Former Texas football OL coach Herb Hand hired by UCF

More and more former coaches on staff with the Texas football program from last year’s team are finding new homes in the midst of the 2021 offseason. Once now former fourth-year Texas head coach Tom Herman was let go last month, the opportunity to re-shift the coaching staff for the second straight offseason appeared on the Forty Acres.

Back on Jan. 2, Herman was replaced by the former Alabama Crimson Tide offensive coordinator and the reigning Broyles Award winner Steve Sarkisian. Sark will be the fourth head coach in a span of less than a decade on the Forty Acres.

There’s a lot of excitement brewing among Longhorns fans about where this program is headed following all of this coaching staff change early in the offseason. Sark has sparked a lot of excitement both with how he filled out his coaching staff and the results he’s found on the recruiting trail thus far.

Background of the former Texas football assistant

Moreover, the latest former Texas assistant coach to find a new home this offseason is the former offensive line coach/co-offensive coordinator Herb Hand. According to a report from the Orlando Sentinel on the evening of Feb. 18, Hand will serve as the next offensive line coach for the UCF Knights in the American Athletic Conference.

For three years, Hand served as the Longhorns offensive line coach after parting ways with former Auburn Tigers head coach Gus Malzahn in Alabama a few years back. Hand was Auburn’s offensive line coach from 2016-2017, as one of his first big Power Five positional coaching jobs.

In fact, it was just three days ago that the Knights announced Malzahn as their next head coach. Auburn parted ways with Malzahn earlier in the offseason after another year of falling short of expectations with that blue blood program.

Hand will now get to re-join Malzahn’s staff for the first time in more than three years.

Prior to Hand’s offensive line coaching job with Auburn that started back in 2016, he was an assistant with the Penn State Nittany Lions from 2014-2015. Penn State was his first truly big assistant coaching gigs in the Power Five ranks.

Before taking the job with Penn State, Hand served in various roles with the likes of the Vanderbilt Commodores, West Virginia Mountaineers, Tulsa Golden Hurricane, etc. He’s a longtime offensive line coach in the college football coaching ranks.

Under the direction of the former head coach Herman, Texas finished up with a record of 7-3 (5-3 Big 12) last season after winning five of their last six games. Their last game resulted in a 55-23 drubbing of the Colorado Buffaloes in the Alamo Bowl back on Dec. 29.