Unless you believed Saban or Urban would have left for UT, the pool of candidates just wasn't that strong. Look at the other hires that year, Sarkisian to USC, Franklin to PSU, Petersen to Washington, Petrino to UL. Petersen and Petrino are seemingly just now paying off but all these programs scheduled under their new coach. Same with this past season, there were multiple Top 10-15 programs looking for new HCs and the biggest hire was Richt to Miami? Timing matters.
What's the point of beating OU if you just come back and lose to a team like Baylor? Or WVU? or TCU? I mean you gotta ride a win against a ranked team high and finish the season strong. I don't have any confidence in Strong to do that.
This is weird. Why beat one good team if you're not going to beat them all? So basically, if you can't go undefeated, why bother?
Strong is a big character guy, and the OC hiring was great, though they spit the bit in the Cal game by not running the ball at the end there. Defense though...got to get better. DD
No my point was if you beat a good team only to go on to lose to multiple inferior teams, how does that show any progress? One game doesn't trump a chunk of games. In college football, you don't really have a lot of margin for error if you wan't to compete even for a bowl game on New Years Day. So if you beat OU but lose to OK State, Baylor, etc. then I don't know how that helps any.
It does seem like a one step forward, two steps back situation a lot of times. Been reading how Strong had to force Bedford to play guys Hill, Davis, Hager, and a few other freshman last season. As well as forcing some in game adjustments, notably against BU. I was really excited when Bedford came with but I hope a Strong doesn't wait too long to make a move at DC, whatever it may be. Thought Strong wasted his first 2 years with Watson but the defense hasn't been much better.
That ND home win is not looking all that impressive : - Michigan State beats ND at ND; - Wisconsin blows out Michigan State; - ND is struggling against an unranked Duke team at ND. Then, BTG said there are no Big 12 teams in the Top 15. Even if we get our share of wins this year, I don't know if that can tell us we are progressing towards elite, because we aren't playing any elite teams.
ND is 1-3 now. Got killed by Michigan State and just lost to Duke at home. UT's opening win over them is worthless. The jump to #11 looks like the biggest poll knee jerk in history.
Just finished watching OSU-Baylor. Man, OSU really blew that chance to beat Baylor. Failed on a conversion on 4th and 1 from the 2 and then fumbled at Baylor's 2 yard line on consecutive drives. Unless we fix our defense, they're probably going to hang 50 on us and win.
Who would you rather have? Especially if Herman chooses another school or decides to stay at Houston? Yes he was fired for a reason. But sometimes a change of scenery can do a lot for a coach.
