Strong is going to get a 3rd year no matter what. He needs to get another solid recruiting class so we can rely on "his guys" being solid. I just don't feel like I've seen a well coached game from him. Perhaps a better way to phrase it is a game that he coached up his team. He doesn't have a signature win. He just has a signature almost won against Oklahoma. I'd be surprised if they finish over .500 It doesn't take a long time for people's expectations to change. There was a 10 year span not long ago where Texas was the winningest regular season team with two national championship appearances and another year where they were an interception away from going. Nine straight years of 10+ wins and 12 straight years of 9+ wins. Expectations rise despite the years before. I can't see them dropping anytime soon.
Forget about national titles. At this point, I think people would settle for regularly being in the top 20 or so and then mixing in some special seasons where we're in Big12 / national title contention. There are lots of schools that do that, and it's not an unreasonable expectation - it's essentially how most of Texas' history is. We've ended the season ranked once in the last 5 years, had 2 seasons with losing records, and been basically irrelevant in the conference. That's far worse than the baseline for the school.
All this, and everything is cyclical. Look at Michigan, Ohio St, USC, Auburn, Florida, FSU, LSU, Notre Dame. Then you start talking about schools like Nebraska, Miami, UCLA, TAMU...if you do it right you can have a 2 or 3 year window to compete for national championship. Oregon is the new flavor of the month. Alabama is the standard for now, but even that will change at some point...
The issue is that the game plans suck, and the players don't seem to be improving. Strongs coaching so far has been a train wreck. BTW Swoopes led his HS team his senior year to a sterling record of 1-9, which does not exactly bode well for leadership. DD
True, but the fact is that nobody associated with that run is still around - not players, not coaches. It's nice that expectations have changed. History just shows - to me - that those expectations might not be all that realistic. Maybe that great run had more to do with Mack and less to do with the school. After all, previous coaches didn't get it done - we were just plain mediocre for a long, long time - and the school had the same advantages.
Because we have more available talent and money than almost every other school. Why should we expect less with those type of advantages?
I don't think so. If the offense remains a complete train wreck, the team doesn't show much fight during the season and finishes with 5 wins or less, he could be fired. Rice, Kansas, Iowa State should be locks. If they win 3 more besides these, Charlie Strong will definitely get another year.
I think I've said it a few times already before - we had those same advantages before Mack and we were mediocre for decades.
Strong is like Muschamp. He's best suited as a DC. I might be overreacting to a sample size of 1 season and a game, but he really hasn't had a single game where he has shown he's capable of being a head coach. Like Brando said, he'll definitely get a 3rd year, but I think after that it's pretty much the hot seat if nothing improves. I personally don't see him doing better, much like I expected with Muschamp, and I think Strong would make a great DC just like he's already proven from his days at Florida. Hope he proves me wrong, but I'm also tired of waiting for this team to become a powerhouse again. It's been 5 years, and that's way too long for one of the top all-time programs.
While I understand your point, Texas did not have the massive financial advantage before Mack. They weren't selling out games, didn't have an LHN, didn't have any basketball program, etc. Except unlike Muschamp, Charlie Strong was already a head coach for 4 years at Louisville and did some great things. He's not a DC-turned-HC at this point. Most of those 5 years was with a different coach. Our unwillingness to fire him or force changes is what caused the culture-disaster that infested the program. Another coach likely could get better short-term results and more quickly get to 9-3 or whatever, but someone needed to cleanup the crap underneath, or it was all going to be a mirage. While I'm disappointed with Strong's performance thus far and he wasn't anywhere close to my 1st choice, no one was going to have this team in championship contention this year regardless because of the mess that they had to fix.
New team, new front office. There is literally nothing in common from uts past teams from this one, other than lots of money and a strong talent pool to recruit from. There is no reason Texas shoulnt be a great team
Will Patterson suffer for this, if Strong continues to not "Coach em up"? I mean Notre Dame's freshman looked great. DD
You know all I hear about Heard is - he's young, he's raw, he only ran in high school, so he can't really pass yet. How do you get to be a 4 STAR QB recruit without knowing how to throw the ball???!!!! In tennis, you don't recruit good athletes who have never hit a tennis ball. How the hell can QB recruits have so little skills?
