Fans, Negativity and Texas Football

It’s been difficult to be a fan of Texas football lately.  On this, the 10th anniversary of the Longhorns’ magical win over USC in the 2006 Rose Bowl, we are all reminded of how great Texas football used to be.

As well as how far the program has fallen.

Since I came onboard Hook’em Headlines, there haven’t been many positives to write about.  As such, I”ve developed a reputation for being excessively negative.  I admit it.  I own it.  Part of that negativity is driven by circumstance and part of it is just who I am.  I’m not a sunshine pumper.  Sorry.

There are, in my estimation, three main types of sports fans.  You have the casuals.  They tune in, watch the game, have fun and when it is all over they go about their business.  They don’t think much about what just happened or what’s ahead.

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I can be this fan with other teams, but not with the Longhorns.  My emotional investment is too high.

Then you have the sunshine pumpers.  You can’t say anything bad about your team and you never, ever boo your team. We’ve got a lot of those out there.  If you came to be a Longhorn fan during the Mack Brown era, you’re excused. No one pumped sunshine better than Mack Brown. No one.

Then you have the criticals. The ones who never seem to be satisified.  The ones who always want more.  Believe it or not, there are far more critical fans out there than me.  I was perfectly content with Mack Brown’s eight wins and a decent bowl game trajectory when most criticals were ready to burn his house down to get him out of town.

You are the type of fan you are.  There’s no right or wrong. I wish I could be as uninvested as a casual, but would it be as much fun? I get not talking bad about your team, but sometimes they deserve it. If I think my team is playing crap ball, I’ll say it. If I think they are underperforming, I’ll call it. Being a fan doesn’t mean that you have to turn a blind eye.

The sad fact is, right now there is a lot of negativity and uncertainty surrounding Texas football. There are also a lot of things to be positive about as well.  The problem is, the positives are all about potential and they are all contingent on future outcomes that no one can predict.

The negatives, on the other hand, are very concrete.  They are front and center for all the world to see. That is why it is so easy to be negative about the Longhorns.  Now that we’re a month removed from the Longhorns last game and the college football season is all but over, lets take a look at both sides of that coin and try to gauge where Longhorn fans should be.

The Positives

There is a lot to be excited about if you’re a Texas fan. For one, the will he stay or will he go drama surrounding Charlie Strong is, for the time, a thing of the past. You’d have to be a fool to think that all of the rumors and the speculation didn’t have an effect on the team this past season. Most teams don’t operate well in chaos.

Now that Strong is secure for the time being he has responded, hitting the recruiting trail hard. There are already some positive returns and some good buzz out there. It looks like Strong might be able to salvage a class that looked underwhelming for most of the year.

Then there is all the young talent that is already at Texas. The youth movement of 2015 could wind up paying big dividends down the road. So far, the Horns are following Strong’s Louisville blueprint almost to the letter.  If that holds, then 2016 promises to bring a return to fun times and good football, two things that have been sorely lacking over the last six seasons.

Then there is the hiring of Sterlin Gilbert and Mike Mattox to run the offense. Both appear to be improvements over Shawn Watson and Joe Wickline.  Both appear to be young, talented, hungry and eager.

You see the problem with all of those.  If.  Should.  Might.

Strong is secure in his position. Until the next ugly loss.

The recruiting class is coming together. If Strong can win some intense head-to-head battles and plug some key holes. 

The young talent is promising. As long as they continue to develop and don’t flatline. 

Texas is following the Louisville pattern. Unless 2012 and 2013 were flukes driven more by a generational talent at QB than anything Strong did. 

Gilbert and Mattox will make the offense better. If the small school coaches aren’t in way over their head.

None of those positives are solid. That’s not to mean that they aren’t reasons to be excited. It’s not to rain on anyone’s parade. The fact is, the light at the end of the tunnel is far away and it might be heaven but it might be the D train barrelling down the tracks towards us. We just don’t know.

We have no way to know.  Not for several months, anyway.

The Negatives

The negatives, on the other hand, are very real and very familiar. The Horns still failing to address glaring weaknesses at important positions such as quarterback, defensive tackle and safety.  Their defense has been historically atrocious in three of the last four years.  The offense has been dreadful.  Strong’s obvious weakness in hiring assistant coaches, something that also plagued him at Louisville.

Longhorn fans have been repeatedly slapped in the face by these things. The on-field product has declined from top fight to good to frightening average and at times flat out putrid. There’s no way to put a happy face on some of the craptastic performances Texas has put on recently.  Even Mack Brown couldn’t have pumped any sunshine after that 24-0 shutout at Iowa State.

The poor recruiting and development that has carried over both staffs.  The penchant for getting outcoached. These things are all real and fresh in our memories. They don’t require distant prognostication.

So yes, it is easy to get sucked down in the quicksand. The fact is, there just hasn’t been much to feel good about. When Texas fans who once bemoaned 10-3 records as subpar are celebrating narrow escapes against a Baylor team quarterbacked by a wide receiver, you know that people are grasping at straw that will make them feel good again.

Personally, I find it hard to be optimistic because I see a lot of the same tell-tale signs that marked the decline of the first Golden Age of Texas football and it concerns me.  This goes beyond Strong and recruiting and blow out losses.

When Darrell Royal’s powerbase began to weaken in the 70s, the cracks in the foundation were filled with lots of people with multiple and sometimes conflicting agendas and not all of them really cared about what was in the best interest of Texas football.

When wealthy boosters and image-conscious suits start trying to run the football program, the football program suffers.  When I think about the last few years at Texas, of Rick Perry’s vendetta against Bill Powers, Red McCombs openly questioning the Strong hire, the Steve Patterson ordeal,  I see the same dysfunctionality that wrecked this program once before.

The same dysfunctionality that took DeLoss Dodds fifteen years to fix.

I think about the botched hiring of Sonny Cumbie and the near fumble with Gilbert and I see that dysfunctionality. When Charlie Strong needed Mike Perrin and Greg Fenves to be there, they weren’t.  Not until it was almost too late.

The same goes for Strong.  I see a lot of John Mackovic in Charlie Strong. Both were specialists on one side of the ball who struggled with the other side. Both were keen evaluators of talent whose teams often beat themselves with sloppy, undiscipline play.  Both were capable of getting their teams up for big games but struggled to motivate their teams consistently.

Texas Longhorns

In the end, none of us know anything for sure. Strong could be on the verge of another breakthrough that will see Texas soar back into the elite.  If that happens, we can all pretend that we just woke up and found Bobby in the shower and it was all just a bad dream.

Or Strong might be the bridge between two dynasties, like Ron Zook at Florida.  Destined to fail but a necessary step in the process.  If this is the case, though, Texas fans will have to endure several more years of futilitybefore getting back to the mountaintop.

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So we all face our choices.  Look to the positives and the hope of a brighter tomorrow or wallow in the misery that we’ve been subjected to for too long. We all deal with things in our own way.  We all bleed orange, even if we show it differently.