Texas coach Charlie Strong hasn’t asked anyone to stick up for him publicly when it comes to fallout surrounding a rash of player dismissals, but he’s had no shortage of allies stand behind him after several pundits decided three games was long enough to determine the Strong-to-Texas move won’t work.
Strong’s early results became the topic du jour at ESPN Wednesday. Following comments by ESPN SEC commentator Paul Finebaum and top analyst Kirk Herbstreit, the network dedicated a half-hour to the new Texas coach in its Outside the Lines show.
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“You got blown out by BYU and came up short against UCLA,” Kannell said. “Now you’re seeing guys being removed from the team…I’m very concerned that Charlie Strong is losing that locker room.”
Finebaum picked up the scent and immediately declared 2014 a lost season for Texas already.
“Kicking off players is a good start, but it’s not going to be enough and I think this season is already lost for the Longhorns,” he said. “They played a competitive game against UCLA, but that’s not what Texas is all about, being competitive. Texas is about national championships and I’m not sure Charlie Strong is headed in the right direction.”
Herbstreit, ESPN and ABC’s lead analyst, spoke with Mike Golic during Wednesday’s Mike and Mike radio show and called the remarks insane.
“Charlie Strong isn’t the first coach to come around and kick guys off of a team because he’s trying to change the culture,” Herbstreit said. “It happens to be a high profile place and it happens to be a school that’s been struggling since their ’09 national championship [appearance]. The idea that three or four weeks in that he’s not a right fit for Texas I think is insane.”
By Wednesday, Finebaum hadn’t changed his tune when talking to Bob Ley on OTL .
“That is a very tough job to succeed at if you don’t win big and I’m not sure when and where Charlie Strong is going to win big,” Finebaum said. He also said Strong isn’t a good fit because he isn’t a politician of a coach.
“To be the head coach at Texas you have to answer to a lot of people,” Finebaum continued. “There are 10, 15, 20 guys who think they have a seat at the table because they give a lot of money and I think that’s where Charlie Strong has had a little bit of a problem and I think that’s where he’ll have a bigger problem down the road assuming he can win on the football field which I’m not sure he can either.”
Strong doesn’t feel that he answers to upwards of 20 people. ESPN writer Tim Keown, part of the OTL panel discussing Strong, suggested that, those 20 people are part of the culture that needs to change.
“If there are 15 or 20 people who believe their checkbook buys them the right to dictate what happens on the football field, perhaps that’s the part of the culture that needs to be changed, not the coach who is laying out rules, having discipline and then dismissing players who don’t follow the rules,” he said.
Strong believes he answers to Athletic Director Steve Patterson. If there are high dollar donors to assuage, that falls to Patterson, Austin-based reporter Chip Brown explained.
“Charlie is not a PR guy,” he said. “He’s a football coach. He’s in the bunker with those guys. He’s around them all the time.”
While Texas’ deep-pocketed donors surely can get their audience with Patterson, Strong remains entrenched with the team, working diligently to change what he inherited for the better the only way he knows how, by installing his rules, living by them and making sure everyone else knows they better. That’s the way to win a locker room, former Ohio State and NFL receiver Joey Galloway said on the program.
“Players respect that,” Galloway said. “They know who the bad guys are. They know who is getting in the way of winning football games. And when a guys steps in says ‘I’m going to get rid of the things that make us lose football games,’ even if that’s a teammate guys will respect that and follow you.”
At the end of the debate, only Finebaum and Kannell suggest that Strong is a bad fit and that he’s in danger of losing the locker room. Brown, who’s covered the Longhorns for better than two decades with numerous organizations, currently HornsDigest.com, said Strong is in complete control of the situation and to suggest otherwise is foolish, regardless of the 1-2 start to the season.
“[Strong’s] got his hands full,” Brown said. “Charlie Strong does not waver and he’s going to do things his way. These players believe in him. I don’t know where Paul Finebaum gets his information, but I’m on the ground here [in Austin] and these players are buying in to Strong.”
Finebaum even asked the man Strong followed about the dismissals of players he recruited. If Finebaum was fishing for someone to disagree with the path Strong has taken, he came up empty. Brown called player turnover amidst a coaching change normal, and people are paying closer attention to these because, well, it’s Texas, as outlined in a USA Today summary of the interview.
“The one thing about Texas, the good and the bad, it’s a lightning rod,” the former coach and current ESPN analyst said. “When I asked Coach Royal the best thing about coaching at Texas, he said 27 million people care about what you do every day of your life. I asked what is the worst thing about Texas and he said 27 million people care about every moment of your life.”
He summed up the situation honestly and professionally.
“It’s his team,” Brown said of Strong’s first eight months. “He has a right to do whatever he wants. I have not had an opinion of those… I do know this and I think Charlie would tell you the same thing: No coach ever wants to run off a kid. You want to save them.”
These eight months have proven two things: Charlie Strong can’t save every player, and it’s way too early to say he can’t save the program.
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