there is no analogous situation with football, because everything that RT did to “earn” the job came in the postseason. the football equivalent of RT replacing beard would see Texas go from a top 3 team in the polls with the most dominant defense in the country through three weeks (with Texas 3-0), only to see Texas finish 7-4 with one of the lesser defenses in the conference and a berth in the Texas Bowl. bye bye RT.
this is arguably the most frustrating thing about this- 99% of college basketball fans only care about the tourney, which makes up about 1% of the job of a cbb HC- assuming they even make it. on march 9th, 2023 everyone here was on board with the fact that RT wasn’t good enough and that we’d be hiring someone else to take over. three weeks later all of those same people all now believe that we HAVE to hire him, that he “deserves” it, that he’s “earned” it, all because chris beard’s between team played better during their last few weeks together as a team. the irony here is that you have to actually make the tourney for it to matter, and next year when we’re turning down an NIT bid and watching all of the coaches we could have had actually participating in the tourney, i wonder if those fans will still be feeling the same way about RT.