Tom Herman wasn't all that

Last weekend, the University of Texas fired Tom Herman after four years at the helm of the Longhorn football program, replacing him with Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian. It's a risky and extremely expensive move for Texas, which is on the hook for upwards of $24 million to buy out Herman and his assistants before they even pay Sarkisian and his staff a single dime. And Sarkisian, who is by all accounts a great offensive mind but who drank his way out of a head coaching job at USC several years ago, is by no means a slam dunk to return the Longhorns to greatness. 

But Herman couldn't return the Horns to greatness, either, which is why he is being let go. Texas simply discovered that Tom Herman wasn't all that.

In that regard, it's interesting to come across this video about Herman's 2016 University of Houston team, which makes the argument that the Coogs would have been the first Group of Five team to make the College Football Playoff if they hadn't experienced some "weird" losses:

"How can you beat #3 Oklahoma led by Baker Mayfield, and #3 Louisville, led by Lamar Jackson, but not take care of business against Navy or SMU?" The narrator asks. The answer, at least partially, is Tom Herman: he could get his team up for big games but couldn't do the same for lesser opponents.

To be fair to Herman, player injuries played a role in at least a couple of his head-scratching losses while he was at Houston. And to be fair to his players, constant rumors about Herman's next coaching gig - he obviously had one foot out the door the entire time he was at UH - had to be a major distraction. 

That being said, head-scratching losses are still losses, and by the time Texas poached him from Houston at the end of the season his shortcomings were already evident. I wrote at the time of his departure:

For a man who preaches the importance of winning conference championships, he managed a rather sad 2-3 record in the AAC West this past season, good enough for fourth place. Herman is also a less-than-stellar 6-4 on the road. Those numbers won't cut it on the Forty Acres.

Sure enough, his numbers didn't cut it at Texas. Herman's overall record was a respectable 32-18, but it came with a few major issues. First, Herman's Longhorns lost 7 times to unranked teams when they were ranked in the AP Poll: as was the case at Houston, he simply couldn't get his players up for games against lesser opponents. More important for the Longhorn faithful, however, is that Herman's teams lost to archrival Oklahoma four out of five times while he was head coach there (one of those losses being in the 2018 Big XII Championship game, which was Herman's only conference championship appearance at Texas). While Herman's Longhorns did win all four of the bowl games they went to and ended the season ranked in the AP top 25 three out of his four years at the helm, it wasn't good enough for the Orangeblood faithful. A 1-4 record against the Sooners and zero conference championships was not what they expected when they hired him; he just didn't live up to the hype.

For Steve Sarkisian's part, if he and his staff can recruit the state's best players, and if Sarkisian himself can stay off of Sixth Street, he may have a chance at bringing Longhorn fans the glory they desire. If he can't, then it will be just another instance of Texas throwing a lot of money into something and getting very little in return.

As a UH fan and alum, I must say I am getting a bit of schadenfreude out of the fact that, as of this moment, all of Art Briles, Kevin Sumlin and Tom Herman are unemployed.