Texas’ Strong goes public
Reticent coach learning to deal with glare of Longhorns’ spotlight
Late one night, he walked into a store, asked to see the manager and announced: “I want to do something here.”
This was last December, back in Louisville. But after admitting to playing Secret Santa, Charlie Strong doesn’t want to divulge many more of the details.
He reveals only that he told the manager he wanted to “pay someone’s layaway off, to go pay a store’s layaway off,” and that he should be identified only as a “sports figure.”
Was Strong the anonymous benefactor who made news by giving more than $13,000 to pay off Christmas expenses for 169 families last December at a Louisville-area Walmart?
“That’s one I can’t talk about,” Strong said. “The people back there would kill me.”
Clearly, Strong wants to remain at least partly anonymous, even as he knows it’s not really possible. Not back there at Louisville. And certainly not in his new job as Texas football coach.
“Around here, no, you cannot be,” Strong said. “You try to be. You drop your head, but you cannot be.”
Since Strong was hired to replace Mack Brown, there haven’t been many questions about his credentials, at least not when it comes to coaching football. In his final two years at Louisville, the Cardinals were 23-3, including a Sugar Bowl victory against Florida.
But at Texas, the head coach’s job description famously involves much more than football.
You have to win — big. Given the enormous resources of the nation’s richest athletics department, and in no small part because of the success Brown had in rebuilding the program before its recent slide, the perpetual expectation is to chase the national championship.
Texas started spring practice Tuesday with 13 returning starters from an 8-5 season. The positive spin is that the Longhorns were in the thick of the Big 12 championship race until late in the season and their returning nucleus is talented.
Reality is the Longhorns lost to BYU, Mississippi, Oklahoma State and Baylor last year and never threatened to beat Oregon in the Alamo Bowl.
Regardless, any honeymoon for the new coach will last until the first loss. But winning is only a piece of what’s required.
In his 16 seasons, which included a Bowl Championship Series national title and a runner-up finish, Brown excelled in the very visible roles of spokesman, ambassador and politician. To use Brown’s analogy, he found a way for a long time to “keep all of the BBs in the box.” At Texas, there are a lot of BBs. At Louisville with far fewer obligations and a lot less pressure, Strong developed a reputation for being at best indifferent to external relations. With the news media and the public, he was seen as inaccessible, even aloof.
Asked about the perception, Strong pointed to a day when, after no reporters showed up for spring practice because Louisville’s basketball team was playing in the NCAA tournament, he closed the rest of his practices to the news media.
“I said, ‘OK, if y’all don’t want to come, y’all don’t have to come,’ ” Strong said. “So we shut off the practices. Everybody got upset, but you could have sent a beat writer, a student or someone (to practice). I think that’s where that came from.”
Maybe it’s that simple, although it usually isn’t. Lack of media attention won’t be an issue at Texas, which is tracked daily by dozens of reporters — and that’s not even counting the Longhorn Network — and is nationally relevant even when the on-field product isn’t nationally ranked.
But Strong says he doesn’t really want to hide, and he has drawn positive reviews for his first few moves, both internal (requiring most players to live on campus, pushing spring practice back a few weeks to get in more conditioning) and external.
“You have to embrace it,” Strong said, referring to the demands of the job. “When you do get an opportunity to meet a lot of people, I take time out. I don’t ever want anyone to ever feel like I’m bigger than anyone or that this job is bigger than this university. It’s all about the program.”
He has worked hard at other important outreach, too. Strong is known as a very good recruiter, but he has little experience in Texas. One day last month, he flew to the Dallas area to speak at a regional high school coaches meeting. From there, he flew to Katy to speak at a regional high school coaches meeting. From there, he flew to New Braunfels to speak at a regional high school coaches meeting. By 1 p.m., he was back on campus, ready to host a bunch of recruits on junior day.
“It’s all part of it,” he said. “That’s what you have to do.”
And again, he added: “It’s all about the program.”
But some of the work is different at a place where noted fan Matthew McConaughey leaves phone messages — Strong said he planned to call the Academy Award-winning actor back soon — and where, while taking a run on one of his first days in Austin, he was recognized and then chased. Strong just ran away. Usually, it isn’t an issue. The 53-year-old runs an average of maybe 30 miles a week, rising six days a week at 4:30 a.m. to clip off five or six miles. He regularly finds himself running down a new block on a different route, getting to know another part of his new city. During those runs, he especially likes the residential areas near the campus.
“People are asleep,” Strong said.