Huge news. Sark is the new coach at Texas and Tom Herman is fired. View: https://twitter.com/chipbrown247/status/1345410210320576514?s=21
Texas Football: Tom Herman Out, Steve Sarkisian In
- Thread starter RedOctober3829
- Start date
Happy new year!
I am no fan of Sarkisian but maybe he won’t suck*.
* He will. He did at USC. What the fuck?
I am no fan of Sarkisian but maybe he won’t suck*.
* He will. He did at USC. What the fuck?
I am absolutely gobsmacked at this. I was all for getting rid of Herman; not sure what to think of Sarkisian.
So what happened with Urban? He couldn't handle the stress? They couldn't back up the truck enough?
Money wasn’t the issue. He apparently was concerned about his health and the year-round stress of college football, including having to deal with our absolutely bonkers big-money donors (the tail wags the dog at Texas). He also as, it seems, expressed interest in the NFL and wanted to keep his options open.
Source/tweet?
EDIT - This is the tweet I found. Seems like more than speculation and less than a firm report, but your post suggests he definitely turned the job down.
View: https://twitter.com/davidpollack47/status/1345428315419631616?s=21
If this is true it is a perfect representation of what an unholy mess the football program is. They have screwed up every head coaching hiring process since the regents forced coach Royal out in 1976. Every single one. Royal wanted Mike Campbell to succeed him so the regents picked Fred to spite Royal. No one really wanted McWilliams but everyone’s emotions ran wild. John Mackovic anyone? Gary Barnett was the next leading candidate until Mack fell into our lap. Then Strong and Herman. What a disaster.
My post is about the HC hiring process. Yes we are all thankful for Mack. The point is that it was supposed to be Gary Barnett due to an absolute clown show of a search process that the big-money donors force down the AD’s throat every damn time.
KW, canderson, or anyone else -- do you belong to a UT message board? And/or who are your favorite sources/Twitter follows?
I don’t do UT boards but follow some Inside Texas guys. But I know reporters in Austin and a few athletic department sources (but just in the comms area so not a ton of dirt unfortunately).
I don't think Texas is more desirable than OSU as a spot these days, and he walked away from the latter. Unless significant health/personal changes happen, he's not coming back for anything short of the NFL.
Agreed with Canderson that the Inside Texas guys are good for more of the administration/actual football stuff and were ahead of the game for the coaching search, as far as recruiting goes The Football Brainiacs have been the best in my opinion. Of course this changes with every new coaching staff as sources shift etc.
As far as the hire goes, it's very whelming. Herman clearly needed to go given that he had lost booster support over the Eyes, lost way too many winnable games, and recruiting was about to fall off of a cliff. Sark is clearly going to come in with a much better staff around him than Herman's Houston buddies and has experience at the closest comparable school to UT. I don't think we'll go below 7 wins ever, but we'll see if we can actually make the step to double digit wins and fighting for games that matter.
I use Surly for the freely posted premium info, but the football board is incredibly craptacular. The recruiting board is a lot more sane when active (see: not the past 3 months).
Agree. It is super fast moving with not a lot of thought in most posts, but at least it’s not orangebloods.com. Almost no one on Surly claims real insider information.
People on here were giddy about Herman’s hiring when Strong was fired.
Edit: I checked the old thread and I was wrong. The Longhorn fans here were skeptical from the beginning.
Edit: I checked the old thread and I was wrong. The Longhorn fans here were skeptical from the beginning.
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Seriously. If he hadn't already been bleeding recruits like a hemophiliac, Bijan's performance in the bowl game alone would have proved that his lack of use this season (and wasting of a year of eligibility) would have been a fireable offense all its own.
But hey, at least he let Keontay "I'm gonna tease my intent to transfer midseason" Ingram lose the TCU game for him.
Probably the best natty game ever. Incredible.
I don't know the ins and outs of Texas football, but Sarkisian doesn't seem the answer. He wasn't great at another recruiting powerhouse. What will be different. But at least he didn't get left at the airport I guess.
I presume the alcoholism that plagued his USC tenure is now under control? Good news if he’s been able to clean himself up. Think I remember reading that it basically cost him his wife.
Herman clearly wasn’t the answer. Just an underwhelming coach in almost all facets. Better off at a place like Houston.
Herman clearly wasn’t the answer. Just an underwhelming coach in almost all facets. Better off at a place like Houston.
The school isn’t paying for it. He’ll be on an associate professor’s salary (or something like that) from the university, making him an official university employee. The Longhorn Foundation, funded entirely from outside donation, pays the real money.
Yeah - more a general gripe about college
sports. But UT did lay off people recently.
https://www.si.com/college/2021/01/02/texas-firing-tom-herman-hypocrisy
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that collegiate athletics are about student athletes, actually have a meaningful connection to the institution, and are amateur.
True, but somewhere along the line they'll still cut other things because of this.
All of this was actually true for me. Granted, I played on the golf team and not football or basketball, but still.
Sorry, you're right. I meant football and basketball.
I used to be a huge college football fan, for Texas, but these kids are being taken advantage of, and the institution -- the people at the bottom -- are being shorted however much the bond issue for DRK expansion is.
Post-hiring of his full staff I'm more bullish on Sark than I was right after it was announced. I'm at about an A/A- for the full staff, bit lower for the process. It felt like we didn't seem to know what was going to happen with Gideon as far as role between possibly hiring him for Muschamp and not knowing Banks was in play which may have taken a ST coordinator title from him (which isn't a big deal and he can obviously still contribute there). The Mike Stoops situation was a fuckup I put more at the feet of CDC for needing to be the person who understood the big picture and puts it down immediately. With the safe assumption it was boosters who got in his ear immediately about Stoops it may be one of the first time their meddling resulted in a positive action. Overall really happy with the staff, hopefully they're able to get a few immediate contributors in free agency from the portal.
You're just talking about the south end zone expansion. Even just on this latest round, UT is taking on $50 million in revenue bonds for it. UT claims these will be paid off from athletic revenue, but there's an opportunity cost to the institution for giving this money away to finance the construction. Even though it's not taxpayer/tuition money directly, it's still a significant liability born by Board of Regents credit, and it's still $50 million that is coming from the university (the definition of opportunity cost). This is a purely business decision furthering a decades-long trend in building a de-facto pro sports franchise. It's certainly not about the mission of the university.
I can't find the financing info for previous expansions, but I'm sure a large chunk of the following have been financed publicly:
-1997-1999 expansion (suites, upper deck added, track removed)
-North end zone expansion (2007-2008; $149.9 million)
- Football academic center ($2009; $27 million)
