Charlie’s Choices Rejoinder
I shared a column with you about the state of Charlie Strong’s rebuilding process written by Scipio Tex, the lead writer for Barking Carnival. If you haven’t read it, access it here. In my opinion, he is the best and most knowledgeable writer of anybody there is on the subject of Texas football.
I’ve read this article from start to finish three times, trying to determine whether Scipio is endorsing Strong’s performance so far and calling out fans who have lost their faith in Strong as unreasonable, kneejerk, and unsophisticated. My conclusion is he’s leaning in that direction. If he is, then as much as I like him as football writer and analyst, I’m calling him out for indulging in the condescension of the intelligentsia.
To build his case for Strong, Scipio cites Mack Brown’s tenure at North Carolina where he started 2-20 before posting a winning record in his third year, and eventually getting the Tarheels into the top 10. His inference here is that impatient Longhorn fans should take heed of the North Carolina administration’s virtuous patience and quit their carping. His point is worth noting, but for every instance he can cite where patience paid off, I’m sure thorough research would reveal an equal number of failures. Case in point – our own David McWilliams’ record in his first three years at Texas was 16-18, including 4-7 and 5-6 records in years two and three. He was granted a fourth year, and had a dream season in 1990, going 10-2 before reverting back to his mean of 5-6 in his fifth and final year.
Scipio concludes his article discussing the matter of faith.
Strong hasn’t helped himself in some key areas. Right now, faith in Strong is largely a matter of, well, faith. Faith that he’ll make the right coaching hire on offense, faith that he’ll close the 2016 recruiting class with the same miracles that he did in 2015, faith that his development plans are still on-line, faith that he’ll jettison a few of the generational peers on his staff where most programs house their ambitious ace recruiters, faith that he’ll persevere and sell us his vision on the field since he can’t do it from the pulpit.
I think one of my loyal readers — who happens to be my brother David — answers the faith question with home run here: I’ll stick by my belief that there are dozens of head coaches who could have, would have assembled an appropriate staff AT THE START OF THE FREAKING REBUILD.
Another one of my readers joined in with a point that Scipio Tex would have to tip his hat to: Compare Strong to Stoops first year at OU. He was a defensive coordinator like Strong. He hired Mike Leach and Leach went out and found Josh Heupel. Strong did nothing to upgrade the QB situation, even after the disasters at the end of last season. He also brought in a staff that had very little recruiting connections in Texas, and he kept the worst coach from Mack’s staff. I hope to be wrong, but I think it’s going to be a slow death march for a couple of years. By then a coach like Tom Herman will be long gone.
To conclude my rejoinder to Scipio, I will quote my father when he paraphrased the opening of “If” by Rudyard Kipling. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then maybe you don’t know what the hell is going on.
Lock of the Week
This is getting scary. Willie Earl’s lock of the week is still undefeated at 4-0 after last week’s pick of Houston -12.5 versus Vanderbilt.This week I’m going with the Cougars again at -8 at home versus Cincinnati.
HooK ‘eM,
W.E.
Over/Under Contest
[gravityform id=”24″ title=”true” description=”true”]
