Texas Football: 5 worst coaching hires in Longhorns history
While Texas football is one of the most well-recognized and traditionally successful college football programs of all time, the last decade has cast a dark cloud over the Forty Acres for the most part. The 2010s and early 2020s were not the friendliest to the Texas program.
In terms of records by decade, the Longhorns had two of the three worst win percentages in the program’s history during the 2010s and so far through the 2020s. The only decade worse than the 2010s for the Longhorns in terms of win percentage (71-57 aggregate record, .555 win %) was the 1930s (47-44 aggregate record, .517 win %).
Texas had some missteps during the 2010s in terms of subpar coaching hires, thus player development suffered. It looks like it will take a while for the Longhorns to recover heading into the mid-2020s under the current regime led by head coach Steve Sarkisian.
Sark seems to have the program headed in the right direction heading into his third season with the Longhorns, improving the team’s record by three wins year-over-year in 2022 (5-7 to 8-5).
It would obviously be great to see Sark get the Longhorns back to the point of national prominence that the fans on the Forty Acres have become used to in the last few decades. But he’ll have to avoid making some of the missteps that some of the recent coaches did that got the program in the hole that he is still digging out of.
Worst head coaching hires in Texas football history
With that in mind, here’s a look at the five worst coaching hires of all time for the Longhorns.
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5. Ed Price (1951-1956)
Record: 33-27 (.549 winning percentage)
The era of Texas football that existed under head coach Ed Price consisted of two very different sagas. The first half of Price’s tenure as Texas’ head coach (from 1951-1953) was very successful, as he led the program to three straight winning seasons in the early 1950s.
Price and the Longhorns got off to a good start as the program entered the new era in the 1951 season following the conclusion of Blair Cherry’s coaching tenure on the 40. Texas beat three ranked opponents, including the No. 11 Oklahoma Sooners in Red River, during the 1951 season, finishing up with a record of 7-3 (3-3 SWC).
Texas built on that success in 1952, which was Price’s most successful season as the program’s head coach. He led Texas to a record of 9-2 (6-0 SWC), winning the first and only conference title he would get with the Longhorns. The 1952 campaign ended with a bang with the Longhorns downing the No. 8 Tennessee Volunteers in a convincing manner by a score of 16-0.
And while the 1953 campaign wasn’t as successful for the Longhorns as the prior year, Texas still was one of the better teams in the Southwest Conference. It wasn’t until the 1954 season that Price’s teams started to struggle mightily.
From 1954-1956, Texas had two losing seasons and one .500 record. The worst season for Price came during his final year on the 40, in 1956, when Texas finished with a record of just 1-9. That was the first losing season in more than a decade for the Longhorns.
After three straight seasons where the Longhorns posted a losing or .500 record, Price put in his resignation following the conclusion of the 1956 season.
Price’s six-year run as Texas’ head coach was a tale of two sagas. He found success during his first three years as head coach after being promoted from Cherry’s staff in the early 1950s. Texas also had three straight teams in the early 1950s that ranked among the 10 best in the country in the Simple Rating System (from Sports Reference).
Unfortunately, though, he couldn’t sustain that success in the mid-1950s. That led to one of the worst three-year runs in program history when Texas posted a record 10-19-1 (.333 winning percentage) from 1954-1956.