Big 12 Media Days dispatch: Herman ready to lead Texas out of the storm

[caption id="attachment_31265" align="alignright" width="350"] Photo by Jim Sigmon[/caption] “Texas is back, folks!” This was Joe Tessitore's bold statement after Texas’ double-overtime thriller over Notre Dame to open last season. Then Texas proceeded to go 5-7 including an overtime loss to Kansas, one of the many factors that led to the firing of Charlie Strong. In comes Tom Herman with the weight of the expectations of one of college football's biggest fanbases and a collection of boosters with some of its biggest checkbooks. Herman inherits a program that is loaded with talent but it hasn't translated to wins on the field. Herman was well aware of the expectations that come with being the head coach at the University of Texas. “All of you are going to ask me about expectations. I don’t know,” he said, “In fact, in our first team meeting, I said raise your hand if you've been on a winning Texas football team, and three people raised their hand." The last few seasons have been, to quote Herman, “a tremendous storm." Herman attributes this to a lack of continuity in the program from the top to the bottom. “We're talking about a Hall of Fame coach leaving, a Hall of Fame athletic director leaving, a president leaving, a new president coming in, a new AD getting hired, that AD leaving, a new interim AD leaving, the next head coach leaving and not having success. So I think there was a lot of non-continuity, if that's a word. There just wasn't any stability from the top down.” Over the last eight months, Herman has been trying to change the culture at the University of Texas. He wants to create a competitive winning environment at the university. “And so every time we have a competitive situation, we're going to make sure that the people that don't win in that competitive situation, that they feel awful about it and that it's not funny and it's not hokey or corny, that it's really, really bad for them to lose, as well as it being very, very cool for the guys that win and very rewarding for the guys that win because that's what happens on Saturdays and that's what happens throughout the season,” he said. He has offered myriad different rewards for winning in a competition in practice. “What we do and make sure there are tangible rewards for winning whatever that competition is. We talk about how we have the student of the week, and that guy gets recognized. We've got T-shirts and all that. We've got -- again, everything from off-season conditioning drills, where we have winners and losers, and the winners get to eat a better meal not that the losers, the list of competitions and tangible rewards for winning, but also tangible consequences for losing,” he said. Herman has very high expectations at Texas, despite not saying that himself. However, if there is a program that can meet those expectations it's this university and this coach. He definitely has the blue chip talent to meet these expectations. Now it falls on his coaching to get them to that winning tradition that fans are used to seeing from Texas.