Apropos of this discussion, I have been reading some very critical opinion pieces on Tom Herman coming from media outlets in Texas. There was one in the
Houston Chronicle that essentially said this:
- Texas is back. This is what Texas Longhorn football is and has been for decades. Big talk and high rankings to start the season, 5 losses and unranked at the end of the year.
- Mack Brown's 12-year string of 9-wins-plus seasons is actually the exception.
- Even with Mack's run, Texas has had 18 5-loss seasons in the last 36, counting this one.
- Not coincidentally, Texas has finished unranked in 18 of the last 36 seasons, counting this one.
That one was probably the harshest, but commentary from Dallas and even Austin has been almost as critical.
Reading that in the
Chronicle article stunned me. I think of Texas as being much better than that, not just in recruiting rankings but in on-field performance. I think of the Horns winning the 2005 NC and playing in the 2009 BCS title game with Alabama.
For some reason, Texas has played OU better than it has played its average opponent, while OU cannot say the same thing about its play against Texas. I guess that the fact that it almost always seems very hard for OU to beat Texas has colored my thinking about Texas in general.
So now, I wonder. As the flagship university in a football-crazy state, a state that produces a wealth of Div I FBS players each year, possessing a budget bigger than the budgets of 98% of Div I FBS programs, possessing platinum-plated facilities, why is Texas not a perennial top-5 program rather than one that finishes ranked only half the time?
