I am sure I will get beat up over this, and this will be the only and last post I ever make on here. You want to blame the coaches. Easy enough. You want to blame the staff. Easy enough. You want to blame the University. Easy enough. Here is what I blame.....the kids that are on the field, with the exception of just one, Sam Ehlinger. He stayed on the field for the "Eyes of Texas", the only one, the only one that cares about this university as much as I do. Bring in Saben, Bring in Urban. Mack Brown is a good coach, just look at what he has done with UNC. Yet we dumped him. I have seen nobody since Colt, that has come here to play because he loves this university more than anything else. No one! Sam can't keep someone from holding. Sam can't keep someone from illegal motion. Does Sam have some errors? Yes. That interception at the end of yesterday's game was disheartening. I actually feel for the kid. But the coaches don't coach interceptions. The coaches don't coach offsides. The coaches don't coach holding. The coaches don't coach blocks in the back. The Texas team, since 2006 has been full of recruits that feel entitled to be at Texas, and that they should be winning no matter what. Doesn't matter the coach. Maybe we should just recruit 2-3 stars so that they shine because they are proud to be part of something that they wouldn't normally be a part of. Fu*k recruiting stars. Maybe if we just recruited players that actually wanted to be here, and didn't have egos of NFL players, we could play some damn football. This is an entitled team, not because or the coaching, but because of the prestige at playing at Texas. They expect to win, not play to win. You can reply if you want. I won't say anything further. I blame the kids, not the coaches.
OP--- good post and it should not be your last.
Please allow me to respectfully retort.
Yes-- I agree with the spirit of your post. We DO have entitled kids. One walk around the locker room, weight room, medical treatment facility, meeting rooms etc-- and you will see a brand of luxury usually reserved for Saudi Princes. When your locker has its own big screen TV and patented LED light system specifically created for this locker room-- you know you're spoiled. I won't even compare the facilities now to the facilities when I was there-- and don't kid yourself, everything we had 25 years ago was first class-- but now, it's opulence. Sheer opulence.
I have been fortunate enough to have stayed in some of the most posh hotels all over the world. The accommodations we have provided for our athletes rivals ANY five star hotel I've ever entered.
But here's the problem--- Bama has some pretty posh digs as well. So does aggy. Ohio state's facilities are insane. LSU players have BEDS in their locker. Each kid has a chase lounge to SLEEP on---- in their locker!
Other cushy places exist and at many of those cushy places-- kids win.
So let's back away a bit from the spoiled part.
Many of our kids played at schools that had teammates that went on to other universities. Westlake has produced Superbowl winning QBs-- Foles/Brees and Brees will be in the NFL HOF one day-- book it. Sam came from this school. But literally right next door is Lake Travis. Baker Mayfield, Garret Gilbert, Charlie and Michael brewer-- all came from this school. Some of these kids are entitled and some aren't-- and they all didn't go to the same university.
So we've backed away from kids being spoiled and we've backed a bit away from entitled athletes-- so what other factors can there be?
There's an old saying that "attitude reflects leadership". This is the case in Austin. There is and has been for quite some time, an attitude in Austin that is different than most cities. I remember when Austin was still a relative cow town. 183 and mopac were only concrete pillars with a two lane road running alongside in the shadows of the massive thoroughfare being built. Empty fields surrounded this construction. People traveled to Austin from far away exclaiming how "cool" Austin was. Those of us living there didn't see Austin as that cool. It was just "Austin" to us. We weren't trying to be cool, trendy, different. We were just being "us".
Then the floods came. The hoards of people descending upon Austin scrambling feverishly to stamp their own brand of "cool" on the town to make their mark. People started trying to BE cool. They went out of their way to break the social norms in an attempt to set trends, buck the system, make a ripple, stand out and create their own culture.
In short--- people started trying to BE COOL. And like Steve McQueen said, "if you have to try to be cool, you're not fvcking cool."
The climate of Austin changed and along with it, the personality of the VERY pliable kids on our team started to change. During this change of cultural climate, our kids (who can get into any venue in Austin because they are football players) were drawn into this ultra progressive soup that was being made. It slowly began to poison our well. Let's look at this for a second---
There are schools located in larger metro areas. University of Houston comes to mind. But are their any BLUE BLOOD programs located in large metro areas?
Bama?
OU?
Michigan?
Ohio State?
Notre Dame?
Nope. None of them are. USC could be your only blue blood program located in a major metro area-- and how has USC been doing the last 10 years?
Let's look at who is winning these days.
Bama- college town
LSU-- small city
Ohio st--- small city
Clemson--- college town
OU-- South of a city but in a college town.
Do you see where I'm going with this? Kids in college towns and small cities can be insulated from outside influences to a certain extent. Kids in a major metropolitan area, are more susceptible to these social influences that can become distracting and detrimental to a program.
Now, who's responsibility is it to limit these distractions and regulate what these kids are exposed to and who influence them?
The coaching staff.
And the staff is doing a terrible job of this.
Now let's address the poor discipline. See above. Kids that allow others around them to influence them negatively have poor discipline. Period. End of discussion.
Now let's address the staff.
Our coaches can coach. You put Herman at a non-power 5 school and that guy is going to win you 9-10 games every year and get you to a mid tier bowl game like clock work. But because of the CLIMATE in Austin, both political and social, Herman and his staff lack the tools to turn this tide back to the pre-2005 days. When you start handing out sideline passes to Hollywood stars and musical celebrities, you're setting a tone for your kids that they are "better" than everyone else. If they weren't, then why are Oscar winners hanging with them and sucking their ass---- "I must be important cause this dude with an Oscar thinks I'm the sh!t" .......... And that's how it keeps the train rolling. And Tom Herman is just as goo goo over singers and stars as his kids are. You think Nick Saban gives a sh!t about an Oscar or a grammy or a stupid ass rap album? He doesn't.
Tom is fighting an uphill battle that he doesn't have the chops to over come. Tom can't ban the kids from our state of the art weight room and banish them to the sh!t hole weight room under the stadium where there's no air conditioning and no juice/smoothie bar with a barista. The kids won't do it because they know deep down that even if they make that sacrifice, Tom can't get them to the promise land.
But they'd do it in a heart beat for Saban. They'd do it for Dabo. And they'd do it for Urban.
Urban has the chops to get the culture of Austin out of the locker room. He can convince kids to stop worrying about social justice issues that in the grand scheme of things, matter little. I'm hearing now that people with a platform are supposed to stand up for what THEY perceive to be "righteous". The problem is, the platform these kids have was GIVEN to them by those that came before them. Nobody would care what a player from a 7-5 team in a tiny little college had to say.
But a BLUE BLOOD program located in a major metropolitan area in one of the most progressive cities in the world creates a platform for kids that haven't EARNED that platform to speak their mind and allow the droning masses that have attached to these ideologies to chime in and reinforce their beliefs while aligning with these kids and thus, falsely empowering the kids. (Influenced by outside entities because they have no discipline)
It falls on the staff and the university to curtail that. Tom may WANT to curtail it, but the administration sure as hell doesn't want to curtail it. It fits their narrative.
And Tom doesn't hold enough sway or have enough prestige to tell the administration to suck his chocolate starfish and whip his players back in line. He's got no skins on the wall. He's got no clout. He's a goo goo eyed star fvcker that is just happy to be here.
And that's the root of the problem. When you're just happy to be here, you aren't getting anything done worth a damn.