Charlie Strong is the new head football coach of the Texas Longhorns.  He is leaving a program in the Louisville Cardinals that he built into a very well respected team.  The Cardinals were in disarray when Charlie Strong arrived.  Bobby Petrino had taken off in the middle of the night to go coach the Atlanta Falcons and his replacement was God awful.  He was so bad, he isn’t even worth mentioning in this piece (and I’m a Kentucky Wildcat fan!)  Bobby Petrino had turned Louisville into one of the most exciting teams to watch in college football.  Even though they played in a weak conference, the Cardinals were still a top 15 program in the country.  He had finished 11-1 in 2004 and 12-1 in 2006.  In the years between Petrino and Charlie Strong, the Cardinals had fallen into a losing program and lost all of the Petrino momentum.  Charlie Strong changed that from the very beginning.  In four seasons at Louisville, Charlie Strong was 37-15, never had a losing season and won 3 of his 4 bowl games.  Louisville is about to finish the season ranked in the Top 15 for consecutive seasons for the first time in school history after a 12-1 year following 11-2 last year.

The question is not whether Charlie Strong is good enough for the Longhorns.  He is a damn good football coach.  He has recruiting ties in the state of Florida from his time as a Florida Gators Defensive Coordinator.  As the head coach of the Texas Longhorns, he will be able to get the best athletes that the state of Texas has to offer as well.  He is a great defensive mind that should be able to find ways to compete against the offenses at Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Baylor.  I have no doubts in my mind that he will be just as successful at the University of Texas as Mack Brown was the last four seasons.  However, Texas was ready to run Mack Brown out of town after 16 seasons and a 158-48 record including a national championship…the first one that Texas had won since 1970!  A string of 8-5 and 9-4 records is not good enough for the high standards at Texas.  12-1 and 13-1 is not good enough either if the 1 loss came to Oklahoma and they won the conference title.  The schedule that Texas faces is going to be a lot harder than anything that Charlie Strong had to face at Louisville.  There is a world of difference between Oklahoma, Baylor and Oklahoma State on Texas’ schedule and Cincinnati, UConn, Memphis, Temple and the other conference foes that Louisville has faced in the last several years.  Can Charlie Strong be successful enough to go 11-1 and 12-0 against that schedule or will the Longhorns continue to finish around 8-4?

Let’s not forget that his was not the #1 choice for the job.  The media and Longhorns fans had Nick Saban leaving the University of Alabama to coach the Horns.  When that got shot down, it became Jim Harbaugh was going to leave the San Francisco 49ers to come to Austin.  That makes Charlie Strong at least the third choice for the job if not fourth or fifth.  It’s a lot easier for a boss to get rid of you if you weren’t his top choice to begin with anyway.  Last but not least, we have these nuggets from the internet today after Strong was announced as the new head coach.  Texas is in the deep south.  It is a state full of white, rowdy, country boys that can tend to be on the racist side.  The Dallas Morning News ran an article on their website today to let Longhorns fans know that Strong was not a “hip hop coach.”

After outrage throughout the internet, the Dallas Morning News tweeted again to say that it was former Notre Dame coach, Lou Holtz, that said Charlie Strong was not a “hip hop” coach.  Just because you use someone else’s words doesn’t make it any better.  The tweet could have just said, “10 Things You Might Not Know About Coach Strong.”  Why put in the “hip hop” coach part?  By putting it in your tweet without crediting it to Lou Holtz, the message is assumed to be yours or at least endorsed by you.  If I tweeted, “Green Bay Is The World’s Worst City”, without adding “according to …”, it is assumed that I am saying that or at least agree with it!

The uproar over the article led to this GIF making its way around the internet.  It is taken from the movie “Blazing Saddles” and is the seen where the new sheriff is on his way to the little old town of Rock Ridge.  They had a marching band and “Welcome To The New Sheriff” banners and were very excited…until they saw that the new sheriff was a black man.  It has been altered to show how SOME of the Texas Longhorns fans reacted to today’s announcement:

I am not familiar enough with the cultural complexities of the state of Texas but seeing the tweet by Dallas Morning News and knowing what I do know about racism, I know that it will be at least a little problem for Charlie Strong to deal with in Austin.  I know that the level of competition is going to be higher in Austin than in was in Louisville.  I know that the expectations will be higher and the tolerance for losses less.  I think Coach Strong made a mistake by taking the Longhorns job.  I think he should have at least seen how Louisville’s first season in the ACC went.  However, with Teddy Bridgewater leaving, maybe Strong knew how next season would go and decided to take the Texas job while it was his for the taking.  He couldn’t bank on Florida having another horrible year and firing Will Muschamp next season or on him still being a bright star in the coaching world to take the job.