Solomon: With UH all in, losing isn’t an option.
The last time the University of Houston went to West Virginia in search of a head football coach, it landed its man.
Bob Pruett of Marshall. Pruett had just gone 49-4 in four seasons with the Thundering Herd, who moved up to Division I after winning the 1996 Division I-AA national championship, and was a bowl victory over BYU from completing the 1999 schedule with a perfect 13-0 record.
The move to UH was a major step up for Pruett.
He took the job, and the huge raise from $132,000 a year to nearly $1.5 million, on Friday, Dec. 10.
He gave it all back the next day.
For UH, which had to cancel a scheduled news conference for that Monday, Y2K was a problem.
UH quickly adjusted its plan and hired presumably the first coach named Dana to lead a college football team in Texas since the legendary Dana X. Bible. It did not go well.
Dana Dimel lasted three years and posted the worst winning percentage of any football coach
in school history.
Welcome to 2019, the year the University of Houston went all-in to get its man from West Virginia. His name is Dana, and he’s here to stay.
Or more accurately, former West Virginia head coach Dana Holgorsen, who was introduced as UH’s new coach on Thursday, is here to win.
Or else.
UH president Renu Khator said she is not bothered by the repeated mention of her seemingly off-the-cuff remark at a private party at her home a couple years ago.
She said then that “we’ll fire coaches at 8-4.”
“My expectations have always been high,” Khator said. “I always say ‘a nationally relevant program.’ You can argue with me about how do you (stay) nationally relevant.
“You tell me. Is there any other way to keep a nationally relevant program? You gotta have wins. You gotta dominate your conference. You gotta win conference championships. (Do that) and the road to a New Year’s Day bowl game is pretty open.”
Swinging for the fences
If you don’t appreciate and applaud the expectations Khator and Tilman Fertitta, the chairman of the board of regents, have set for the school’s athletic department, you’re probably not well-versed in UH athletic history.
Criticize their batting stance, pitch selection and execution, but there is nothing wrong with them swinging for the fences.
Khator believes “a winning athletic program is an asset to a university; a mediocre one is a liability.”
“I’m a firm believer if you’re going to have an athletic program, have an excellent one,” she said.
Luring Holgorsen to Houston is a move unlike any hire the school has made.
Never have the Cougars hired someone who was the head coach in even one bowl before stepping on the UH campus. Holgorsen spent the last eight years at WVU, leading the Mountaineers to a 61-41 record and seven bowl appearances.
The UH way has been much more like what it did in hiring Holgorsen’s predecessor Major Applewhite, a former assistant who was hired after Tom Herman left for Texas and fired after just two seasons.
Applewhite’s Cougars finished this regular season in the Khator danger zone of 8-4, then were walloped by a record 56 points by Army in an otherwise meaningless bowl. That defeat convinced UH brass that Applewhite wasn’t capable of making the program nationally relevant.
From the program’s inception, when it hired its first football coach — Jewell Wallace from San Antonio Jefferson High School — UH has been a place where inexperienced coaches could get a shot.
Horgorsen not a gamble
Only two of the previous 14 coaches hired at UH had been a college head coach before coming to UH. Bill Meek (1955-56) spent four seasons at Kansas State, and Harold Lahar (1957-61) worked at Colgate for five years.
The most experienced and accomplished coach to come to UH was Jack Pardee, who had been a head coach in three professional leagues before bringing the run-and-shoot to UH.
Who knows what Holgorsen will do at UH, but this isn’t truly gambling per se. UH has nothing to lose. Each of its previous hires was a bigger gamble.
Without putting up the money to lure Holgorsen from West Virginia, UH would be a wannabe program hoping to make enough noise to be invited to ante up at the highstakes table where Power Five conferences play.
By investing so much — a $4 million average salary and another $4.5 million annually for assistant coaches — UH is still a wannabe program hoping to make enough noise to be dealt in at the highstakes table.
But the latter move, a salary total more than double the $2.1 million pool Herman was given to hire a staff in 2015, gives it a better chance.
Applewhite didn’t get that chance because UH didn’t believe he was going to make that happen.
Ten years ago, UH fans were using old-fashioned
‘He’d better win’
Sumlin and his staff were paid less than the $4 million a year Holgorsen will take home himself.
Holgorsen was part of that staff, making $187,200 as the offensive coordinator. He comes back for more than 21 times that much.
He met Khator back then. She doesn’t remember.
“I barely knew the head coaches then,” Khator said with a smile.
When she met Holgorsen this time around, for an interview on the recommendation of Fertitta and athletic director Chris Pezman, she was impressed.
“He’s the right choice, but he’d better win,” she said with another smile.
Holgorsen doesn’t seem to be intimidated by that.
“Make no mistake about it,” he said, “we’re here to win championships.”
He’d better. UH fires coaches at 8-4. jerome.solomon@chron.com twitter.com/jeromesolomon troughs in the men’s bathrooms at raggedy Robertson Stadium, and Kevin Sumlin was the seventhhighest paid coach in lowly Conference USA.