UT and A&M spending big for mediocrity
Maybe we’ve been looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it no longer makes sense to keep expecting our state’s marquee college football programs to win more often. Maybe throwing money at a problem just doesn’t work.
And maybe instead of asking if anybody can do the job better than Tom Herman and Jimbo Fisher, we should just start asking if anybody can make mediocrity cheaper.
If no one was surprised by the giant eggs laid Saturday by Texas and Texas A&M (and no one was), and if it has become increasingly clear that the Longhorns and Aggies are no different under Herman and Fisher than they’ve been for much of their history (and they’re not), then this hasn’t been a failure of coaching.
It’s been a failure of fiscal responsibility.
As you might be aware, Fisher (at $7.5 million per year) and Herman (at over $6 million) are the two highest-paid public employees in the state. And while it might be part of an old-fashioned Texan ethos to believe that the best representatives of the state are the ones who get out of the way and leave us be, it is not unreasonable to conclude that for that kind of money, Fisher and Herman should be doing, well, something.
But almost three years into Fisher’s tenure at A&M and almost four into Herman’s at UT, it remains difficult to ascertain the purpose of those schools’ gargantuan investments.
After Saturday, the combined records of the Aggies and Longhorns under their current coaches is 45-26. That’s good for a .634 winning percentage. Since 2009, the combined records of every A&M and UT coach not named Fisher or Herman was 132-87. That was good for a .603 winning percentage.
So the best thing you can say about either expenditure is that it led to small, incremental improvement. But after TCU beat the Longhorns for the sixth time in eight years and the Aggies lost to Alabama for the eighth time in a row, it only accentuated how far both UT and A&M still sit from the national elite, despite their eagerness to pay their coaches like they’re already there.
Neither program merits much sympathy, even if they are experiencing a few pangs of buyer’s remorse. Both essentially bid against themselves to get into this situation — A&M by blowing Fisher away with an unprecedented 10-year, $75 million deal, and UT by adding two extra guaranteed years to Herman’s contract after a four-loss season.
Now, as college athletics budgets nationwide get slashed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, neither the Longhorns nor the Aggies can even consider coming up with the kind of cash it would take to make a change. So they’re stuck, and as they search for reasons to be optimistic, the real shame of it is neither one of them can count on picking up an easy victory against the other.
So while the rest of the country laughs at both for spending and spending and spending in spite of the worst return-on-investment numbers this side of a speedboat filled with Blockbuster Video stock, UT and A&M face the possibility of another year without a championship, and more questions about whether they’re getting any closer.
No, it’s not easy to beat Alabama. But the scores of Fisher’s three games against the Crimson Tide at A&M (45-23, 47-28 and 52-24) don’t show much progress.
And no, there’s not inherent shame in losing to Gary Patterson, the TCU coach who’s one of the best in his profession at preparing for a big-name opponent. But since Herman took over at UT, the Longhorns have now suffered more losses as a ranked team against an unranked opponent (six in four years) than anyone in the country. After needing a miracle comeback to avoid another last week at Texas Tech, they couldn’t dodge this one.
To be fair, Herman’s been better than Charlie Strong was, and he’s all but guaranteed to get another chance or two at a breakthrough. But if he fails in the end to live up to his paycheck, and if Fisher does the same?
Maybe the Longhorns and Aggies can just make it easier on themselves the next time, and pay for the disappointment up front.