re: Herman Calls for Texas and Texas A&M to Resume Their Football Series

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She’s seriously crazy. Like not figuratively; I mean literally nuts. I’m married, so I’m aware they’re all a little crazy (although my wife is way less than most), but Mensa’s wife is in that rare air of unstable women who legitimately constitute a real liability to their husband’s careers (and lives).

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Elaborate.

All I know is I've seen her with a group of friends and they were all hot.

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Elaborate

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She’s called into the sports radio stations of the teams her husband has coached (until now, but wait until the tide turns against him here) to berate them and has also harassed the local sports beat writers. It became a definite “thing” in both Columbus and Houston.

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pretty sure sumlins wife did the same when he was at houston. thats not too uncommon at schools that arent in the spotlight

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Nah. Sumlins wife would never go after a sports writer for small petty shite. This woman goes off the chart in the Hot-Crazy Matrix.

I was gonna grab a late snack in preparation for the BYU/Zona game, but instead I read that. I am full

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Finger: Tom Herman still smarter than rest of us

As usual, Tom Herman knew better than the rest of us.

He always has. From the month he stepped on campus as head coach at Texas, it became plainly obvious there was no reason to question the credentials of anyone he chose to hire or the caliber of anyone he chose to play, because most of us simple-minded folk cannot even dream of comprehending all of the subtle intricacies that go into such decisions.

And so it should have come as no surprise that the ignorant, unsophisticated football-watching public completely misconstrued what happened to Herman's Longhorns in their season-opening loss to Maryland on Saturday, when what appeared to be the latest in a long line of UT humiliations was actually nothing of the sort.

Silly us. We are so naïve, so painfully uninformed, that we thought we were watching a team as unprepared to start Herman's second season as it was to start its first. Dummies that we are, we assumed that a flurry of bone-headed penalties and a rash of late-game turnovers were signs of a squad that remains as sloppy and as undisciplined as ever, but the truth is we just did not understand how much the Longhorns had improved.

Thankfully, Herman was gracious enough to break it down for the reporters covering the game in Landover, Maryland, and thereby set a country full of mouth-breathing college football watchers straight.

Sure, it might have seemed like the Longhorns made all the same mistakes they did last year, and that the offense showed no signs of progress from a season in which it ranked as one of the worst in the Big 12, but that's only because we did not notice any of the details Herman and his staff did.

"We saw a lot of development," Herman said. "I wouldn't say we failed in that area."

And although we know-nothings might have assumed it might be a unnerving to lose a second consecutive opener to a moribund program that had spent the last month mired in a scandal, and was playing for an interim head coach, and had not beaten any ranked team aside from UT in 22 tries dating to 2011, it's actually no big deal.

After all, when Herman was asked by some knee-jerk journalist to describe how big a setback the defeat was for a program that wants so desperately to be taken seriously again that it made "Prove Us Right" the team motto, he answered, "Not very."

After all, can't the world see how right the wise John Mackovic was when he referred to such temporary embarrassments as "a blip on the radar screen?"

The general public just has no perspective. Fans watch a team suffer a loss like Saturday's, which flukishly included a bunch of the symptoms of six losses last fall, and they trick themselves into seeing the continuation of a trend.

That nonsense makes Herman shake his head.

"A lot of people are going to want to say this feels a lot like last year," Herman said. "It doesn't to me."

What the rest of us need to realize is that Vince Lombardi was wrong. Winning isn't the only thing. And Bill Parcells misspoke when he said a team is what its record says it is.

Sometimes, all that matters is how good the team thinks it is. And the outside world just needs to trust the coach on that.

"We know how much better we are now than we were probably at any point last year," Herman said. "We didn't show it in the first quarter and the fourth quarter."

Minor details, those. Second-guessing anything that happens during pivotal moments in the game — which quarterback Herman uses, which plays the team runs, etc. — is pointless, just as it was to second-guess the decisions Herman made way back when he was just starting at UT.

Some of us remember the reception he got when he hired Tim Beck as offensive coordinator, despite a bit of a lackluster track record, and when he hired Casey Horny as a quality control assistant, despite his longtime association with a Baylor staff apparently unaware of what was happening in its own program.

Herman's message back then was clear. He knew better than the rest of us.

And clearly, he still does. He surely realizes that UT fans never should have expected a national contender to come anytime soon, anyway. After all, over the past 34 years, the Longhorns have finished as many seasons unranked as they have in the Top 25.

That decade-long streak of success to start the Mack Brown era? That was the outlier, not the norm.

Despite what many Longhorns continue to believe, winning football games is not their birthright. They need to realize all of this is far more complicated than it looks.

And they need to admit that when it comes to believing their own eyes or the guy who knows better, well, the choice is obvious.

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The best part of this is they are going to get to where they don't give any HC the time needed to have his system fully implemented w/only his players. They are way too impatient for that.

Misery Index: Trouble in Texas as Tom Herman begins second season with another flop

Texas leads the first Misery Index of 2018, a weekly measurement of knee-jerk reactions based on what each fan base just watched.

FIVE MOST MISERABLE

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Texas: Maybe we’ve had it wrong the whole time. For all of its supposed advantages and program wealth, perhaps Texas is harder to pull out of mediocrity than anyone realized. The last time the Longhorns were really good, this year’s crop of high school seniors were in third grade. Since then, they’ve only finished a season ranked in the top 25 one time. It takes an incredible coach, a force of nature, to overcome the cumulative effect of that much dysfunction. That’s what Texas thought it was getting in Herman. But now, it’s fair to wonder if his reputation was elevated by a stacked, ready-to-win roster in his two-year stint at Houston and not the other way around.

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Texas Tech: It only took two plays against Ole Miss to see the Red Raiders’ defense in a familiar position — disorganized, breaking down in the secondary, allowing D.K. Metcalf to catch an easy 58-yard touchdown. Sure, Texas Tech caught a tough draw in the opener against a dangerous Ole Miss offense, but allowing 546 yards in a 47-27 loss isn’t a great way to start for Kliff Kingsbury when he had 10 starters back on defense this year. Two of them were ejected for targeting, by the way, indicating a total breakdown of discipline. Based on the thousands upon thousands of empty seats in Houston for this one, Texas Tech fans may be losing patience with Kingsbury as he starts his sixth season. With Houston, Oklahoma State, West Virginia and TCU coming up in the Red Raiders’ next five games, things could get tense very quickly.

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TRENDING TOWARDS MISERY

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Arizona: What, exactly, were the Wildcats doing in Kevin Sumlin’s debut? Quarterback Khalil Tate’s Heisman candidacy took a huge hit with a 28-23 loss to BYU in which he passed for 197 yards and ran for just 14 on eight attempts. A player who made his name last season running the speed option seemed intent on being a pass-first quarterback, chucking it up 34 times. That’s not going to be a recipe for success.

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Jesus, Finger tee'd OFF on 'em

I can take it or leave it with playing Texas again. My inclination is to make the deal soon though while we have all the leverage. We can make it early season with neutral refs, home and home. If we think there is benefit of it being odd or even years as well do so but as it stands we have Bama as our feature game in odd and LSU in even. Make the series start after the Arky in Jerryworld contract is over so we get an extra home game back every other year.

It would make the game a "nice to have" for us but not critical. We lose and then we win out and we still make the playoff virtually every year because we have the SECW schedule. Texas? They lose and they will need help.

It also screws them schedule wise because they can no longer schedule a prime OOC opponent except for us. Why? They play 9 Conference games instead of 8 and they have a neutral site game with OU. That means they have to schedule cupcakes for their other 2 OOC games or else they could end up without enough home games. For us we have 4 OOC games and in a few years with Arky back to home and home we have a lot more flexibillity to add another quality OOC opponent if we want, maybe that means a home and home or maybe it is neutral site.

It makes our schedule really attractive. Cupcake followed by Texas followed by SEC with Bama in the middle and then LSU at the end. Multiple showcase games every year guaranteed at Kyle and always in control of our own destiny. If they cancel, so what? We can go back to what we are doing now without much pain.

As I said we don't need them but if it is inevitable we will play them we should make the deal while we have the leverage. Texas is about as weak as they ever will be and we are only getting stronger. The 3 keys to me are 1)Home and home 2)Neutral refs 3)Early season (we do not play them Rivalry weekend). The game will never be what it was as both schools are too different now. It will be more of a fun early season game as opposed to the feature game it once was. If we can't meet the right conditions though we walk, screw 'em.

Oh, and btw it would be worth a ridiculous amount of money to play them. That game is a guaranteed sellout that we can charge whatever we want and will get an annual sponsor. It also likely is a Gameday location fairly often and would likely be the biggest annual early season game on the schedule nationally, there really isn't anything regular with the same level of importance.