Texas Football: 3 Tom Herman decommits that are shining elsewhere

Of all the decommitments that fourth-year Texas football head coach Tom Herman ever dealt with, which are the costliest and finding success elsewhere?

During his time with the Texas football program so far, fourth-year head coach Tom Herman found his share of successes and failures between the recruiting trail and actual results on the field. Texas consistently hauls in top ranked recruiting classes in the Big 12, and among the best in the entire country.

But that doesn’t usually matter all that much if they struggle to find success in the win column due to lack of player retention and/or player development. The latter of those two problems is something that really hurt Herman and the Longhorns over the course of the last few years. Outside of a solid run during the 2018 season, the Longhorns consistently fell short of meeting expectations.

Texas started out as a preseason top 15 team in both major polls again heading into the 2020 season, and really have yet to live up anywhere close to the hype. And this point of the 2020 college football season (entering Week 8), the Longhorns hold a record of 2-2 (1-2 Big 12) after falling short to the rival Oklahoma Sooners and TCU Horned Frogs to form the current two-game losing streak they find themselves on.

Unless the Longhorns get a big win over the Baylor Bears at home on Oct. 24, out of the bye week, Herman could be in real trouble. Texas needs to come up big down the stretch, but they’re pretty much out of College Football Playoff contention for good, and their fortunes in the Big 12 don’t look too good either.

With the pressure mounting on Herman heading into this showdown against Baylor, it’s interesting to look back at all of the past successes and failures that brought Herman to this point. He’s had his fair shares of each since starting out his head coaching career with the Houston Cougars more than five seasons ago.

Here’s a look back at some of those tough breaks for Herman as a head coach, and three of the costliest decommitments that turned out well during his coaching career to date.