State of Texas football: No top-25 teams last season
Tom Herman wasn’t sure the question was accurate. Last week at Big 12 Media Days, the new Texas coach was asked about no teams from the state of Texas finishing in the final top-25 polls. Herman was asked if there are any new challenges to teams in the state and how he intends to overcome them.
“Houston didn’t finish in the top 25?” Herman responded.
No, he was told. The Cougars didn’t. Despite a season-opening upset of Oklahoma, UofH went 9-3 in the regular season, then lost 34-10 to San Diego State in the Las Vegas Bowl.
“They didn’t?” Herman repeated. “I thought we did. I guess not.”
Of course, forgive Herman for not knowing. He was a Longhorn by then, having fled Houston before the bowl game.
But it’s true. No Texas teams in the top 25. The only vote-getter in the AP poll was indeed Houston, which ranked 37th in the voting.
The last time no Texas team was ranked was 1967. But only 10 teams were ranked back then. According to research by the Fort Worth StarTelegram, never has a final Associated Press poll been void of a Texas school in its top 25 votegetters.
The 12 Division I-A teams in Texas went 65-85 last season, with a 1-5 bowl record. This from squads with the built-in advantage of geography. Sure, all kinds of infidels descend on Texas to recruit. But the Texas schools already are there, in the middle of all that talent. And heck, the state is big enough that even recruits who want to get away from home can do so and still stay in-state. So what’s going on? “No. 1, we’ve got to keep players here,” TCU coach Gary Patterson said. “I think the Internet and everything else has led to that because kids go anywhere now to look at a school. It’s not regional. And we’ve got to do a better job of keeping them in the state. If you want to have great teams, you have to have great players. No doubt about it, that’s what we have to be able to do.”
Herman said there are no inherent challenges being a university in Texas, but that “the doors to out-of-state recruiting have been opened a little bit, and I kick myself every day because at Ohio State I think we had a little bit of something to do with that. When I came down here and signed J.T. Barrett and Dontre Wilson and Demetrius Knox and Mike Mitchell, I think that was a little bit different than what had been done in the past here in the state of Texas.
“So I think a lot of people feel like they can — especially when Texas is down. Other schools smell blood in the water a little bit. When we get (the University of) Texas back … I can’t imagine a scenario where you’d ever see not one team from the state of Texas in the top 25, as well as some of the other nonPower 5 schools that are playing in our state.”
Patterson didn’t reference Ohio State, but he did reference Texas A&M. The Aggies left the Big 12 in 2012 for the Southeastern Conference, and SEC recruiting in Texas has picked up since then.
“I think A&M going to the SEC hurt us a little bit because you have that common factor,” Patterson said. “But to be honest with you, I think the Big 12’s learning it’s helping us because we’re now leaving the state to be able to get kids to come into the state.
“But we should be embarrassed we don’t have a team in the top 25. There’s a lot of good football players, even that come to our schools, that can play and play at a high level, and we need to play better. It’s simple as that.”
That’s the kind of straight talk the Big 12 and Texas schools need.
“You should know me by now,” Patterson said. “We’re not going to make any excuses about how we do our business. We played at a high level for many years. A lot of the schools in this state have, and we need to get back to that. But I’ve always found it’s cyclical doing it. You’re going to have senior-oriented groups. You’re going to have young-oriented groups. And when you’re older, you’re going to be better. So for us, we have to get back to keeping the players here and the players we have here playing at a high level, and we need to win ballgames. There’s no secret to how you do that.”