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Posted
4 hours ago, SL Xpress said:

Just to dovetail on this, because I feel like this is an important point regarding Texas recruiting. This isn't for a Texas Tech audience. This is for fellow Longhorn fans.

I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole of the 70s and 80s, because that's it's own thing, but it did set a foundation for the pure as the driven snow approach the administration, the coaching staff, and frankly, all of us fans took regarding our football program.

In the late 90s Mack Brown arrived and shifted the entire dynamics for how to recruit Texas. He locked the state down. Texas went on a facilities spending spree that no one else could even approach. Brown was a Svengali wizard with closing skills even Alec Baldwin could admire. But things changed towards the middle of the 2000s. There were mistakes made on the Texas side, so it's not all on every one else. But this is when 7 on 7s first becoming popular, where you were falling behind in development and exposure if you didn't participate. It was the beginning of the personal trainer era. All of this had been going on in basketball since the 80s, but high school football coaches had held on as the gatekeepers, at least in Texas, into the mid 2000s.

Saban was the first to industrialize the new dynamic. Suddenly Alabama was tossing out 300+ offers per recruiting cycle, with the caveat that they weren't "committable" offers. To make it committable, you had to make it to one of the Alabama camps. How were you going to get to one of the camps? Well, Alabama would pay your way. This was the start of the paid unofficial visits, which are basically de rigeur and have been the worst kept secret in college football recruiting for a decade and a half. They would spread around hefty bonuses to third parties who could get talented players to their campus. Soon the whole SEC was participating in these shenanigans, and not long thereafter, the rest of the college football world as well. Especially Clemson, Oregon, and Ohio State. 

Mack Brown, and then Charlie Strong after him, refused to play this game. We wouldn't do anything to establish relationships with third parties because we still felt like the key relationship was with the Texas high school football coaches. We also wouldn't move up our recruiting cycle, because Mack Brown felt like kids should finish their junior season first. So not only were we not compensating players in the same way schools like Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State were doing, we also were refusing to work with third parties, we weren't willing to compensate players for visiting the campus on an unofficial visit, we weren't helping defray costs much less financially reward people for bringing talented players to campus. 

And in the meantime all of us - and I include myself in this - would feel good about how tight we were able to wear our halos. I remember the first time I had my road to Damascus moment was when it was apparent we had a legitimate shot at Saban. At the time he felt like he had no chance to compete with Bear Bryant's legacy at Alabama, but if he could become the first coach to win 3 national titles at 3 different schools, that's something he could be remembered for. It's laughable now, but at the time none of us - including Saban himself - understood the dominant run he was about to go on. I thought about it, and realized I wanted to win so badly in this new environment, that if hiring Saban was the price we had to pay, I was all in. Then Dodds and Brown managed to cockblock him, and the opportunity vanished.

I remember when we were hiring Tom Herman, and I told a collection of hardcore fans that we were going to start working with third parties and paying for unofficial visits, and everyone was aghast. "Oh, we don't do that at Texas." Yeah, we don't, and we're getting our heads handed to us in recruiting because we don't. You have to make the decision whether you're willing to compete in the big time, and right now we are literally making the deliberate decision we don't want to. It's not possible to compete in this environment without working with third parties and without helping with unofficial visits. That's anywhere. 

I'll also say that the reason Texas is in the position it's in regarding NIL has very little to do with the coaching staff or the administration. People don't understand how hard it is to do anything from the grassroots level without buy in from the heads of the organizations they're ostensibly trying to help. It's one of the hardest things in human society. It's unbelievably hard. I'm not going to say the administration sabotaged NIL efforts, but they sure didn't make it easy. They saw it as a threat, not an opportunity.

The folks who worked on NIL at the beginning are heroes to me. I mean that literally. I did nothing to help, but as a fan I get to reap the rewards of unending cold calling, unending hearing the word no, unending education of the stakeholders. Yes, we have a rich alumni base, but not that many of them wanted to invest in NIL. We don't have a Phil Knight $30 billionaire whale bankrolling our entire operation. Even now the administration would prefer in some ways to have the $20.5 million figure be the ceiling for payroll costs, but if we abided by their wishes we'd be ceding the field to the Texas Techs of the world. 

I say ad nauseum that you have to have the right coach. All the support in the world doesn't matter if the wrong guy is in charge. Neither Charlie Strong nor Tom Herman nor late Mack Brown would be successful in the current environment at Texas. It would simply buttress their collective incompetence. I feel like Sarkisian is the right guy. I can't say I felt that when he was hired. I certainly didn't feel that way after his first two years. But the way he's built the program, the way he's built his staff, the consistent development I see in Longhorn players in ways I never have before. The narrative he paints about changing the culture, with the GPA, the "way you are some of the time is the way you are all the time" line, the way he and his staff vet the players they go after. The work ethic. The transparency. The results on the field. I'm a believer.

But without being willing to compete in the same way the programs around us are competing would tie the hands behind the back of whoever the head coach happened to be. I am grateful the people who are in a position to make these kinds of decisions are choosing the path they're choosing. 

Please no spoilers in express’s novel. I’m almost done reading it. Need one more day. 

  • Haha 4
Posted
2 minutes ago, Tired Horn said:

So, what are the golden days of Tech football? Off the top of my head, here are the top three in my football watching lifetime:

1. 1973 - Jim Carlen and Joe Barnes produced an 11-1 season with a Gator Bowl win over Tennessee. Might have beaten Texas to finish the regular season unbeaten if the game had been in Lubbock instead of Austin. Final rank = 11.  

2. 2008 - Mike Leach went 11-2 just  in time for a contract extension that they ran him off to be rid of the next year. Final rank = 12.

3. 1976 - Steve Sloan and Rodney Allison (with a little known assistant coach named Bill Parcels) went 10-2 and almost went to the Cotton Bowl. Final rank = 13.

As far as a sustained era, I'd pick Leach. He got Tech consistent television coverage, making them feel relevant even when they were mediocre.

Good luck in winning the Medium 12, you occasionally Red, occasionally Black Raiders.

 

 

I'd have to agree, I got to Tech as a freshman in Leach's first year. 

Posted
2 minutes ago, Tired Horn said:

So, what are the golden days of Tech football? Off the top of my head, here are the top three in my football watching lifetime:

1. 1973 - Jim Carlen and Joe Barnes produced an 11-1 season with a Gator Bowl win over Tennessee. Might have beaten Texas to finish the regular season unbeaten if the game had been in Lubbock instead of Austin. Final rank = 11.  

2. 2008 - Mike Leach went 11-2 just  in time for a contract extension that they ran him off to be rid of the next year. Final rank = 12.

3. 1976 - Steve Sloan and Rodney Allison (with a little known assistant coach named Bill Parcels) went 10-2 and almost went to the Cotton Bowl. Final rank = 13.

As far as a sustained era, I'd pick Leach. He got Tech consistent television coverage, making them feel relevant even when they were mediocre.

Good luck in winning the Medium 12, you occasionally Red, occasionally Black Raiders.

 

 

Mike Leach also had Cody Campbell and John Sellers on his roster. That looks like it might be one of the biggest parts of his legacy at Texas Tech. 

  • Like 1
Posted
8 minutes ago, Hookem10 said:

Please no spoilers in express’s novel. I’m almost done reading it. Need one more day. 

ok, but it's here if you want to peek

 

Spoiler

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Posted
3 minutes ago, SL Xpress said:

Mike Leach also had Cody Campbell and John Sellers on his roster. That looks like it might be one of the biggest parts of his legacy at Texas Tech. 

There are many measures of Leach's greatness, whether it was his eventual coaching tree, his innovation and influence on the game, or even his focus on academics when players still followed a 4-5 year program- in case you forgot, he had  RB Edward Britton sitting at a desk on the field during practice one year for not focusing on the books.  His grad rates were relatively stellar, especially compared with what he inherited in 1999.

Maybe it is by definition the Leach curse, but in his last season at Tech, one which was recognized as an absolute rebuilding campaign, his team went 9-4, including the Alamo Bowl he wasn't allowed to coach.  In the subsequent 15 seasons, the Red Raiders never topped 8 wins, regardless of the circumstances.  IMHO, that is an additional measure of the man's legacy.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted
On 8/12/2025 at 12:54 PM, TrashMaster G said:

oRM28U.gif

 

This one is too good for just a .gif that ends before you see that dude wobble around in the spirit world. His kids are probably still concussed thanks to Vasher

 

Posted
16 hours ago, Brian Fantana said:

There's a best buy too

The Bears have to drive to Dallas to go the Cheesecake Factory. I’m told there’s also one of those in Lubbock. They just don’t put Cheesecake Factories anywhere.

Posted
11 hours ago, Frank Drebin said:

You’re seeing now what it is like if UT could pay players.  

Oh those dark times when Texas didn't out-talent other teams.  I 'member...

Posted
55 minutes ago, Iceman said:

Oh those dark times when Texas didn't out-talent other teams.  I 'member...

You can be obtuse all you want.  But if you cannot see the difference, I do not know what to tell you.

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Going to be another 10 in 2026.

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