Holgorsen says move ‘easy decision’
Former West Virginia football coach embraces big expectations at Houston
HOUSTON – The billionaire is not annoyed, necessarily, but he’s not having it. The topic is how and why Dana Holgorsen is Houston’s football coach, and, well ...
“I don’t understand,” Tilman Fertitta says. “What the hell is the big deal in going from West Virginia to the University of Houston?”
Of course, Fertitta understands. It absolutely is a very big deal for Houston to land Holgorsen. But start with this, from the coach.
“It was an easy decision,” Holgorsen says of leaving a Power Five program for a Group of Five school. Houston — the university, but also the city — is a place he says “has always been special to me … that always had a whole bunch of potential.”
Focus on that last word. Holgorsen, who was an assistant at Houston in 2008 and 2009, says the difference between what he knew then and what he’s found now is dramatic. Enrollment has exploded. Academics have elevated. Facilities have sprouted. And while the goal for the school and the coach is undoubtedly to win football games — a lot of football games, every season — there’s also much more involved in Holgorsen’s move.
“If we can continue the path of where it’s (gone) in the last 10-12 years, I’m telling you Houston’s gonna be in the conversation,” Holgorsen says. “So that’s all we care about. I don’t care about the rest of it.”
The rest of it is there, though. So here’s why it made sense for Holgorsen, after eight years at West Virginia, to leave: Negotiations on a contract extension had stalled. The Mountaineers were likely to take at least a half step back after the departure of a talented nucleus including quarterback Will Grier. And while Holgorsen says he loved West Virginia and had grown very comfortable in Morgantown — “We had everything kind of rolling in the right spot” — his affinity for the city of Houston had only grown through the years.
He maintained close ties, made regular trips back through the years to visit friends and even had a weekly appearance on a Houston radio station. He says the school’s location in one of the nation’s largest media markets helps offset the difference between the Big 12 and American Athletic conferences.
Houston is where Holgorsen cut his teeth as an offensive coordinator under Kevin Sumlin. In an office down the hall from the one he occupies now, he took what he’d learned at Texas Tech in Mike Leach’s Air Raid and added elements from other systems, including what Rich Rodriguez was doing with the run game at West Virginia.
“It was the first time I did it on my own,” he recalls. “We had a lot of good talks and long meetings in those offensive (meeting) rooms to develop a pretty good product, and we won a lot of games for two years.”
The move also made cents. Holgorsen signed a five-year, $20 million deal. As important is a $4.5 million salary pool for assistant coaches that matches what he had at West Virginia. Applewhite’s annual salary was $1.75 million; Houston’s previous assistant coaches’ pool was $2.14 million.
“There’s a commitment here,” Holgorsen says. “There’s high expectations, but there’s a commitment to what the program is and what the program needs.”
They’re paying for wins, of course. But they’re also trying to play a much longer game.
When the Big 12 considered expansion three years ago, Houston was among the candidates asked to make a pitch; the league’s decision not to expand still leaves the Cougars incensed. But Fertitta and others believe the opportunity will come at some point (When new media rights deals are negotiated? When the College Football Playoff expands?). Holgorsen’s hiring is another indication of the school’s intent to position itself for whatever the future might bring.
The narrative from Houston types goes something like this: The university’s trajectory was radically and negatively altered in the mid-1990s, when the Big 12 was formed from the Big Eight and four Southwest Conference schools. Houston had been a proud SWC member for a quarter century, but when the shuffling ended, the school was suddenly a have-not. The Cougars went from playing conference games against teams like Texas and Texas A&M to East Carolina and Southern Mississippi.
As the university’s athletics profile declined, so did fan interest. But in recent years, during the tenure of chancellor Renu Khator, the school has undergone a dramatic makeover. Enrollment is up 33% to more than 46,000. It has a designation as a Carnegie Tier One Research institution and has invested $1.2 billion in new facilities from 2007 to 2017.
That includes $282 million in athletics facilities. Along with 5-year-old TDECU Stadium, Houston has an indoor practice facility that’s the equal of any. There are plans — probably three years away, Holgorsen says — for a standalone football operations building.
It’s not coincidental that Houston’s basketball program has been revived under Kelvin Sampson. And in poaching Holgorsen from a Big 12 school, Houston signaled its continued intent to play football at the same level, and yes, to one day join a Power Five conference.
“Academically, and if we continue to win in football and basketball and baseball and other sports, I think we’re gonna be very attractive to every conference out there,” Fertitta says.
“Plus all the eyeballs in the city of Houston. It’s all about eyeballs today. … We have to do what we’re supposed to do. And if we do what we’re supposed to do, it’s all gonna work out. If we don’t, it won’t work out.
“But it’s on us. It’s on us to be better academically and athletically.”
Holgorsen’s immediate goal is to build roster depth. He’s excited about the talent he inherited, including senior quarterback D’Eriq King, part of a group that enrolled after a 13-1 season in 2015 that included a Peach Bowl win against Florida State. The surge was possible because of the school’s location in the heart of one of the nation’s most fertile recruiting grounds. Holgorsen’s staff will focus on Houston and then branch out along the I-10 corridor eastward into Louisiana, as well as northward into east Texas.
“He has as good a chance to win a national title here as he did at West Virginia,” Fertitta says. “You just have to win, OK?”
Well, probably not. Just ask Central Florida (which succeeded Tom Herman’s Houston teams to become the Group of Five’s best) if even winning them all in the American Athletic Conference is enough to reach the College Football Playoff.
The expectations at Houston skyrocketed after Herman went 22-4 in two years. When he moved to Texas after the 2016 season, Houston gauged Holgorsen’s interest before promoting Major Applewhite, who’d been Herman’s offensive coordinator.
“I think (Holgorsen) maybe always wished, ‘Maybe I should have gone to Houston,’ ” Fertitta says, “and we wished that we had tried harder to get him. But we’re all happy today.”
Along with Applewhite’s promotion came expectations, with Khator famously saying, “We’ll fire coaches at 8-4.” In two years under Applewhite, Houston was 7-5 and 8-4, and a 70-14 loss to Army in the Armed Forces Bowl was the final straw.
“I’ve been reminded of that a few times,” Holgorsen says, laughing. “It’s true. … The truth of the matter is, we want those high expectations and we want to be in that conversation. The only way you do that is if you win the league.”
He adds: “People are on the Central Florida bandwagon right now, as well they should be. That’s who they want to talk about right now. That was Houston four years ago, but we haven’t been there the last couple of years. The expectations here are not to be 8-5 and not in that conversation. We understand where we need to be, and where we’ve been the last couple years is not good enough, because people do forget about you.”
But Holgorsen says he’s in it for the long haul.
Clearly, Houston thinks the program is, too. If the expectations are outsized, so are the dreams — or rather, the plans.
“I’ve coached at the highest level in this deal,” Holgorsen says. “This is my next mission: to get the University of Houston in as good a place as we can get it, and build it the right way, and be in that conversation once it’s time to be in that conversation.”