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A high-ranking Texas official said Sunday night that the school is "very close" to deciding to move on from head coach Charlie Strong at the end of the season. Texas is expected to target Houston coach Tom Herman as its top choice. LSU is expected to target both Herman and Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher. If Herman ends up as the top target for both, it will be fascinating to see which one he chooses. Herman is a former graduate assistant at Texas and has much stronger ties there as opposed to Louisiana. (Herman's coaching path went through Sam Houston State, Texas State and Rice.)
There are strong arguments for each program, but Herman's experience in the state of Texas and his having spent time at the school would appear to give UT an edge. That's by no means definitive, as there are many variables and positives and negatives at each place.
While both have great tradition and recent national championships, neither is a paragon of stability. When top-tier coaches evaluate where they want to work, they want stable leadership overseeing them.
LSU failed to fire Les Miles last year, despite making an attempt at it, when it was obvious the school should have. Joe Alleva is seen as one of the weaker athletic directors in the SEC, and his future at the school isn't certain in the long term.
Texas has been an administrative mess for years, and there's no immediate end in sight. Athletic director Mike Perrin is a bright man and an accomplished lawyer. But he has no practical athletic department experience and is overmatched in his current job. With Perrin acting as a placeholder, there's been a mad scramble for power under him, which has caused administrative upheaval and congestion that's made it a difficult working environment for coaches. Instead of athletic department employees focused on helping coaches win, there's a feeling at Texas that they are more concerned about their own power.
As Texas prepares for another coaching search, it will be interesting to see whether it makes another run at Oliver Luck, the former West Virginia athletic director who is now a top NCAA official. When Texas hired Steve Patterson in 2013, it had targeted Luck but ended up switching course at the 11th hour. Patterson didn't last two years, a rocky tenure undone by his own mistakes and just how antiquated the athletic department was when he arrived. (An interesting nugget is that Herman has a relationship with Luck from his days at offensive coordinator at Rice when Herman recruited his son, Andrew, to the Owls.)
Both schools are in talent-rich states, but the recruiting edge may go slightly to LSU, only because there's no in-state competition for the best players. Texas can still recruit pretty much whoever it wants, but Texas A&M has emerged as a recruiting juggernaut under Kevin Sumlin. There's much more in-state competition with Baylor, TCU and Texas Tech.
The biggest edge for Texas is that it presents the easier path to the College Football Playoff. (Not having to beat Nick Saban may be the biggest advantage of the job, along with avoiding the rough-and-tumble SEC West.) But being in the Big 12 also means dealing with Big 12 drama. That league's recent history of dysfunction reads like an article from The Onion.
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