Texas Longhorns

Charlie Strong and Texas failed each other

Published Dec. 9, 2016 12:49 p.m. ET

Dieter Kurtenbach

Texas’ football season is over, but the drama is just beginning in Austin.

Charlie Strong might be fired, he might not be. But after a 31-9 season-ending home loss to TCU on Friday that secured Texas a third losing season in three years, it’s hard to imagine that the former option won’t come to pass.

Then again, at Texas, anything is possible.

And no, that’s not a compliment.

Strong failed as the head coach of Texas. He’s a good man and he’ll land another head coaching job elsewhere, and he’s a good bet to be successful in that role, but a third-year coach at one of the biggest programs in football doesn’t get a fourth year after losing to Kansas. Not in 2016.

Strong reportedly could have saved his job with a win against TCU — 6-6 and an inspiring effort might have won him a fourth year. That’s a ridiculous scenario — an implicit statement that the bar is set at “mediocre” or, more specifically “it’s ok to lose to Kansas” at Texas — but it’s not as ridiculous as the limp performance by Strong’s team.

If his players wanted to save their beloved coach’s job, they sure had a funny way of showing it.

Strong has been a dead man working in Austin for two months. His exit at the end of the season seemed inevitable before the loss to Kansas, and Tom Herman has been the top candidate to replace him for longer than that.

But the Longhorns’ handling of Strong’s employment and the courting of his replacement has been so dysfunctional you have to wonder if the team will even have a head coach to start next year.

Texas prolonged the inevitable — either through choice or disorganization — and it will probably pay for it when the Longhorns finally pull the trigger.

Prominent boosters and school administrators are clearly at odds over who controls the program — some big-money, big-influence money men want Strong out and the administration clearly wanted to keep him (and athletic director Mike Perrin seemed wildly flummoxed by it all).

Meanwhile, in the last 48 hours, Herman’s camp did an excellent (but transparent) job of leveraging the open LSU head coaching position to increase his open-market price and force Texas’ hand.

In many ways, Strong made an unnecessarily complicated decision really easy Friday.

Everyone can get behind making the move now, right? Herman has made it clear he’s leaving Houston and Texas can’t afford to finish second.

How would that play out? What would happen if Texas, after weeks of terrible, backroom flirtation, struck out with Herman? Would it go back to Strong? That wouldn’t be awkward at all.

No one on the outside will remember this in a few years, but this entire situation has been botched by all parties involved.

Strong didn’t do a thing to help keep his job. Look at what Jim Harbaugh has been able to do in two years at Michigan. Look at what James Franklin did in his third year at Penn State. Look at what Herman did in two years at Houston. That’s what Strong was supposed to do in Austin. He ran out of excuses heading into this season. This was a put-up or shut-up campaign.

Instead, his last two games of this season were as bad as any of the bad losses he had in his first two years. Anyone looking for a sign of progress in an effort to defend Strong has been left grasping for straws.

Herman did a terrible job of keeping his reciprocal flirtations under wraps. Anyone with common sense knows that Herman was the top target at both Texas and LSU, so having the “deal imminent” reports coming out before LSU’s game Thursday was uncouth. Herman’s agent has a job to do, and Herman’s camp isn’t solely to blame for Thursday’s fiasco, but a good majority of that leveraging has to be attributed to Herman’s camp, and the scorn should go that way as well.

LSU — Texas’ only real competition in the marketplace — proved woefully inept at using its head start. After totally botching Les Miles’ firing last year, the Tigers fired him in September and have since done… what exactly?

And for simplicity’s sake, because this is enough for a book, the Texas athletic department has major issues, starting with an athletic director who is woefully overmatched by the position, boosters who overstate their influence, and a school president and board of regents that seem incapable of coming to a decision without drama.

How did everything go to hell here? This could have been an easy move. Herman is the hottest coach in football — don’t let someone with recency bias tell you differently — and he’s in-state. He’s beaten Oklahoma this year. He’s landing five-star recruits from underneath UT. He’s a MENSA member at a school that is trying to position itself as a global academic powerhouse. He wants the job and has given Texas every opportunity and more to make the call.

They have to make the call now.

This entire scenario has been a mess, but the inevitable has to happen in quick succession now.

Right?