This is who Steve Sarkisian is.

[BurntOrange&White 39957]

13 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

Again, he had no upperclassman talent at all on last year’s roster (not a single player drafted) and had 2 QBs who were bad and never played before. That’s different than being 5-7 in your third year. I think people still don’t fully accept just how bad that roster was last year. 

Right now, it seems like the team is a bit better than last year’s even with a freshman QB who has done some freshman things. We’ll see how they close this year. My guess is that they’ll split and finish 7-5, which, while not thrilling, isn’t a terrible outcome. If they fall apart and end on another long losing streak, well, Sark will be on the hot seat probably.

I think the off-season and next season will tell us what Sark will be. If he signs a good class, keeps talented players out of the portal, attracts talented players from the portal, and wins 10 games with a more experienced and talented roster, then perhaps he’s not a lost cause. If it’s the same bullshit, where every conference game is a coin flip, then yeah, we’ll know. 

That’s a lot of words to say 5-7, many blown leads, and losing to a bad Kansas team AT home. 
 

 

7-5 in year two is dog shit. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by BurntOrange&White

[lilMAC25 3803]

12 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

Again, he had no upperclassman talent at all on last year’s roster (not a single player drafted) and had 2 QBs who were bad and never played before. That’s different than being 5-7 in your third year. I think people still don’t fully accept just how bad that roster was last year. 

Right now, it seems like the team is a bit better than last year’s even with a freshman QB who has done some freshman things. We’ll see how they close this year. My guess is that they’ll split and finish 7-5, which, while not thrilling, isn’t a terrible outcome. If they fall apart and end on another long losing streak, well, Sark will be on the hot seat probably.

I think the off-season and next season will tell us what Sark will be. If he signs a good class, keeps talented players out of the portal, attracts talented players from the portal, and wins 10 games with a more experienced and talented roster, then perhaps he’s not a lost cause. If it’s the same bullshit, where every conference game is a coin flip, then yeah, we’ll know. 

It’s the part I bolded that is hard for me to expect. 
 

I can (and do) hope (seriously, we SHOULD be on track for that this year, alas…), but I have ZERO expectations of that type of performance by a Sark team over a season’s worth of games.

[Brothahorn 10087]

IMO, part of our problem is that we can't just hire a football coach. He has to be a fancy Dan, smooth operator because 'We are Texas'. 

 

If we ever just hire a 'coach' I suspect we would be where we want to be. 

[Valmy77 13265]

1 hour ago, BurntOrange&White said:

He did that in year 1 lol

I know. But if he is still doing it in year 3, he shouldn't get a year 4.

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

2 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

IMO, part of our problem is that we can't just hire a football coach. He has to be a fancy Dan, smooth operator because 'We are Texas'. 

 

If we ever just hire a 'coach' I suspect we would be where we want to be. 

Mack Brown won a national championship and got us to another.

[Valmy77 13265]

3 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

IMO, part of our problem is that we can't just hire a football coach. He has to be a fancy Dan, smooth operator because 'We are Texas'. 

 

If we ever just hire a 'coach' I suspect we would be where we want to be. 

Yep. Coach Pierce is just a baseball coach, a real pro who can coach the game. Not some fancy superstar.

And it works. We go to the College World Series and win the Big 12 with him. 

The football program could do a lot worse than make hires like that...and does.

[Valmy77 13265]

6 minutes ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Mack Brown won a national championship and got us to another.

And Fred Akers almost won 2 others.

Somehow both guys tanked the program on their way out and the other four hires have been failures. It's weird.

[Hookem2147 21346]

49 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

IMO, part of our problem is that we can't just hire a football coach. He has to be a fancy Dan, smooth operator because 'We are Texas'. 

 

If we ever just hire a 'coach' I suspect we would be where we want to be. 

Wasn’t that what Strong was supposed to be? Put the T back in Texas baby!

[Brothahorn 10087]

1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

Mack Brown won a national championship and got us to another.

I know he was the Tobacco Road Con Man but I always looked at Mack as a football coach first. Once he got here, things changed, maybe. It's blasphemy, but I look over there and see that 7-1 record and cry. Yes, I know his time was up. But we could have tried to get the band back together after Charlie.

[Hookem2147 21346]

26 minutes ago, Brothahorn said:

I know he was the Tobacco Road Con Man but I always looked at Mack as a football coach first. Once he got here, things changed, maybe. It's blasphemy, but I look over there and see that 7-1 record and cry. Yes, I know his time was up. But we could have tried to get the band back together after Charlie.

Your post made me look up UNC and holy crap that schedule.

I guess they at least beat App State though.

[LTtxfan 49329]

6 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

Your post made me look up UNC and holy crap that schedule.   I guess they at least beat App State though.

 

Yeah, that's an ugly schedule... Wake Forest will probably beat UNC, but NC State may have too many injuries to win that last game

 

[Brothahorn 10087]

22 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

Your post made me look up UNC and holy crap that schedule.

I guess they at least beat App State though.

 

10 minutes ago, LTtxfan said:

 

Yeah, that's an ugly schedule... Wake Forest will probably beat UNC, but NC State may have too many injuries to win that last game

 

I'm not going to defend Mack Brown Texas Football Volume 1. He played his self.

 

But few of us would be critiquing our team if we were 7-1 with wins over a spare Tech, overrated OSU and shitty 0u teams. In addition to the usual suspects.

[Loop 1604 227]

5 hours ago, JFKFC said:

How are we trending in conference road games when we lead at halftime? 

[Loop 1604 227]

1 hour ago, LTtxfan said:

 

Yeah, that's an ugly schedule... Wake Forest will probably beat UNC, but NC State may have too many injuries to win that last game

 

Mack is the king of winning close games…

[TXpride 550]

10 hours ago, ATXhorn17 said:

This. If we go that route, we’re in “win at all costs” Baylor territory… Downright irresponsible to put Urban in charge of ~85 18-24 olds… 

Even if Urban’s approach successfully translates to the modern CFB era (which I’m skeptical of), the wins would not outweigh the inevitable scandal and media circus.

We already went that route and he turned us down. I doubt we'll make another run at him, but it's not because we're above it.

[Valmy77 13265]

3 hours ago, Brothahorn said:

 

But few of us would be critiquing our team if we were 7-1 with wins over a spare Tech, overrated OSU and shitty 0u teams. In addition to the usual suspects.

No we wouldn't.

But he wasn't doing that here in his last four seasons. He clearly needed some time off. Or something happened. Something made his program extremely dysfunctional and you could see it happening while 2008 and 2009 were happening, you could see the players coming up after that group were bad. I have no idea what happened or why but whatever it was it seems to have lingered for a very long time. That was my main anxiety in wanting him to be gone because I knew he was doing lasting and permanent damage to the football program and we needed somebody in there quick to do triage. Instead we got Charlie Strong, which was equivalent to bringing in a butcher instead of a medic. 

[Loop 1604 227]

10 hours ago, BurntOrange&White said:

That’s a lot of words to say 5-7, many blown leads, and losing to a bad Kansas team AT home. 
 

 

7-5 in year two is dog shit. 

We could honestly easily go 6-6 or 5-7 again…what the fuck Sark- somehow making me miss Turtle Tom.

If recruiting tanks, he’s done after year 3. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Loop 1604

[lilMAC25 3803]

3 hours ago, Loop 1604 said:

We could honestly easily go 6-6 or 5-7 again…what the fuck Sark- somehow making me miss Turtle Tom.

If recruiting tanks, he’s done after year 3. 

We need a crying reaction.

[Eskimohorn 5642]

Mack is the king of winning close games…

One reason for this is that usually Mack Brown teams have superior players. But he has a conservative system thats risk averse. My sense is that, like Tom Herman, they were lazy and did not put as much into gameplans week to week. And Mack conditioned his teams to counter-punch and weather the storm.

So, you’d see slow starts and then more aggressive play-calling in the 2nd half (like crossing routes, working the middle of the field). By the 4th quarter, Mack Brown teams would be in good position to win the game.

Mack Brown also had Duane Akina. So usually meant a team wouldnt be able to pass their way back into games.

Mack Brown is also fortunate to have some great kickers. And he managed them well.

[closetohumping 17456]

10 hours ago, Loop 1604 said:

Mack is the king of winning close games…

And OOC scheduling.

[JFKFC 4891]

4 hours ago, Loop 1604 said:

We could honestly easily go 6-6 or 5-7 again…what the fuck Sark- somehow making me miss Turtle Tom.

 

7-5 was always our ceiling because of Sark's approach. We were all allowed some unexpected optimism because we were fortunate enough this season to play the worst OU team to ever take the field at the Cotton Bowl in the history of ever. So, for that reason, if a miracle occurs and we win 3 of our last 4, we will be at 8-4. Sane people know this is extremely unlikely. I really want a winning season but I just don't know how we get 2 more wins. 

[Hank Chinaski 6315]

53 minutes ago, Eskimohorn said:

One reason for this is that usually Mack Brown teams have superior players. But he has a conservative system thats risk averse. My sense is that, like Tom Herman, they were lazy and did not put as much into gameplans week to week.

I don’t think it was “laziness;” I think there is a reasonable strategic logic to being conservative when you have superior talent. Mack just didn’t seem to get that it didn’t work when the talent disparity wasn’t great. (In fairness, I think he eventually did get it, but it took a while and lots of losses to OU.)

Herman’s problem was that he’d switch to totally conservative within the game as soon as he had a little bit of a lead. And he wasn’t playing with superior talent like Mack was. 

Edited November 4, 2022 by Hank Chinaski

[Hookem2147 21346]

38 minutes ago, JFKFC said:

7-5 was always our ceiling because of Sark's approach.

Please explain his approach

[lilMAC25 3803]

25 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

Please explain his approach

 

[Skipper 6189]

1 hour ago, JFKFC said:

7-5 was always our ceiling because of Sark's approach. We were all allowed some unexpected optimism because we were fortunate enough this season to play the worst OU team to ever take the field at the Cotton Bowl in the history of ever. So, for that reason, if a miracle occurs and we win 3 of our last 4, we will be at 8-4. Sane people know this is extremely unlikely. I really want a winning season but I just don't know how we get 2 more wins. 

If 7-5 is our ceiling and 8-4 is "EXTREMELY" unlikely to "sane people" such as yourself, allegedly, what kind of odds are you offering?

[927 E. 41st 1124]

19 hours ago, Valmy77 said:

Unless he wins a conference championship somehow I think any extension prior to Year 5 would be a mistake. We already did that when Herman almost won the Big 12 in 2018.

I think it could be structured properly, so I don't think "Any" extension would be a mistake.

The 3-4 year coaching spiral has been at least as destructive as anything Patterson or Strong did to us, and yet some continue to chase lightning in a bottle and dismiss obvious progress as insufficient. 

With a two season sample size at UT DKR was 13-7-1 and at his previous stops his H.C. record was 17-13. I wonder what our history would look like if we fired him after his 4th season (1960  7-3-1). 

I am not saying that Sark is the next DKR, but IMO it's time to stop chasing our tail. 

I used to love it when the Aggies would fire their coach every few years, it means what it always does. A few more years of changes, with the usual "he has to get his guys", "He needs to make some coordinator changes", ect. cycle and repeat

[markstanco 12586]

21 minutes ago, Skipper said:

If 7-5 is our ceiling and 8-4 is "EXTREMELY" unlikely to "sane people" such as yourself, allegedly, what kind of odds are you offering?

He just likes to be upset. 

[BurntOrange&White 39957]

17 minutes ago, markstanco said:

He just likes to be upset. 

show me a win, pussy! lol

[gmr548 16591]

Please explain his approach

Believing the second half is scored like golf?

[Thatguy 8801]

19 minutes ago, 927 E. 41st said:

I think it could be structured properly, so I don't think "Any" extension would be a mistake.

The 3-4 year coaching spiral has been at least as destructive as anything Patterson or Strong did to us, and yet some continue to chase lightning in a bottle and dismiss obvious progress as insufficient. 

With a two season sample size at UT DKR was 13-7-1 and at his previous stops his H.C. record was 17-13. I wonder what our history would look like if we fired him after his 4th season (1960  7-3-1). 

I am not saying that Sark is the next DKR, but IMO it's time to stop chasing our tail. 

I used to love it when the Aggies would fire their coach every few years, it means what it always does. A few more years of changes, with the usual "he has to get his guys", "He needs to make some coordinator changes", ect. cycle and repeat

  This guy gets it. 

    There is a reason, even though we are rich, even though we are the flagship university in the state, and even though we are smack dab in the best football state in the country, we can't get high profile coaches. Why would anyone with choices wanna come here? 

[Levi 2592]

2 hours ago, JFKFC said:

7-5 was always our ceiling because of Sark's approach. We were all allowed some unexpected optimism because we were fortunate enough this season to play the worst OU team to ever take the field at the Cotton Bowl in the history of ever. So, for that reason, if a miracle occurs and we win 3 of our last 4, we will be at 8-4. Sane people know this is extremely unlikely. I really want a winning season but I just don't know how we get 2 more wins. 

Kansas and Baylor at home would be a lot of normal picks but your infatuation with Baylor probably blinds you from you that. 
 

It’s getting really annoying seeing you write negative paragraphs over and over again then finishing them with “I really want this to not happen” as if it absolves you from being the biggest weirdo when discussing  the program. 

[Skipper 6189]

38 minutes ago, markstanco said:

He just likes to be upset. 

I mean he's clearly convinced this team has almost zero chance of going 3-1 so let's see if he'll offer 10-1 odds if he has so much confidence in his evaluations

[Hookem2147 21346]

8 minutes ago, Skipper said:

I mean he's clearly convinced this team has almost zero chance of going 3-1 so let's see if he'll offer 10-1 odds if he has so much confidence in his evaluations

Cut him some slack. He's convinced if we had Baylor's 2 transfer OL we'd have their outstanding record.

Oh wait, what's that? They are also 5-3? Interesting.

[hook me 2103]

1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

  This guy gets it. 

    There is a reason, even though we are rich, even though we are the flagship university in the state, and even though we are smack dab in the best football state in the country, we can't get high profile coaches. Why would anyone with choices wanna come here? 

This used to be a dumb comment, but in a world with NIL this is a completely idiotic comment. You answered your own question - not once, not twice, but three times & forgot a new reason that goes right at the top.  

[Horn of Gabriel 1667]

16 minutes ago, hook me said:

This used to be a dumb comment, but in a world with NIL this is a completely idiotic comment. You answered your own question - not once, not twice, but three times & forgot a new reason that goes right at the top.  

Yeah, you're wrong.  Otherwise high profile coaches would be falling over themselves to take Texas and we wouldn't be resorting to flash in the pan G5 coaches and head coaches recycled as coordinators.  We'd be talking about Coach Saban's 8th title at Texas by now.  Our fanbase consistently overestimates the attractiveness of the Texas HFC job.  It's probably top 5-10 - but if you're talking pulling about a proven coach who has won titles already, there's only a handful of those and they already have attractive jobs, have great recruiting, have a NIL program setup, and most importantly have their boosters and administration working with them not against them.  Oh and they won't be on the hot seat after some poor results like they would at Texas and probably already have better talent in place than Texas with their system already implemented.

This is the root cause of why statements like "money whip" in regard to hiring coaches is so dumb.  First, we don't do that.  Second, even if we did, any truly great coach is going to look at Texas and our dysfunction and ask themselves what's more attractive: running their existing system and job for 10% less money but having ultimate job security for as long as they want in, or making slightly more at Texas while having to rebuild all the systems that made them great to begin with and risk getting fired in year 3 if any of the 100 variables you don't control don't work out in your favor.  You don't have to be a genius to figure it out.

[lilMAC25 3803]

2 hours ago, Thatguy said:

  This guy gets it. 

    There is a reason, even though we are rich, even though we are the flagship university in the state, and even though we are smack dab in the best football state in the country, we can't get high profile coaches. Why would anyone with choices wanna come here? 

Because of $$ and the chance to win.

 

keeping a coach who fails most years just to keep continuity means we are Iowa, and no one is scared of Iowa

[hook me 2103]

5 minutes ago, Horn of Gabriel said:

Yeah, you're wrong.  Otherwise high profile coaches would be falling over themselves to take Texas and we wouldn't be resorting to flash in the pan G5 coaches and head coaches recycled as coordinators.  We'd be talking about Coach Saban's 8th title at Texas by now.  Our fanbase consistently overestimates the attractiveness of the Texas HFC job.  It's probably top 5-10 - but if you're talking pulling about a proven coach who has won titles already, there's only a handful of those and they already have attractive jobs, have great recruiting, have a NIL program setup, and most importantly have their boosters and administration working with them not against them.  Oh and they won't be on the hot seat after some poor results like they would at Texas and probably already have better talent in place than Texas with their system already implemented.

This is the root cause of why statements like "money whip" in regard to hiring coaches is so dumb.  First, we don't do that.  Second, even if we did, any truly great coach is going to look at Texas and our dysfunction and ask themselves what's more attractive: running their existing system and job for 10% less money but having ultimate job security for as long as they want in, or making slightly more at Texas while having to rebuild all the systems that made them great to begin with and risk getting fired in year 3 if any of the 100 variables you don't control don't work out in your favor.  You don't have to be a genius to figure it out.

Yeah, the statement was "someone with choices", meaning someone actively looking for a new job or, at least, honestly open to listening to an offer. Maybe the problem isn't we're overestimating how attractive our job is, but how much more attractive it'd have to be in relation to other jobs to make someone like Smart, Day, or Swinney move. Obviously that isn't happening, & that wasn't the argument presented in the first place. I always assume those names are thrown out in jest, but I'm sure there are people who honestly believe we could get them to come here. I'm not among that group, but am firmly in the group of UT being a top of the top job when available & only getting better with facilities & NIL. Herman had choices, namely LSU, & he came here instead & that was before we had facilities that brought us into this century or NIL. Sark had choices, not the least of which was taking over the machine if/when Satan ever retires or dies, & he came here even before NIL. Beard had choices & he came here even though he built a top 15-20 program & TTU would have built him a statue. Every school fires coaches when they don't perform up to their standards. TTU fired Wells in the middle of year 3 with a 5-3 record. Auburn just fired Harsin in year 2 after trying to run him out of town after year 1. UF ran off Mullen after going 29-9 in 3 years with an SEC CCG appearance AFTER running off McElwain in the middle of his 3rd season after his 1st 2 seasons ended in the CCG. 

Schools fire coaches within 3-4 years all.the.time. It's not a UT problem, it's SOP around college football. It's not a ding against us anymore than it is against any of the other schools that do it.

[lilMAC25 3803]

37 minutes ago, Horn of Gabriel said:

Yeah, you're wrong.  Otherwise high profile coaches would be falling over themselves to take Texas and we wouldn't be resorting to flash in the pan G5 coaches and head coaches recycled as coordinators.  We'd be talking about Coach Saban's 8th title at Texas by now.  Our fanbase consistently overestimates the attractiveness of the Texas HFC job.  It's probably top 5-10 - but if you're talking pulling about a proven coach who has won titles already, there's only a handful of those and they already have attractive jobs, have great recruiting, have a NIL program setup, and most importantly have their boosters and administration working with them not against them.  Oh and they won't be on the hot seat after some poor results like they would at Texas and probably already have better talent in place than Texas with their system already implemented.

This is the root cause of why statements like "money whip" in regard to hiring coaches is so dumb.  First, we don't do that.  Second, even if we did, any truly great coach is going to look at Texas and our dysfunction and ask themselves what's more attractive: running their existing system and job for 10% less money but having ultimate job security for as long as they want in, or making slightly more at Texas while having to rebuild all the systems that made them great to begin with and risk getting fired in year 3 if any of the 100 variables you don't control don't work out in your favor.  You don't have to be a genius to figure it out.

We are on coach 3 because we’ve made 2 bad hires in a row (and the 3rd one is looking shakey).

[927 E. 41st 1124]

12 minutes ago, lilMAC25 said:

 

keeping a coach who fails most years just to keep continuity means we are Iowa, and no one is scared of Iowa

Who suggested that? However, if we ever want to climb out of the hole we’ve been in continuity IS a consideration. Short of Charlie Strong levels of ineptitude, firing a coach after 3 years is counterproductive.

[lilMAC25 3803]

5 minutes ago, 927 E. 41st said:

Who suggested that? However, if we ever want to climb out of the hole we’ve been in continuity IS a consideration. Short of Charlie Strong levels of ineptitude, firing a coach after 3 years is counterproductive.

Anyone who says things like “we have to give him time to get his players in place” while discussing a coach who is .500 and sub .500 vs conference opponents and regularly blows two TD leads.

 

again, this would all go away if Sark would do his job and win games. Alas….

[Thatguy 8801]

4 hours ago, hook me said:

This used to be a dumb comment, but in a world with NIL this is a completely idiotic comment. You answered your own question - not once, not twice, but three times & forgot a new reason that goes right at the top.  

  @Horn of Gabriel answered you up thread but I wanted to chime in. 

3 hours ago, hook me said:

Yeah, the statement was "someone with choices", meaning someone actively looking for a new job or, at least, honestly open to listening to an offer. Maybe the problem isn't we're overestimating how attractive our job is, but how much more attractive it'd have to be in relation to other jobs to make someone like Smart, Day, or Swinney move. Obviously that isn't happening, & that wasn't the argument presented in the first place. I always assume those names are thrown out in jest, but I'm sure there are people who honestly believe we could get them to come here. I'm not among that group, but am firmly in the group of UT being a top of the top job when available & only getting better with facilities & NIL. Herman had choices, namely LSU, & he came here instead & that was before we had facilities that brought us into this century or NIL. Sark had choices, not the least of which was taking over the machine if/when Satan ever retires or dies, & he came here even before NIL. Beard had choices & he came here even though he built a top 15-20 program & TTU would have built him a statue. Every school fires coaches when they don't perform up to their standards. TTU fired Wells in the middle of year 3 with a 5-3 record. Auburn just fired Harsin in year 2 after trying to run him out of town after year 1. UF ran off Mullen after going 29-9 in 3 years with an SEC CCG appearance AFTER running off McElwain in the middle of his 3rd season after his 1st 2 seasons ended in the CCG. 

Schools fire coaches within 3-4 years all.the.time. It's not a UT problem, it's SOP around college football. It's not a ding against us anymore than it is against any of the other schools that do it.

      We are in this mess because the coaching tree talks. A guy gets offered a job and he picks up the phone and calls a guy who worked here that he worked with and respects. Pick a guy. Charlie Strong. Will Muschamp. Tom Herman. Any of the coordinators that we've cycled through. They tell him what we are like and the guy says thanks but no thanks. The way we handled Mack was embarrassing. Even before Charlie lost to KU we were already courting Herman. Then we did the same thing 4 years later. 

   We are the Jerry Jones' of cfb. Constantly meddling and acting like we are better than we are. We think money is the answer to all our problems, and the coaches uninterested in coming here are silently telling us we are wrong. Salary and NIL aren't that attractive if you have no job security. Teams negatively recruit against us telling recruits our coach will soon be fired. I know that is fact as a potential recruit that we lost told me that, and why shouldn't they listen to it? We laugh at aggy for giving Jimbo a big contract but that backing of their coach beyond reason is WHY they are beating us on the recruiting trail. Right now Sark has us back in the driver's seat with recruiting but if we pull out the pitch forks recruiting will fall off. We need to realize as a collective that we go ourselves into this and we might need to give a coach a couple years extra to get ourselves out of it. Simple as that. 

[Hookem2147 21346]

2 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

We laugh at aggy for giving Jimbo a big contract but that backing of their coach beyond reason is WHY they are beating us on the recruiting trail.

You had me until this part

[Fondren & Main 6731]

13 minutes ago, Hookem2147 said:

You had me until this part

Yeah, he’s wrong on that for sure.

[lilMAC25 3803]

13 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

Yeah, he’s wrong on that for sure.

And the idea that Texas shouldn’t have been looking for a new coach before the loss to Kansas by Strong.

 

Complete loonie toons.

[Fondren & Main 6731]

Yeah, Strong sucks.  He piledrove back to back programs into the ground.

[Eskimohorn 5642]

      We are in this mess because the coaching tree talks. A guy gets offered a job and he picks up the phone and calls a guy who worked here that he worked with and respects. Pick a guy. Charlie Strong. Will Muschamp. Tom Herman. Any of the coordinators that we've cycled through. They tell him what we are like and the guy says thanks but no thanks. The way we handled Mack was embarrassing. Even before Charlie lost to KU we were already courting Herman. Then we did the same thing 4 years later. 
   We are the Jerry Jones' of cfb. Constantly meddling and acting like we are better than we are. We think money is the answer to all our problems, and the coaches uninterested in coming here are silently telling us we are wrong. Salary and NIL aren't that attractive if you have no job security. Teams negatively recruit against us telling recruits our coach will soon be fired. I know that is fact as a potential recruit that we lost told me that, and why shouldn't they listen to it? We laugh at aggy for giving Jimbo a big contract but that backing of their coach beyond reason is WHY they are beating us on the recruiting trail. Right now Sark has us back in the driver's seat with recruiting but if we pull out the pitch forks recruiting will fall off. We need to realize as a collective that we go ourselves into this and we might need to give a coach a couple years extra to get ourselves out of it. Simple as that. 

Herman and Strong pulled in major classes before the stench of mediocrity strained their credibility and they were compelled to shake up staffs.

We go 5-7 or 6-6 the pitchforks will come out organically. We’ll still pull a great class perhaps with some notable losses.

Year 3, we start slow, then the wheels will come off of recruiting. We’ve seen this show before.

We need football people to discreetly vet up and coming coaches, analyze their results, get intel, not just for head coach but coordinators. The “hey I like this guy” golf club convos between BMDs is a demonstration of dysfunction. Del Conte and ex players are the only people I want involved in the initial phase of coaching searches.

Regarding Sark, I like him and think he can have success. But the lack of passion last year at Fayettenam was a red flag. And now the road record solidifies what I suspect: Sark is not motivating the team to play with attitude when not feeding off the home crowd.

[closetohumping 17456]

1 hour ago, Eskimohorn said:

 

Herman and Strong pulled in major classes before the stench of mediocrity strained their credibility and they were compelled to shake up staffs.

We go 5-7 or 6-6 the pitchforks will come out organically. We’ll still pull a great class perhaps with some notable losses.

Year 3, we start slow, then the wheels will come off of recruiting. We’ve seen this show before.

We need football people to discreetly vet up and coming coaches, analyze their results, get intel, not just for head coach but coordinators. The “hey I like this guy” golf club convos between BMDs is a demonstration of dysfunction. Del Conte and ex players are the only people I want involved in the initial phase of coaching searches.

Regarding Sark, I like him and think he can have success. But the lack of passion last year at Fayettenam was a red flag. And now the road record solidifies what I suspect: Sark is not motivating the team to play with attitude when not feeding off the home crowd.

 

First part is true. I think I’m the bj foster class he pulled five of top ten in Texas.  And that’s with being an asshole.  I know most of those guys didn’t pan out but the services had them high.   
 

hard not to root for sark.  

[TwiceHorn 31519]

On 11/3/2022 at 10:19 AM, SL Xpress said:

 

I don't know about competing big donors. Tom Hicks and Don Evans were on the board of regents. Hicks was the chairman. They were going to be the most important decision makers regarding that hire. There wasn't any real competition on that front.

Barnett had inside scoop on how dysfunctional the athletic department was in terms of how football was run, so he insisted on a separation of football from a lot of the decision making within the AD for him to take the job. Mack Brown, on the other hand, talked in his interview about what a privilege it would be to be the next head coach at Texas and how excited he would be for the opportunity. I'm boiling down hours long interviews into a short sentence, but that was a big part of the dichotomy of the two. 

Brown wasn't exactly the slam dunk we think of him as. After receiving the offer to coach at Texas, he went back to UNC AD Dick Baddour to ask for North Carolina to match UT's offer. Baddour told him he was getting paid as much as he was going to. Sally Brown was earning over $1m per year as a luxury home developer, which she obviously wasn't going to be able to maintain in Austin. UNC was in the midst of finishing a Taj Mahal of football facilities that was going to help transform the program, built on money Mack Brown was instrumental in raising. He'd built a top 5 program after starting with two consecutive 1-10 seasons. If UNC had simply matched UT's offer, he wasn't going anywhere. 

I don't know about the Strong hire being organized. Basically the message came down to hire the best African American coach available, and that's what Patterson did. That is not going out and hiring the best available candidate. 

The Akers hire was mostly about freezing Darrel Royal out of the football program, never mind that he was still the AD. That hire was orchestrated primarily by Allan Shivers and Lorene Rogers, who wanted to lessen the power and influence they perceived Royal having. 

As far as Sarkisian, I'm not exactly shouting out, "Fire him now!" I firmly believe you give a coach 3 to 4 years to do their thing. If it's an unmitigated disaster in year 3, then yeah, he should be gone. But if there are significant signs of progress throughout the program, then that's enough for me, personally. My doubts about Sarkisian lie in the old Darrell Royal line when talking about freshmen ballplayers, "If they're going to bite, they're going to bite as a pup." I'm not seeing the kind of wholesale improvement I think the greatest coaches would already be imparting on the program. And if we're not going to have one of the greatest coaches at Texas, what are we doing? We need another legend as head coach. Not someone who does pretty well. The enemy of great is good, and all that. 

I'm seeing signs of a guy who has never won that much in his previous tenures. Who seems like a nice enough guy, but maybe not as much of a hardass as he needs to be, who is a very good playcaller when he has the right pieces, but when he doesn't the offense can look pedestrian, who doesn't have a good feel for what it takes to field a standout defense, and mostly, whose teams don't know how to win. Of all the coaches we've had since David McWilliams, who was always my personal favorite as a person, I like Steve Sarkisian personally the most. I like the way he comes across. He seems like someone I would enjoy having dinner with. But I have never professed to having a need to like the head coach. If they're complete assholes and they win at an extremely high rate, I'm good. If John Mackovic and Tom Herman, both of whom I despised, had won a whole lot more, I would have very easily come to peace with that. I never liked Mack Brown all that much. He drove me a bit crazy. But until he acted like he had figured out college football and quit working on the recruiting trail, I could have lived with his 2000-2009 results for a long time. We all could have. 

I'm just not sure I see a guy who gives us regular 10+ win seasons with conference championships and regularly competing for titles when I look at Steve Sarkisian. Hell on earth for me would be settling for a coach who gives us 9 wins every year so that he wins enough not to get fired, with no hope of anything better. This might sound counter intuitive, but I'd honestly prefer a series of coaches who flame out right away so we can go look for the next one. 

To me future legendary coaches come in and make a dramatic impact right away, even if it doesn't equal winning at the highest levels. I'm not seeing that in Sarkisian. Are you?

From my understanding, and I could be wrong, it's been a long time, that Dodds, egged on by one group of BMD, was supporting Barnett and Hicksco sort of forced Brown into the conversation in the 11th hour.  That's more or less a BMD competition and it would have been lost to Barnett had Nicksco's influence not affected the situation.  It had a decent ending, but wasn't some form of organized or systematic hire, even if the criteria applied to select between them were valid.

With respect to Strong, we used Korn-Ferry to assemble a list of candidates.  I'm not saying they should always or ever be used, but hey, it's organized and systematic.  That list, as I recall, was a reasonable bunch of attainable, good coaches.  Maybe not everyone's dream list, but not a ludicrous list.  The ultimate criteria may have come down from Powers or whomever to hire an AA coach, but the process was still fairly systematic by comparison to the hiring of  Herman, for example.  I think that only happened because Patterson, as a newb and total "corporate guy," did it by the "school solution," even if he got run over by the administration in the end.

Herman was a hot name and had attracted a lot of attention, probably without much real scrutiny, at UH.  We were supposedly competing head to head with LSU.  And supposedly Houston BMD were behind him.  Disorganized, unsystematic clusterfuck.

Unfortunately, Mack Brown's taste for rubbing elbows and receiving adulation from BMD, and administration, probably demolished any firewalls between BMD and coaching hires that Dodds may have tried to erect.  So that brought BMD right back into the forefront.

And this is a perfect encapsulation of BMD stupidity. https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/alabama-football/nick-saban-mack-brown-tom-hicks-texas-regent/  Fucking hell, Hicks, why the hell are you even talking to Saban if you either a) don't want to get Mack fired or b) have him fairly committing to retirement?  Go ask Mack?  Are you fucking kidding me?  And then to run your mouth about it so Sexton won't take your calls?  Hubris?  Some form of stupidity?  Assuming it's accurate, of course.

 

Edited November 5, 2022 by TwiceHorn

[TXpride 550]

Bama kept firing coaches until they got Saban. Didn't seem to matter once they got their guy. Look up the coaching history of any blue blood program and it's usually the same story: 2 or 3 legendary coaches with long tenures, and a bunch of bums who lasted 3-4 years. Maybe Sark suddenly gets it and becomes the guy (unlikely based on history and his performance thus far), but you don't keep him around just for the sake of continuity; no program with expectations does that. If the results are still mediocre after 3-4 years, you try again.

[Wally Pryor 5262]

1 hour ago, TwiceHorn said:

And this is a perfect encapsulation of BMD stupidity. https://www.saturdaydownsouth.com/alabama-football/nick-saban-mack-brown-tom-hicks-texas-regent/  Fucking hell, Hicks, why the hell are you even talking to Saban if you either a) don't want to get Mack fired or b) have him fairly committing to retirement?  Go ask Mack?  Are you fucking kidding me?  And then to run your mouth about it so Sexton won't take your calls?  Hubris?  Some form of stupidity?  Assuming it's accurate, of course.

 

There are different iterations on how Brown submarined the deal. Choose whichever you want but always believe he did just that. The pictures of him that mid December in Florida recruiting (ie., fleeing) Austin perfectly capture a thin-skinned clown who wanted nothing to do with Saban as someone who could successfully replace him. In that vein, any success Brown has had at North Carolina has been superseded by the delight of the subsequent 12 years of mediocrity at Texas.

I've no doubt he and Sally raise a glass to that every December.