On Monday, reporters asked Texas head coach Tom Herman where he thought the program’s standard should be this season after Friday’s loss to Iowa State ended Big 12 Championship appearance hopes.
“I think the standard should be where I always have expressed it to be, which is to be in the conversation and to be competing for conference championships,” Herman said. “In the month of November and December, we were there this year. We were there a short two years ago. This year, we came up three points short in our opportunity to advance to play another game.”
Texas hasn’t won a Big 12 Championship or appeared in a national championship game in more than a decade. For fans, it’s been a grueling decade filled with winces, hesitations and anger. The “Texas standard” Herman refers to — a standard that was once hailed as Big 12 and college football’s cream of the crop — has been difficult to define this decade.
That’s because defining the “Texas standard” is impossible when there isn’t a definitive expectation the program will accept.
The bottom line used to be a Big 12 Championship game appearance and an AP Top 25 finish. Texas sent 13 players to the NFL in the first round of the draft in the 2000s. This past decade, the fan base has been hit with a barrage of four-loss seasons and middle-tier bowls. Only three Longhorns were drafted in the first round.
Back-to-back head coaching blunders seem like the obvious reason behind the most forgetful decade in Longhorn football. But what’s not clicking? Texas has had eight top-10 recruiting classes in the last decade and is the wealthiest program in college sports, yet the problems persist. Even the last four seasons under Mack Brown stooped below the standard.
Each season this last decade has followed the same pattern. Fans scream “This is our year!” after every out-of-conference early-season blowout. Then, hope falters after Texas loses its first game.
The blame game ensues. Fans and alumni say the players aren’t playing well and the coaching is horrible. They wonder who Texas can hire to make their dreams come true.
An obvious disconnect exists between the program’s expectations and reality. The standard used to be championships, and now it’s everything but — that’s the reality.
Fans expect Texas to kick Herman, yet there hasn’t been any clear evidence he will be hitting the road any time soon. The loss is reason enough, some say, but Herman said Monday that he and Athletics Director Chris Del Conte have a great relationship and had a positive conversation this weekend.
“(The offer to talk to recruits) still stands as per our last conversation this weekend,” Herman said. “And he knows as well as I do that the main focus needs to be on preparing to beat Kansas State in Manhattan.”
This week, redshirt junior left tackle Sam Cosmi and junior safety Caden Sterns, two key cogs of Texas’ arsenal, declared for the NFL Draft. Why wouldn’t these players look out for their interests? There is little left of the 2020 season and little left of the program that once dominated college football.
So what is the standard? It’s not clear. This season, it appears the standard was to skate by, to throw in hopeful wins and devastating losses and to sit on the outside looking in to the Big 12 Championship — not to win one.
