 That’s right; now that the 2014 signing class is wrapped up and committed, let’s take an honest to goodness look at the most important 365 days Coach Strong will ever encounter. Typically, new coaches enjoy a bit of a honeymoon period when taking over at a new job with both fans and recruits. More typically, coaches have a window of three to five years to right the ship before they are deemed failures. In the scope of recruiting, that’s basically a full tenure of getting “your players.”
Texas A&M has taken over the recruiting scene in the state with Baylor charging harder every year. Oklahoma’s win over Alabama in the Sugar Bowl has reinvigorated the Sooner brand, while Texas under Mack Brown became a stale program. Early recruiting has seen these programs get the inside footing with the next class of prospects the casual recruiting fan will begin hearing about, and Texas has an uphill fight with the majority of them. From the end of the dead period until signing day multiple defectors left the uncertainty of the Texas program for other schools. Yesterday Texas watched a pair of brothers that had been strongly committed leave at the last moment for LSU. This particular de-commitment could potentially cost Texas their two blue chip guards they had committed for the 2015 class. Top prospects from the state that Strong promised to lock down are flocking everywhere else but Texas, and Strong has been forced to supplement that by going out of state for the most part. In Texas, you can cherry pick the best of the national talent, but you make your living by recruiting in the richest state for high school football talent.
Aside from troubles on the recruiting trail, the Longhorns enter a season breaking in a new offensive line and uncertainty at the quarterback position. On defense, they return a lot of starters but the losses are felt in leadership on that unit with the departures of Jackson Jeffcoat, Chris Whaley, and Adrian Phillips. The Texas schedule also has a brutal first stretch with four of the first six games of the season against BYU, UCLA, Baylor, and Oklahoma. To recruit well you have to show it on the field and this new Longhorn regime will be fresh out of the frying pan and into the fire. Everywhere you look, uncertainty lurks and doubt creeps in. The expectations are there too. Everyone expects a marked improvement on the field and in recruiting, they expect Rome to be re-built in a day. Yes, 2014 is the most important year in Charlie Strong’s professional life as it will set the tone for his tenure and allow him to boost his recruiting or potentially bury him.
But you know what? Charlie Strong knows all of this better than anyone. It’s his skin in the game and he feels the pressure of re-building one of the blue bloods of the collegiate sports world while being the first minority head coach in the team’s history. At his press conference yesterday, Coach Strong talked about the shortcomings of in-state recruiting in his short tenure. “We can do a lot better, and will do a lot better in locking down the state in recruiting.” That is a statement that is direct and to the point with no excuses. If the final few weeks of 2014 recruiting were any indication, any losses felt in the 2015 class won’t be for a lack of effort. When the dead period ended, the coaching staff hit the road on a tour that would make most music acts nauseous in looking at the schedule. Now that the 2014 class has been sign, sealed, and delivered, the coaching staff can turn its focus fully to the first class that they can call their own. I have a feeling that Hurricane Strong is about to hit the Texas high school scene and sweep up anyone in its path.
Much has been made about the recruiting practices of other schools in the state. Kevin Sumlin’s “Swag Copter” has been all the rage, and having live DJ’s at practices and Drake in your locker room certainly doesn’t hurt when you are marketing your product to seventeen year old kids. When asked about those things, Charlie Strong said, “We’re not going to be a gadget program. At the end of the day, we’re the flagship program in this state. We’re The University of Texas”. The message is clear here, results matter and all the rest is just noise.
Coach Strong recently toured all of the high school football regional meetings by jetting around the state and appearing at each one before showing up at the UT basketball game that night. He understands that recruiting matters, and in recruiting, relationships matter. Charlie Strong is a man who has lived football for the last thirty years. He knows what’s at stake, he knows how to go about fixing it, and he knows how long the road is going to be. He knows this better than you or I and he also knows he has a tight window in which to do it in. The time is now, but Coach Strong knows that, so get on the train or get run over by it.
