Meyer debacle another storm for Del Conte
AUSTIN — Back in mid-June, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte drew an analogy between a confluence of crises in America and a 2000 movie about a doomed Massachusetts fishing vessel.
“It really reminds me of ‘The Perfect Storm,’ ” Del Conte said. “You have all these events swirling at once. It’s nothing like anyone has ever seen before and just we’re sailing right into it, right through it. It’s a wild time. Everyone says ‘unprecedented,’ and it is.”
None of the storms Del Conte mentioned months ago have subsided. Most intensified. Then, midway through a pandemic-ravaged 2020 football season, the head of the nation’s wealthiest athletic department spotted another disturbance forming.
Fourth-year Texas coach Tom Herman’s hold on the job loosened following consecutive early-October losses to TCU and Oklahoma. Herman would then, most assumed, lame-duck his way through the season’s final few weeks after Iowa State eliminated the Longhorns from Big 12 title contention on Nov. 27.
By that point, alumni boosters who help fund projects like a $175 million expansion and renovation of Royal-Memorial Stadium and a $60 million basketball and rowing training facility made it clear who they wanted to see lead the university’s most prosperous athletic program, and it wasn’t Herman.
Texas’ feverish pursuit of Urban Meyer had been unfolding for weeks when the Cyclones clinched a conference championship game berth at DKR. One of three coaches to win at least three FBS titles since 1990, the job was Meyer’s if he wanted it.
The uneasy marriage between Herman and Del Conte was saved only by Meyer’s current aversion to leaving the Fox Sports studio. Following that rebuff, the Longhorns AD released a bland statement reading, in part, “I want to reiterate Tom Herman is our coach,” before having to clarify that Herman actually would be back in 2021.
That’s where the situation stands.
The coach knows the athletic
director pursued a high-profile replacement. The athletic director failed and had no immediate contingency plan. No one really is satisfied. Boosters and fans remain on edge, impatient and ravenous for change, despite the challenges and vexing optics inherent in buying out an entire coaching staff a few months after Del Conte announced departmental furloughs, layoffs, eliminated positions and temporary pay cuts.
So after all that, and thanks to his former Ohio State boss’ rejection of Texas, Herman got to stick around for a fifth signing day.
Questions about his job status and relationship with Del Conte populated Wednesday’s press conference, which commenced
after 19 players signed a national letter of intent with Texas. Herman wasn’t keen on spending that 30-minute window offering a prognosis about what happens to him next or why a genial relationship with Del Conte turned frosty.
“My opinion really is irrelevant,” Herman said. “I feel very confident and glad and thankful that Chris did what he did, but at the end of the day, today is about those recruits, and we did have to have some hard conversations with them about what the truth really was.”
The truth is Del Conte saw an opportunity to placate fans and score a personal win by dismissing a coach hired before his arrival and swapping in a future Hall of Famer.
Many Texas supporters and mega-donors don’t mind Meyer’s baggage — and it is substantial — because he has collected so many of the things they covet: conference championships and national titles. And Meyer might not have broken with Del Conte on how to handle the post-game performance of “The Eyes of Texas,” as Herman did earlier this season.
To his credit, Herman, who also marched to protest the killing of George Floyd, told players they wouldn’t be compelled to remain on the field for the alma mater against their will. And he truly believed that to be the case.
But his message contracted Del Conte’s edict that players and coaches stand as a “unified group” for a song many Longhorns view as racially insensitive and problematic.
“There has been a ton of open, honest, mature conversation in regard to a lot of topics,” Herman said Oct.19. “We’re a very divided country. And our locker room is exactly the opposite. Our locker room respects and, in fact, admires guys who speak their mind. Everybody is listened to, and there are no grudges held for anybody who feels a certain way about anything.”
Right now, there exists a division between Herman and Del Conte.
It’s conceivable that both can come together and mend this relationship. It’s also possible Del Conte’s open pursuit of Meyer frayed their dynamic beyond repair.
All that’s certain right now is Del Conte’s still navigating through the storm, trying to find a route that doesn’t doom the whole endeavor.