.
What this is designed to do is bring a cold dose of reality to where the Texas Longhorns football program is heading into third game of Charlie Strong's first season in Austin, while inserting some damn common sense into some of the discussion that is taking place all over OB Land and beyond.
Without turning this speech into a 10,000 word-opus, there are five very critical points I want to make about the state of the 40 Acres going into the UCLA game because there's no telling what's awaiting this program on the other side of Jerry World's walls on Saturday. As I've watched the mood of this message board go from unstable to volatile over the span of six days, it occurred to me that if I didn't take a moment to at least attempt to clear some of the clutter in a few brains out there, there's no telling what the atmosphere on the 40 Acres will look like by the time Thanksgiving rolls around.
OK, let's have a talk.
Important Point No. 1: Mack Brown left the Texas program in absolute shambles
Once upon a time, Mack Brown was an elite-level, Hall of Fame college football coach … once upon a time.
However, slowly but surely over the course of a near-decade, Mack Brown started to lose his edge, his hunger to grind and outwork the competition, and eventually the capacity to turn back time and recapture all that was lost. Many folks like to point to the 2010 season as the moment when things started to go south, but the truth of the matter is that the program started to slip in the three or four seasons before 2010, but the unexpected greatness of Colt McCoy and the band of upperclassmen that created the 2008-09 seasons provided cover for the fact that the foundation of the program had already started to rot from the inside-out.
By the time 2010 rolled around, the issues slammed to the forefront and it was too late to turn back, which meant that every season that Mack was allowed to stick around in an effort to "fix it" was actually another year of digging deeper into the wasteland that suddenly became home.
If you need a refresher course on the inept level of CEO work that Mack provided in those years, just re-read what I wrote more than eight months before Mack's final season began. It's all there …
One of the reasons why I wrote a column last December calling for the Longhorns to go for an earth-shaking, eye-opening splash hire is that the complicated nuance in which the new guy would enter is so tricky that a case can be made that anything less than someone that could change a few dynamics with his mere presence (see recruiting especially) alone might be accepting a job that can't be won.
Nothing about this job allows for a quick fix, as the roster has glaring holes all over the place (especially quarterback and wide receiver), the strength and conditioning program has been under-performing for years, recruiting was at Mackovician levels and the overall soul of the program needed serious therapy.
None of this should be a shock to anyone.
Important Point No. 2: It's going to take time and by time I mean more than 12 months
I dig Charlie Strong, but he was not an earth-shaking, eye-opening splash hire.
That means that the rebuild process is exactly that … a rebuild process. Not reload, bur rebuild, which is a point that gets lost on way too many, which is ironic because I can't think of an area of the program that was actually in good standing order when Strong arrived.
Can you?
Therefore, I'm not sure what to tell some of you who are freaking out over the idea that the 2014 season might be a hell of a painful experience, other than, "What the hell could you possibly have been expecting?"
With personnel issues and a tricky schedule that features a daunting first half of the season, this house of cards was always in danger of falling to the ground if any of the key areas on the team with personnel issues took any hits and that's exactly what has happened. If you're sitting around speculating on what another coach might have done with this group of players, I'm not sure that you're giving the issues throughout the program that have needed to be addressed all at the same time enough consideration.
On some level, everyone is going to have to take a deep breath and let Charlie Strong do his job, because judging him nine months into the task is an absolute joke. It's like evaluating Norman Dale's performance in Hoosiers after he sent four players onto the court instead of five to prove a point.
Speaking of Norman Dale, I wrote this in February
Like Dale's job in Hickory, the only way for Strong to achieve the type of bottom line results that will ultimately define success or failure is to completely change a culture that needs a little convincing that changing the culture means more than simply switching up a few Xs and Os and changing the pregame speech on game days. This isn't about asking a group of young men to play zone or man-to-man defense, as much as it's about breaking the colts and forcing them to embrace a way of life that is completely different than any they've ever known.
Culture change isn't easy and if it was, Strong wouldn't be here right now. Hell, if it was easy, Mack Brown might still have a job in Austin that includes a working whistle.
The hard truth of the matter for those that live around these parts is that the Texas Longhorn way is broken and Strong was hired to fix it. The players that remain don't really have any idea what it takes to be great. Oh, they think they do … they think they've got it right … and some of them probably think this new guy from Louisville (of all places) is out of his mind. Again, if these lost football souls truly knew what level of commitment it took to be great, Strong wouldn't be here.
Of course, culture change doesn't begin with seven-on-seven drills or film study as much as it begins with the basics, which in this case includes treating every class, every workout and every facet in life like it's October in Dallas. It sounds like so much of a movie script because there's a corny truth to the principles that guide Strong's ethos, so much so that the members of the local barbershop gossip group probably believe his intentions are a little misguided. Just coach the damn team, right?
Except that's just not Strong's way. It might be the way of a number of other coaches in the college game, but Strong's way is woven into his core beliefs as a human being. It's about his program being built by his principles in life and that means his approach is unbreakable because asking him to do otherwise would compromise him. Actually, I'm fairly certain that the word compromise isn't one that exists very much in Strong's vernacular.
Get your ass to class. Work your ass off in the weight room and on the field. Keep your ass out of trouble.
That doesn't mean that you go to class when you want. That doesn't mean that you coast in workouts on Friday because you went out on Thursday night. That doesn't mean that not getting caught is staying out of trouble.
What exactly is there to compromise? If you believe as Strong does that the only way to be a champion on the field is to perform like one on the other six days of the week, there's really not any reason to spend a lot of time worrying about those that can't apply themselves or feel like they can cheat the process. Strong wants a team full of junkyard dogs and in his mind you're either a junkyard dog all the time in all areas of life or you're just a pretender that hopes the switch can be found.
If that means that you've got to kick Buddy and Whit out of the gym because they fight against the change, well, so be it.
Nothing has changed.
Look, I can't tell you that Strong is going to pull this thing off, but you have to give the man time to implement his program and you're going to have to live through the growing pains that occur along the way.
There are no short-cuts, no magic beanstalks or miracles on the horizon, which means that if you ignore the fact that this was never going to be a quick-fix under Strong and that it was always going to take at least two off-seasons to have his program truly in place, you're just being unreasonable.
Important Point No. 3: The Texas fan-base is fractured
Let's address one of the elephants in the room, which centers on the truth that the greatest irony of the Mack Brown era is that he both united and destroyed the Longhorn fan-base as the coach at Texas.
The man can't receive enough credit for what he did in bringing Texas fans together after a disjointed and ugly period of time from the mid-80s into the mid-90s, but by the time he left last December, I'm not sure the Longhorn Nation has ever been more splintered.
By the time the Red Banquet had rolled around, numerous factions within the base had emerged and by the time that night was over, a mutiny was starting to occur that only ended when Brown stepped down less than 24 hours after Nick Saban's contract extension had been announced right about the time that Robb Stark … nevermind … can't give away spoilers to the show.
Since the time of the Red Banquet, the fan-base simply hasn't been reunited and it has created a difficult situation because so little of the conversation taking place is based in any kind of reality.
I'm not sure how this happens because a true chicken and the egg situation is in front of us, but the Texas fan-base must find a way to unite itself and get on the same page, and it must do so without the drug of winning providing the easy path.
Important Point No. 4: The Texas fan-base is no different than anyone else
What is happening right now to the Longhorns program isn't some sort of anomaly in college football.
Alabama has gone through it. USC has gone through it. Michigan is going through it right now. Hell, let's not even bring Notre Dame into the discussion because it's never-ending at that place.
There seems to be a feeling that when the Longhorns lose, Texas fans (especially those on Orangebloods.com) somehow act in a way that makes them unique in the art-form known as college fan-base meltdowns.
Those of you on this board are here because of your passion for Longhorn football and you've been put through an absolute ringer the last five years, starting with the Colt McCoy injury in the national title game, and what you see in terms of meltdowns is exactly what would happen if it occurred at any other program with expectations for greatness at all times.
Orangeloods doesn't have the worst board and you guys aren't the worst fans.
This is just what it looks like when a program of this magnitude goes through more than a half-decade of hoping for a drink while wandering in the desert.
Cut yourself some slack because you guys really do deserve a huge and some free therapy.
Important Point No. 5: Understand what the rest of this season is … a step in the process
You notice my lack of meltdowns over the Dallas Cowboys lately?
It's because my expectations for right now are so low that nothing that team fails to do on the field can surprise me. It's just not a good team and playing 2/7 off-suit in every hand of a high stakes game of poker is going to leave you some nights without a smile.
This Texas team is playing football right now with two hands tied behind its back, which is what happens when you have one of the worst quarterback and offensive line situations in the entire nation.
Winning a lot of games should not be expected at this point, which means the focus should probably be on growth taking place in small doses. What needs to happen from here is that this team needs to be taking strides and steps forward in the areas of concern. By the end of the season, if a number of young, returning players start to emerge and see the light, the season will not be for not.
Every single piece of your thought process in my mind should be focused on 2015 because I don't think you can judge the Strong program until he's had two full off-seasons and a recruiting class of his own with which he can start to rebuild.
Also, just a piece of advice …
If game-day meltdowns, especially those in the wee hours of the night, drive you crazy, just follow my tried and true experience.
Just stay away from the board until noon on Sunday because that's usually the time that folks start to sober up and common sense starts to kick in at least a little.
Ok, I'm done.
This post was edited on 9/12 9:16 PM by Suchomel
