Tom Herman is leaving Texas officials no choice but to pursue Urban Meyer - The Dallas Morning News

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The notion that only a record-setting expenditure — buying out Tom Herman and hiring Urban Meyer — can save football at the University of Texas raises at least one important question. What exactly is Longhorn football supposed to be?

I know what fans think the answer is, but I’m wondering why that doesn’t match with the school’s track record. Given that the school’s 1963 and 1969 pre-integration championships are not terribly relevant today, let’s just look at the past half-century. That’s history enough, isn’t it?

And in that 50-year period, Texas has won as many national championships as Colorado and Tennessee.

So when we talk about what Texas should be able to accomplish with its resources and nation-leading revenues and access to great in-state talent, are we missing the boat? The fact is that the period Mack Brown produced from 2004 through 2009 (a 69-9 record, a national title, two national championship appearances) is the aberration. And yet people want it to be the standard.

Now, none of that is to suggest Herman should keep his job after a fourth season on campus. The standard that he has set can’t produce more than a slogan that reads “Better than Charlie Strong.”

And Herman came up way short Monday in his Zoom news conference when he said the standard at UT should be as follows: “Be in the conversation, competing for conference championships in November and December. We were there two years ago, and this year we came up three points short.”

Somehow I think not being eliminated from the Big 12 title game until late November is marginalizing the goal for a $6 million coach.

Strong had three consecutive losing seasons after replacing Brown, and Herman at his worst has done better than that. Still, a 30-18 overall record and 21-13 in the Big 12 is far from special.

I have been accused of writing nothing but negative things about my alma mater, so let’s inject some pure positive here. If Texas can win its last two games against Kansas State and Kansas, this will be the first time the school hasn’t lost at least four games in a season since Brown’s national title loss to Alabama in 2009.

Technically, I suppose the Longhorns would have to win a bowl game as well, and I can’t say I’ve dug in too deeply on where a 7-3 Texas team may be dispatched in this awkward college season. But three conference losses are just the tip of the problem to many.

In a Twitter poll I posted Monday morning on Herman’s biggest loss in 2020, none of the individual defeats to Oklahoma, Iowa State and TCU gained as many votes as the loss of Southlake quarterback Quinn Ewers (43% of the vote). Ewers decommitted from UT earlier this season and has since cast his lot with — who else — Ohio State.

Tom Herman’s worst loss in 2020 is:

— Tim Cowlishaw (@TimCowlishaw) November 30, 2020

Herman on how recruiting is going: “Those that are committed and those that will be committed understand that we are on our way.”

I think the fact Herman refused all questions about his future tells us more about “the way” things are going in Austin. But the protracted length of this school’s slump since its last national title game appearance is still the inexplicable part of the Texas story to me. Even losing to Alabama, a six-year run that included two Rose Bowl wins (one over USC for the No. 1 ranking), a Fiesta Bowl victory and 69 wins overall should have provided the springboard to extended greatness for this team.

Instead, for over a decade, the Longhorns have not managed anything better than Herman’s 10-4 “we’re baaack” season of 2018. Rather pitiful.

There’s nothing to suggest there’s a better solution than Meyer. I don’t know how valid his health scares remain — the ones that caused him to leave Florida and Ohio State while still riding high in the polls — but if he wants the job, history says he will produce. He won national championships in two places and perhaps did his best work prior to that at Utah, so the man can win anywhere.

And if Meyer wants anyone to make the argument he’s as good a coach for this era as Nick Saban, winning titles at three schools would at least one-up Saban in that department even if he can’t match Nick’s total of six at LSU and Alabama.

People have mentioned the baggage that comes with Meyer. But I think the arrest totals at Florida were far more significant than his overly staunch defense of one assistant coach with serious domestic issues. At least Zach Smith seems to have focused his anger management issues on Herman these days on Twitter.

All I know is that athletic director Chris Del Conte better have the money trucks lined up and everything in place to make this move. Longhorn fans who want Herman out will be greatly disappointed if the answer is anything less than someone who has shown he has the treasure map in his back pocket. A young coach with promise seems like something that has been tried and found sorely lacking in Austin.

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