Texas Football: Tom Herman gives his take on Urban Meyer rumors

Any rumors and hot seat discussion is something that Texas football head coach Tom Herman responded to this week in his press conference.

There was an eventful press conference that took place involving fourth-year Texas football head coach Tom Herman on Nov. 16. Coming out of the bye week, Herman spoke on a number of topics in his weekly press conference. But the most notable of those in terms of polarizing headlines was him addressing his job security and the Urban Meyer rumors.

It is interesting that Herman addressed the Meyer rumors in the first place, especially in such a spirited and detailed manner, like he did in this weekly press conference. It’s hard to tell if this is just Herman being frank and honest on this take, or getting legitimately frustrated with the discussion and where the Longhorns are at right now.

Or it very well could be both.

The subplots of this response from Herman to his job security and the Meyer rumors were more on the impact they have on the recruiting trail and how he’s trying to keep his current players away from all of this noise. But that’s not an easy task, especially amid all that is going on this year and with the roller coaster ride of a season the Longhorns had so far.

Here’s some of the more important points on which Herman spoke on this subject in his weekly press conference.

"The biggest mitigating factor in this is there’s a section of people, which is our program, our coaches — the people intimately involved in the day-to-day operations of our enterprise, if you will — that know the truth. And then there’s rumors. And there’s unnamed sources, there’s internet reporters with agendas that claim their own opinion as fact and hide behind unnamed sources and things of that nature. The player part is really easy, almost comical to the point where sometimes a kid will come up to me and say, ‘Coach, you’ll never guess what lunacy just came across my feed. This is crazy, right?’ The recruiting part is a different story because when you have the things that have been written about us in our program, myself and our future — very unfounded articles that state, again, opinion as fact, that state unnamed sources as being factual, it’s very hard to defend against. If I’m a competing recruiter, what do you do? You press ‘print’ and you say, ‘Look, this is true! It must be true! It’s on OrangeFans.com? It must be true!"

There was a lot that Herman specifically talked on in this part of his press conference. But there’s too much to jump into considering the rabbit hole he went down at times. Hopefully he and his team are still focused coming out of the bye week, and heading into this weekend’s matchup in Big 12 play against the Kansas Jayhawks and head coach Les Miles.

Texas is set to take on Kansas on the afternoon of Nov. 21, on the road in Lawrence. The Longhorns carry a record of 5-2 (4-2 Big 12) into this meeting with the Jayhawks. Their last game saw Texas upend head coach Neal Brown and the West Virginia Mountaineers in narrow fashion at home back on Nov. 7, by the final score of 17-13.

The results on the recruiting trail are also an important point to touch on here. Hopefully this response from Herman doesn’t indicate frustration with what he’s hearing from prospective targets on the trail for the remainder of the 2021 cycle ahead of the Early Signing Period next month.

Herman is still likely one bad game away from seeing more pressure come back onto his shoulders for the remainder of the season. He did stretch an impressive three-game winning streak prior to the bye week, including wins over West Virginia and the Oklahoma State Cowboys, though.