This will make or break Patterson, no doubt
Because Deloss got canned after McWilliams and Mackovick? We needed a splash hire to offset the decline of the Big 12. We didn't get it. We got a guy who will probably be a good coach. I would have liked to have seen what he would do without a heisman calibre QB before taking him to Texas. But at least we settled all the arguments about being the best job in the country. We clearly aren't, and it's not even close.
I share your frustration, but what the hell are we going to do about it?
I also agree about the Patterson salary. Never understood why in the hell UT paid him over a mill more than he was making at ASU and 400k more than Dodds.
Who was your 5th in your top5?
The salary is insane and I'm sure many academics at UT will bring that up the next time they are talking about tight budgets. Hell, I would have paid them money to go into Bellmont and clean house. They could have made me the hatchet man and hired someone on the cheap to run the department. It makes about as much sense as Mack's last extension and raise...And Strong isn't cheap by any means either. He will now be the fourth highest paid head coach in football and we have to pay his $5MM buyout and mack's departure expenses $2.75MM and $1.3MM/yr.
Your five correspond with my top 5. Although I also had Gruden and Tomlin in there as well for the needed splash with recruits....You are exactly right, there is nothing we can do except support the hell out of Strong and hope that he turns out to be the greatest college football coach of all time. I also think we can pray for a D4 arrangement to get us out of the Big 12 conference. For instance, if our conference situation was different without A&M in the SEC recruiting like mad and us slipping, I think I would be pumped about taking a chance on Strong. It's really just the fear of continuing the slide into mediocrity that scares me. TCU and Boise State won a lot of games, but neither is a tier one football program. Strong may win a lot of games at Texas but unless he can take the state back and stop the hemorrhaging, it won't matter until we leave the Big 12...Lastly, I don't believe we even seriously pursued guys like John/Jim Harbaugh, Fisher etc. Someone decided the timing didn't work for our self-imposed deadline and we hedged our bets and moved on. If so, that decision was so short sighted on the part of Patterson it shows that he truly has no understanding of our current dire situation or just isn't that interested in football or Texas remaining the top program. I will bet money that he puts more effort into the basketball program because he loves the game and understands it.
