Days before the 2021 recruiting class recruits powerful signer of national letters of intent on Early Signing Day, the director of Texas long horns athletics, Chris Del Conte, issued a statement of support for head coach Tom Herman that was so tepid that it required immediate clarification.
“There has been a lot of speculation about the future of our Football coach. My policy is to wait until the end of the season before evaluating and commenting on our football program and coaches. With the end of the regular season, I want to reaffirm that Herman is our coach, ” Del Conte said.
Del Conte was quickly forced to explain that he understood his statement meant Herman would return as chief contractor in 2021. As questions revolve around Herman’s future, Del Conte had spent the previous months visible silently.
On Saturday morning, however, Del Conte and the Texas administration changed their minds, leading Herman and quickly imposing Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian as his replacement.
In an interview with the Austin American-Statesman on Saturday night, Del Conte explained some of the thinking behind a revival that followed one of the most impressive bowl game performances in program history.
A passage came loose:
Recruitment problems were one of the factors that pushed the Herman era to the brink — after a 7-5 regular season in 2019, Herman fired his two coordinators and replaced five other joined entrants, a complete restructuring of his staff that behind the Longhorns in a position to catch up with the 2021 recruiting class.
Won by the pandemic, Texas has never been able to catch up with rivals, forcing Herman to sign a group of prospects who represent the once-high-ranked non-transition class for the horns in the modern age of recruiting.
In class 2022, the October disengagement of Southlake quarterback Carroll Quinn Ewers, a player considered a potential talent generated in his position, not only represented Ewers canceling the vote of confidence in the Texas program he had given a few weeks before, it also eliminated the potential class advantage under Herman.
During a bizarre rant at a news conference Monday in late November, Herman blamed the source reports for turning into negative recruiting fodder for other entrants.
“Very informed articles that again explain the opinion as a fact,” Herman said. “It’s very difficult to protect yourself from it. If you are a competitive recruiter, what do you do? You press the print button. Then you say, ” Look, it’s true, it must be true.’”
Herman suggested that dealing with these issues internally was not particularly difficult.
” They know the truth, ” Herman said. “That’s the determining factor in this is that there is a section of people in it. Who is our program, our entrepreneurs and the people intimately involved in our day-to-day operations of our company. They know the truth. And then there are rumors.”
But according to The Tale, these players know the truth does not matter. And to the extent that anonymous sources have had an impact on recruiting in Texas while opposing programs use this report against the Longhorns, there is little more destructive to a contractor staff than current players turn on the chief contractor who recruited them in their conversations with recruits.
While the on-field results provided plenty of justification for paying Herman’s $ 15 million refund, the recruitment problems that have occurred so far and the negative recruitment of players behind the scenes have clearly illustrated the need to make a change