Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

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October 4, 2022
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After many years of losing, Make Texas Average Again

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Lexi Acevedo

Editor’s Note: In the spirit of the University of Texas’ friendly rivalry with the University of Oklahoma, the editorial boards of The Daily Texan and The Oklahoma Daily have exchanged editorialsRead The Daily Texan editorial here.

Oh, Texas. For the last six years, you’ve been a combination of adorable, harmless and amusing at one point or another. We thought things might be different this year, but it looks like college football’s golden generation might be extended after all.

You’ve fallen on your ass so much in the last six years, people have started to mistake Charlie Strong for Charlie Brown. 


You may have managed a pair of upset wins over us in that time, but those victories were accompanied by 35 other losses — the same amount of defeats OU had from 2000-2013.

The number 35 also represents the number of assistants Charlie Strong has had to fire in his first three seasons.

Your latest embarrassment against Oklahoma State — a program that is entirely made up of players Texas never even considered recruiting — forced Strong to demote defensive coordinator Vance Bedford to secondary coach. 

So far this season, Texas’ secondary has behaved a lot like the clown problem that’s been sweeping the nation: They might be big and scary, but they won’t do anything to stop you from running around them.

Worse than that, though, has been Strong’s management of the offense. After settling for Tulsa’s co-offensive coordinator, Strong was still turned down. It wasn’t until he literally begged Sterlin Gilbert from outside his Tulsa home that he convinced him to come to Texas. 

But it’s not too surprising it took $900,000 and a full two-week courting process to get Sterlin Gilbert to leave Tulsa — he probably saw it as a lateral career move.

Not only is Texas becoming an unattractive job for coordinators, it’s located in America’s armpit.

Austin is where you go when your two favorite hobbies are marijuana and talking about marijuana, but you don’t have the talent to make a living in Los Angeles. As a result, Austin is home to the world’s most expansive collection of white people with dreadlocks and individuals who actually pay to see live Willie Nelson performances. 

You’re the fake LA, and walking around with dildos in your holsters makes you fake Texas, too.

Even the name is disconcerting — Austin is the kind of uninspired, generic name parents give to a child when they want him or her to grow up to be just as boring as they are, while instilling an awareness that he or she never had a choice.

And it can’t be that easy to get half-decent assistant coaches when they have to look at the color of solidified nacho cheese 365 days a year. 

Make no mistake: Your relevance is fabricated. Your worth is a mystery, your value is artificial and your effectiveness on the gridiron has been more fictitious than a Stephen King novel.

But hey, Texas is back! Or at least that’s what everyone told us after you defeated a highly-touted Notre Dame team opening weekend. 

There’s only one problem: everything that has happened since then. Somehow your starting quarterback is capable of surviving a vasectomy but not adequate enough to defeat a California squad led by the third-best quarterback from Texas Tech’s 2013 team. 

You also got curb-stomped by Oklahoma State, which has even more reasons than you do — about 500 million more — to fire its head coach.

And the Notre Dame team you beat in double overtime at home? Got eviscerated by Michigan State. Whoops.

They say everything is bigger in Texas, which is true — especially Charlie Strong’s failures. Mike Perrin, University of Texas’ athletic director, made it known last week that Strong’s job security is low.

There’s little mystery about who Texas wants as its next coach: Houston’s Tom Herman. Herman would potentially be better but not enough to justify undermining the current coach right before meeting a rival. Perrin likes Herman so much he’s forced to call his doctor exactly four hours after every University of Houston game.

Herman would have an uphill battle if he decided to take the job — the Texas football program has been in shambles for some time now.

Do you know how long it’s been since Texas last won a major bowl game? Look how young President Obama looks about two weeks after the 2009 Fiesta Bowl. Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren were still married. Jordan Spieth couldn’t even legally drive a car yet.

We’ll be hoping your administration doesn’t shit the bed again in its next inevitable coaching search so Texas can finally climb out of the abyss it’s been in since before Michael Jackson died. It’s helpful for the Big 12 when you’re slightly more competitive than mid-level AAC schools.

You were never great to begin with, but enough is enough, Texas.

It’s time to be respectable again. It’s time to be suitable again. It’s time to be relevant again. 

It’s time to Make Texas Average Again.

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After many years of losing, Make Texas Average Again