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Texas AD Chris Del Conte


Machinator

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On 4/3/2021 at 10:30 AM, orangecat92 said:

I am very happy to be here to take the L.  True, I am the guy who thought there was a real chance Shaka would be extended, in large part because he was already extended with mediocre results before, by who? CDC.  CDC has officially turned the dept. around with the two big hires.  He is not done, imo, until two things happen:

1. ALL coaches employed by Texas  know and buy in 100% that there is accountability....he’s almost there already.

2. Plonsky is no longer associated with the University of Texas.  This is a very low priority item in my view.  fearless forecast from faraway is she retires before Moody opens.  

A huge bonus item would be doing something to fix the LHN.  I haven’t seen it in years, but all I read here is that the programming sucks.  

It is still kind of hard to believe that CDC may have fixed both football and basketball fo4 the next 10 years.  

I'm all for getting rid of Plonsky and have railed in the past about her being a cancer in the department. But #2 is a dumb demand at this point as CDC has very effectively moved her into a role of irrelevance. She is no longer in a position to fuck things up in any significant way.

 

On 4/3/2021 at 10:53 AM, orangecat92 said:

Ok, I got it backwards, CDC extended Herman.  

The extension for Herman was Fenves' call, not CDC's.  But, you know, just keep on ahead if you want to continue to cling to reasons to shit on CDC.

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On 4/3/2021 at 11:53 AM, cafe society said:

Should that be plural?  I thought Fenves was the one who extended Herman over CDC's objection.

There was actually a news report, long after the fact, that indicated the Fenves and outside interests strongly encouraged that extension.

That would make sense, because Perrin's extension of Shaka probably didn't originate with Perrin, either.  I'm not sure Perrin was AD-astute enough to consider and effect an extension sua-sponte.  Meaning, I'd guess at most he went around among people and said, "hey, conventional wisdom is you give a new, successful coach an extension to help with recruiting and as a general performance reward, whaddaya think."

I don't think we really know.  But I think CDC is too savvy to have just blindly extended Herman without someone suggesting strongly that he do so.

Also, I suspect CDC may have wanted to go harder on the bloat, but figured out that there were some politics involved.  Texas' Title IX crew is pretty OG and knows where bodies are buried and how to raise a stink.  So some of that bloat is going to have to go by attrition rather than termination, etc.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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17 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

There was actually a news report, long after the fact, that indicated the Fenves and outside interests strongly encouraged that extension.

That would make sense, because Perrin's extension of Shaka probably didn't originate with Perrin, either.  I'm not sure Perrin was AD-astute enough to consider and effect an extension sua-sponte.  Meaning, I'd guess at most he went around among people and said, "hey, conventional wisdom is you give a new, successful coach an extension to help with recruiting and as a general performance reward, whaddaya think."

I don't think we really know.  But I think CDC is too savvy to have just blindly extended Herman without someone suggesting strongly that he do so.

Also, I suspect CDC may have wanted to go harder on the bloat, but figured out that there were some politics involved.  Texas' Title IX crew is pretty OG and knows where bodies are buried and how to raise a stink.  So some of that bloat is going to have to go by attrition rather than termination, etc.

Also, I'm not singling out the women's side for bloat criticism, it's just an example.  There are probably a lot of long-time, outlived-their-usefulness AD employees that are inclined to raise a stink (and have the ammo to do so) if too abruptly terminated.

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This week's FCB weekly "insider" is an ode to the triumvirate, particularly CDC and Eltife. Most noteworthy thing is that (take it or leave it) Eltife is supposedly the originator of the Sarkisian idea.

Spoiler

Want to know how a college athletics superpower like Texas loses its way? Lack of leadership. Lack of communication. Losing sight of the mission because of individual agendas.

Want to know how a college athletics superpower like Texas gets back on track and ends a decade-plus of mediocrity in its major sports?

Strong, connected leadership. Vision. Communication. Staying transfixed on the mission. No individual agendas.

If 2013 was the low point of Texas turning on itself in a desperate attempt to hang on or reclaim its success in the first decade of the 2000s - the Golden Age of Longhorns’ athletics - then there’s a good chance we’ll look back at 2021 as the point when UT athletics regained its mojo.

Within a four-month span during a global pandemic, Texas has made seismic, multi-million-dollar decisions on the direction of the Longhorns’ football and men’s basketball programs thanks to the bold, connected leadership of athletic director Chris Del Conte, school president Jay Hartzell and UT board of regents chairman Kevin Eltife.

They’ve spent so much time calling and texting one another over the past six months, they could put their phones on a family plan. But that’s what it takes to make the decision to spend $25 million in buyout money just to start the process of hiring a new football coach and then invest another $54 million in contracts for Steve Sarkisian and his staff.

That’s what it takes to make a $35 million commitment for seven years to hire one of the top college basketball coaches in Chris Beard, a UT graduate, and provide a pool of money for staff salaries that allows Beard to go hire two sitting head coaches (Rodney Terry and Chris Ogden), one of the top assistants at Kansas (Jerrance Howard) as well as one of the top, young assistants at Texas Tech (Ulric Maligi) to help reach a goal of a national title.

“It was obvious from my first conversation with Chris Del Conte that everyone on the University of Texas leadership team was on the same page,” Beard told Horns247. “From CDC to president Hartzell to chairman Eltife, they are all in sync and working to achieve excellence in every area of the university.

“There’s no question that unified mindset and their shared vision of a championship-level program was a huge key in my decision.”

That unified mindset and shared vision of championship-level programs are also what it took a year ago to invest in a seven-year, $13.8 million guaranteed contract for a new women’s basketball coach. And one year later, Vic Schaefer took a sixth-seeded team in the NCAA Tournament (with only two players he recruited) to UT’s first Elite Eight since 2016. And one of the top recruiting classes in the country will be joining Schaefer’s program this summer.

These coaching decisions make or break an athletic department. They are enormous.

They are even more complex during a pandemic when universities across the country are having to cut salaries and staff to survive shortfalls.

But in Del Conte, Texas has one of the best, most respected athletic directors in the country, who got his start in the Pac-12 but turned down USC twice in 2019. Why? Because he was still in the early stages of a vision for Texas athletics that included $640 million in facility upgrades.

Already completed are the Longhorn Hall of Fame (in the north end of DKR), indoor facilities for baseball and softball, an outdoor pool for swimming and diving, and new locker rooms for soccer and track.

This fall, Texas will debut a $200 million renovation of the south end of Royal-Memorial stadium, and next March will be the grand opening of the $388 million Moody Center, which will house UT basketball games starting with the 2022-23 season, as well as a new, $60 million basketball (and rowing) practice facility adjacent to the Moody Center.

In Hartzell and Eltife, Texas has two savvy, business-minded leaders who have figured out the best way to navigate the political red tape of higher education is to be brutally honest and transparent. They also know about investing for the future.

“It probably doesn’t hurt that two people who are graduates from the UT business school are making decisions about how to invest in athletics, in support of our athletic director’s plans and vision,” said Hartzell, who earned his Ph.D. in finance from Texas and is the former dean of the McCombs School of Business, while Eltife graduated from UT with a degree in business administration.

“We get the return on investment in a very broad sense,” Hartzell said.

In order to make the financial investments Texas is making in athletics, you have to have the blessing of the nine-member board of regents.

In particular, you have to have bold leadership from the regents chair, the role in which Eltife has served since Dec. 20, 2018, after being appointed to the board by Gov. Greg Abbott in January 2017.

Eltife is a self-made millionaire in commercial real estate who was raised by a single mother with his older brother and older sister after his father died of a heart attack at age 39, when Eltife was about to turn 2-years-old.

But his mother, Mollie, who never remarried and raised three children in Tyler while working, always believed in serving others, especially those less fortunate.

Eltife mirrored his mother’s work ethic in building his commercial real estate company - Eltife Properties - and also mirrored her desire to serve others by running for office. He served on the Tyler city council before winning two terms as the mayor of Tyler and then was elected to the Texas Senate, where he held office from 2004-16 and chaired the Senate Business and Commerce Committee.

Talk to those at the Capitol who worked with Eltife, and they describe him the same way: problem solver.

“Kevin’s a consensus builder and a leader among leaders,” said Texas Sen. John Whitmire, the dean of the Texas Senate who served with Eltife. “He’s a can-do guy and wants to get things done.

“He’ll listen to everybody, take in all the information and build a consensus or make a tough call.”

Whitmire said Eltife was always in the middle of the biggest issues facing the Legislature, trying to find solutions and is still someone Whitmire calls on for advice.

“Every time Texas has had to come up with a new coach, I think, ‘I bet Kevin was in the middle of that,’” Whitmire said.

“Some people in leadership positions really don’t want to lead at crunch time. They just like having a title. Kevin leads. Those are the situations he thrives in, because if there’s a big decision to be made, he takes a broad perspective on things, reads people well, gets all the information and isn’t afraid to make a decision.”

After Urban Meyer decided college football wasn’t his thing any longer, it was Eltife who said, “I like Sark,” and Del Conte and Hartzell agreed.

Tom Spilman, the 29-year president of the Wholesale Beer Distributors of Texas, butted heads with Eltife on dozens of pieces of legislation while Eltife was in the Senate. Yet Spilman said he has nothing but respect for Eltife because of how hard Eltife worked to reach deals that often involved compromises on both sides.

“Kevin Eltife is obviously extremely bright,” Spilman said. “But Senator Eltife was always a great communicator, even when he wasn’t backing your bill. And most importantly, he was the best at bringing opposing groups together to solve some of the state’s most complex and difficult problems.”

Abbott saw Eltife’s problem-solving skills in the Senate and gave Eltife one of the governor’s coveted appointments - to the UT board of regents - which had been bogged down with political infighting in the final years of Rick Perry’s 15-year tenure as governor, which ended in January 2015.

In the fall of 2013, legendary UT athletic director DeLoss Dodds retired after 32 years years on the job. Dodds’ run included a Golden Decade for UT athletics from 2000-09 in which the Longhorns won a football national title in 2005 and played for another in 2009; reached the Final Four in men’s and women’s basketball in 2003; won national titles in baseball (2002, 2005) and swimming (2000, 2001, 2002) and reached three College World Series in softball with Olympic gold medal winner Cat Osterman (2003, 2005, 2006).

All that success caused Texas to become the centerpiece of realignment in 2010 and, ultimately, led to an unprecedented, never-to-be-seen-again, 20-year, $300 million deal from ESPN to create the Longhorn Network. That deal was done by ABC/ESPN with the sole purpose of keeping Texas in the Big 12 (an ABC/ESPN property) and to keep UT from joining the Pac-12 (which had more ties to Fox at the time).

But when Dodds retired in October of 2013, with Powers at the tail end of his time as UT president, it created a breakdown in leadership that led to the disastrous, 22-month tenure of Steve Patterson as athletic director and to the ugly firings of Brown, Barnes and, ultimately, legendary baseball coach Augie Garrido.

Texas appears to be finally coming out of that fog with the hires the Longhorns have made in their major sports and across the board (Mike White as softball coach and Edrick Floreal as track coach).

Texas athletics hasn’t been this aligned with The Tower and the board of regents since Dodds hired Mack Brown as football coach on Dec. 4, 1997, and then hired Rick Barnes as basketball coach in April 1998 - a four-month span - just like hires of Sarkisian on Jan. 2, 2021, with the hire of Beard coming on April 1, 2021.

“The keys are that we are all aligned on goals - excellence, supporting the student-athletes and winning,” Hartzell told Horns247 of his relationship with Del Conte and Eltife.

“We bring different things to the table and respect what each brings. We can debate and argue behind closed doors until we find a way forward. And then we all get behind the way forward once we emerge together.

“We’ve worked with chairman Eltife early in the processes of hiring coaches and throughout, and he’s been supportive and helpful, because he’s very savvy and smart.”

Del Conte said for an athletic department to be successful, the school president and regents board chairman have to share the same vision as the athletic director.

“To me it’s critically important to be aligned with the president and the board of regents,” Del Conte said. “It starts with communication. I cherish the relationship I’ve had with Jay Hartzell since he was the dean of the business school and with Chairman Eltife.

“No decision is ever made in a vacuum. You talk about pros and cons regarding any major decision - with financial ramifications or no matter what it is - you want to talk to your leadership.

“The great thing with president Hartzell and chairman Eltife is we can have a discussion about the ramifications of a major decision, and I cherish their views, because they come from a different standpoint than I do. I mean, they trust me to do my job, but they may point out something, and we’ll talk about it. We may even disagree. But we always emerge from a meeting with consensus, and that’s what you want. We all have great respect for each other.”

Added Eltife, “Jay Hartzell and Chris Del Conte are both the best in class, and we are lucky to have them.”

Eltife said because he had been in so many discussions with Hartzell and Del Conte about how the university would proceed under COVID-19 protocols the past year that by the time it came to hiring new coaches, “We worked pretty damn well together.”

And Texas faithful should be happy for that.

 

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Scipio Tex with a piece about how we're finally going all-in (or as close as modern-day UT ever will) on winning:

Spoiler

Right now, the University of Texas is funding, staffing, and resourcing its revenue sports in a coherent, considered, and rational way. It’s long overdue. It’s an attempt to shape and define the market rather than just react to it. An attitude we’ll be very pleased to have cultivated when conference realignment comes along.

Look at the resources that have been made available to football and basketball, despite the cash crunch of COVID-19 and donors irritated with a decade of wasted money on non-performers.

By pursuing this strategy, Texas has the best chance to maximize profits and then strengthen the entire sports portfolio.

To put it bluntly, Texas can cut checks for excellence in the non-revenue sports, where money whipping the best available proven coach is already proving out. See women’s basketball, softball. That can only happen and be sustained with thriving men’s football and basketball. If baseball can get itself to revenue neutral (or even make a slight profit), all the better.

The reciprocal effect is that the overall Longhorn brand is bolstered and we can get back to seeing covers like this again.

image.png

And I’ll start seeing random teenagers in Newark and Los Angeles sporting Texas gear again.

Texas may not get the full impact of a Flutie Effect as it’s not exactly a secret, but every generation begins its knowledge of the college landscape anew. TJ Ford and Vince Young are vague concepts for today’s 16 year olds. Beyond national perception and its effects on student applicants and national viewership, any academic will tell you that fundraising for their projects is a hell of a lot easier when the front porch of the University is the envy of the neighborhood.

While Texas will have to eat Tom Herman’s buyout (or some of it - we’ll see) due to an inopportune extension, they were able to show Shaka Smart that there are still schools who think he can coach. Why return and dispel that notion? Fear likely did the work of reason there, but be glad for it.

So what is the investment? Shaka and Tom were paid a lot. So was Charlie. Does it matter that we also paid SarkBeard handsomely?

More than the head coach’s salary, which grabs the headlines, Texas is investing in total infrastructure. Both personnel and material. Facilities, support staff, developmental staff, analysts, and assistants. Typically, Texas has done a good job of supporting one arm, while neglecting the other. Our right arm looks like prime Arnold, the other is a withered T-Rex. When facilities are being upgraded, staff is neglected. When staff gets a rise, facilities degrade.

What can Texas achieve when both align? We’re about to find out.

Stadium expansion, new locker rooms, weight room, a bubble revamp. A new basketball arena. The basketball practice facility is already outstanding. And then there’s personnel....

While Texas has not been shy in paying a star coordinator (Will Muschamp, Todd Orlando LOL), a broad commitment to support staff has not been there. Some of that is a function of the broader Athletic Department or administration being incapable of differentiating revenue producing investments from nonsense, but a good deal of that has to do with head coaches not getting it and pushing for reasons of ignorance, ego, or a lack of vision and understanding of process. Each of these descriptives apply in part to Charlie Strong, Tom Herman, and Shaka Smart. Some of those coaches feared strong staff voices that might compete with them and thus threatened their ego, some were simply clueless, and others struggled to lead or set vision altogether.

Under Steve Sarkisian, we have a TE coach making 1 million dollars per year. Now that investment comes with subtle benefits, like Pole Assassins, charismatic monkeys, a potential for excellent special teams, and elite rainmaking recruiting, but that salary at that position would have been an impossible sell just two years ago, much less ten. Recent prior Longhorn tight end coaches? Bruce Chambers, Derek Warehime, Corby Meekins. Need I go on? We haven’t had a dude there since Tim Brewster. And our current dude spends all of his free time in Vegas with a diapered monkey. That’s the kind of value add I’m looking for. Want Pete Kwiatkowski? OK. Done. What else? Analysts? Let’s wait for college and NFL firing season to finish and we’ll build out the roster. More recruiting support staff? Done.

Chris Beard is building out a staff of outstanding bench coaches and recruiters, but cleverly supplementing them with pure developmental coaches who will do nothing but work with players on their games and scout out international prospects. Acquire talent, develop talent individually, teach talent the team game. This is the NBA model and it’s how they’re able to transform unskilled collegians into passable basketball players. What if we start that process at age 18? Maybe we can play tough and skilled basketball.

With all of these resources coming online, a coaching catalyst is still required.

It’s also incumbent upon the coaches and AD to enforce a vitality curve on their owns staff and with players. I don’t see complacency as a Beard problem and and I doubt it for Sark. Comfort breeds complacency and weakness. So it’s important that these resources be performance-centered - not “you’re a special snowflake” privileges. Our love comes with a price.

Read Gerry’s post. These are strategic hires and Beard is building a blend of old salts who can teach the game and scout its international nooks and crannies (Donewald) with young risers we’ll saddle for two to three years and replace with comparable juice (Maligi). Chris Ogden - a head coach in his own right - can run an entire practice or phase of the team. And there’s more on the way.

So what if these investments don’t pan?

No bet is sure. Not Sark. Not Beard.

Well, now it’s in the budget. That’s an important step in any bureaucracy. And unless you’re one of the Texas fans receiving a dividend payout from your investment in Texas Sports Inc (you’re not as it does not exist) then you’d rather have money going to tangible things that benefit Texas athletics rather than Bellmont bloat and aimless capital projects. That revenue is getting zeroed out. This is about how we distribute it to best enable wins, titles, and crushing our enemies.

Crucially, no Texas revenue or non-revenue sports coach can say or even intimate they failed for lack of resources. Simply point to the budget for personnel and walk through the new facilities. Failure is not an us problem. It will be a you problem. Every prospective hire knows who didn’t carry their end of the bargain. Then you feed the next one into the machine and hope they can get to home starting from 3rd base.

Texas with momentum is a fearsome thing to behold. A boulder on greased ball bearings. Right now, we just need our revenue sports to shake off the inertia and let physics do the rest.

 

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On 4/1/2021 at 3:50 PM, PencilPusher said:

I haven't waded into the CDC discussion and obviously the football hiring circus was just that-a circus (which is why we are even entertaining this discussion), but given that the AD at Texas (and most places) is effectively the CEO of the athletic department, I'd evaluate him on managing 2 areas, the front of the house (product) and the back of the house (administration). Primary goals as follows:

For athletics administration, the goals are simple. Keep the money train humming and keep the department well in the black, raise capital for big projects as needed, don't add too much bloat-in fact get rid of it as needed, and don't fuck up the small stuff that annoys boosters and other stakeholders. Administration should help, not hurt your cause. Think for the most part, CDC is checking the boxes here though I suspect there are still a lot of things that could be done to improve.

For the end product, the goals should be as follows:

  • The absolute floor for performance should be to have the best program in the entire state for each and every sport we participate in. We're the best public university in the state bar none and should have all aspects of the University follow suit. That doesn't mean the best team every year but if someone says..who is the best women's soccer program in the state, the immediate answer should be Texas without anyone having to think about it. If we ain't there, we got a problem and the AD should be on the path to fix it.
  • Win conference championships about 50% of the time. Especially in the conference we are in, this shouldn't be a difficult goal to achieve. Again, take care of step 1 above, Step 2 is a little easier to accomplish.
  • Be in the hunt/discussion for national championships frequently. We should never miss a championship tournament in the sports that play them, at or near the top of the leaderboard in sports like swimming and track, and should always be in or around the discussion of the CFP annually.

CDC's grade here is an "incomplete" so far, but given that we've turned over most of the "problem" areas over the last 3 years, we should have a good answer in the next few years. Early returns in things like softball and women's basketball are promising, but initial success does not a program make.

That's how I'll evaluate CDC. Overall, I think things are going the right way, but we need to get FB and MBB back in the right direction-those clearly atrophied during the chaotic transition from Powers/Dodds to Hartzell/CDC which casts a pall on everything else.

 

So is this a qualified or unqualified opinion?  

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On 4/3/2021 at 8:27 AM, Machinator said:

 

Another observation is that CDC must’ve ordered his coffee with double cream and sugar before Beard. I bet that was awkward when Beard said, “Naw...I like mine black.”

Edit:  The just like my players line is lame. 

Edited by ImissWallyPryor
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Outside of hiring new coaches and raising money, I think a major part of CDC’s job is just keeping the fans and donors happy and proud. He gets an A as far as I’m concerned. Steve Patterson almost destroyed Texas athletics with his changes, arrogance and ego, and wanting the department to run like a pro team, in turn it pissed off everyone. What a major disaster that’s taken years to correct. 

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1 hour ago, Brandywine said:

Outside of hiring new coaches and raising money, I think a major part of CDC’s job is just keeping the fans and donors happy and proud. He gets an A as far as I’m concerned. Steve Patterson almost destroyed Texas athletics with his changes, arrogance and ego, and wanting the department to run like a pro team, in turn it pissed off everyone. What a major disaster that’s taken years to correct. 

That's about where I am at.

Although I think most of us on Surly could have improved everything after Patterson.

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I can't help but get excited about the changes that are taking place in our athletic department. Several sports have already returned to dominance and we are well positioned with the two that matter to most of our fans. You have to wonder if we are at the cusp of a similar decade as the 2020. Time for someone to start a new thread to discuss "Texas Athletics Return to Glory" or something similar perhaps? Show me a fucking loss! Hook'em everyone!

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10 minutes ago, ShowMeALoss said:

I can't help but get excited about the changes that are taking place in our athletic department. Several sports have already returned to dominance and we are well positioned with the two that matter to most of our fans. You have to wonder if we are at the cusp of a similar decade as the 2020. Time for someone to start a new thread to discuss "Texas Athletics Return to Glory" or something similar perhaps? Show me a fucking loss! Hook'em everyone!

Our worst decade started with a shoulder injury and concluded with a shoulder injury. We have come full circle, now is the time to shine and return to our normal years. 1990s and 2010s, obviously not included.

 

LETS GET THIS BREAD!

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