Gap with OU is getting wider
By any measure, Sooners enjoying far more success
AUSTIN — Vince Young was in Atlanta on Tuesday night. It was the 62nd annual National Football Federation Annual Awards Dinner, and the former Longhorn was to be one of 13 new College Football Hall of Fame inductees.
Young was there because he deserved to be. He was a supernova who orchestrated one of the greatest seasons in Texas history, one that ended with a touchdown run played seemingly on an endless loop at every Longhorns sporting event.
In another sense, Young was also in Atlanta as a remnant of the program’s triumphant past, a time when Texas wasn’t a Big 12 also-ran alongside every other team outside Norman, Okla. Double-digit wins, top-10 rankings and oodles of draft picks were the norm during the Mack Brown era.
After last season’s success, it seemed Texas was set on challenging the Sooners’ hegemony in 2019. That dream died Oct. 12 in Dallas, much to the frustration of Young and anyone else with a stake in the Horns.
No. 4 Oklahoma (12-1, 8-1 Big 12) outlasted Baylor en route to its fifth straight conference title. It is now back in the College Football Playoff for the fourth time in six seasons, the fourteam tournament Texas (7-5, 5-4) hasn’t sniffed even once.
Truth is, the gap between the two most prominent teams in the Big 12 is expanding, not contracting. Even factoring in Brown’s run, Oklahoma has been far more successful than Texas this century.
The Longhorns have finished with more wins than the Sooners only four times since 2000 and never since 2009, when they lost to Alabama in the BCS championship game. OU has ranked higher in the final Associated Press poll in 16 of those 20 seasons, and since 2010 it has produced as many No. 1 overall draft picks (three) as UT has total first-round picks.
The point is Oklahoma has just been flat better this millennium, and it’s not particularly close. It’s even handled its crises better, whether that be last year’s post-Red River Showdown firing of defensive coordinator Mike Stoops, the smooth transition from Bob Stoops to Lincoln Riley, or how it handled Baker Mayfield’s fratty antics.
Texas hasn’t enjoyed such sharp stewardship.
The breakup with Brown was messy. Steve Patterson’s reign as athletic director was a disaster, a twoyear period some around the program likened to the Dark Ages. Charlie Strong was well liked, but several UT boosters and power players never fully bought in, and he struggled to turn starry recruiting classes into winners.
There have been numerous transfers and decommitments under Tom Herman, though Texas still is set to bring in its third straight top-10 recruiting class. But that success in drawing top talent, even dating back to Brown and Strong, has made the Longhorns’ perpetual struggles all the more confounding.
Herman last month said he and the current staff hadn’t done a good enough job developing the droves of talented recruits who have flocked to Austin. There’s a bit more leeway for coaches when they’re trying to turn coal to diamonds, but UT’s four- and five-star recruits arrive fairly polished.
Herman hopes replacing defensive coordinator Todd Orlando, offensive coordinator Tim Beck and pass game coordinator/receivers coach Drew Mehringer will help the team solve that development problem. And he doesn’t believe the coaching turnover, the first of his Texas tenure, will hurt on the recruiting trail.
“Really it’s a much simpler discussion with recruits than I think people realize,” Herman said Thursday. “Assistant coaches want to be coordinators, and coordinators want to be head coaches. To think that you’re going to play for the same position coach and/or coordinator for your entire career, that’s pretty rare.
“The trust has to be in myself as the leader of the organization, the strength of the staff.”
Texas is now 14 years removed from Young’s run of greatness. And nearly a full decade has passed since Colt McCoy was knocked out in the first quarter of the 2009 BCS championship game against Alabama.
Since then, the Longhorns have been doing the whole “Moses getting lost in the desert” thing while Oklahoma sits easy on the throne. Herman and Texas just have to hope it doesn’t take 40 years to finally reach the promised land.