It sounds like you projected , but maybe you ' re having some issues with awareness . For those new to AP , it ' s better to keep first experience ' s brief and exploratory but do keep practicing , and soon you ' ll be able to venture further . Good luck . <| sep |> Texas has often had conflicting priorities . Back when Darrell Royal was hired , Frank Erwin Jr . ruled the roost , and winning in football was given priority . When Darrell Royal stepped down , Lorene Rogers and Alan Shivers combined to restrict any kind of power he might have over the football program . Rather than hiring Mike Campbell , his longtime DC , to replace him as Darrell Royal would have had it as the UT athletic director Rogers and Shivers hired Fred Akers from Wyoming , a former assistant under Royal . Akers was instructed not to allow Royal any kind of input into the football program , up to and including barring him from practice . This led to a schism among boosters which really lasted until Mack Brown was hired . In addition , while Texas has always had vast financial resources , the athletic department depended on Frank Erwin ' s influence over the state legislature for much of its largesse . Each sports team was responsible for their own funding , which created a mess in terms of financial resources . After Fred Akers was fired , numerous calls were placed around the country . I remember there being mutual interest in John Cooper who would take the OSU job the next year who I knew from his days at Tulsa . Cooper turned down the job with a scoff when he learned it wasn ' t going to pay even as much as he made at Arizona . Texas literally couldn ' t afford more because of the financial shortfall within the athletic department . So David McWilliams , a favored son , was brought in after one 75 season at Texas Tech including a win over Texas in an effort to heal the rift among boosters created by Rogers and Shivers , and because Texas really couldn ' t afford much else . It ' s also important to note that the ShiversRogers takeover was representative of an emphasis on academics in general . Texas was bound and determined as an institution to become a prestigious Tier 1 university , on a level akin to schools like Berkeley or Michigan . Fueled by oil money , they stole away prestigious professors from universities around the country , funded all kinds of research programs , raised admission policies , and in general did all the kinds of things a university with a huge budget would do to raise their academic profile . Being seen as a football school didn ' t sit well with the folks who wanted a greater emphasis on academics . This part of the UT system came to a fore when David McWilliams was hired and the next coach was brought in . This is already too long , so I won ' t go into Deloss Dodds , or how he was able to transform the financial status of the UT athletic department , other than to say he was brought in to replace Darrell Royal as the AD in 1982 . He made his identity and his job security about fundraising , and as an adept politician , kept himself out of hiringfiring decisions regarding the UT football coach , although he was involved in the other sports programs . When it came time to replace David McWilliams , the biggest booster at the time , Jim Bob Moffett of Freeport McMoran , the world ' s largest mining operation , insisted on someone with a more corporate mien , who would install an exciting offense . An outside firm was hired to do a search , and they came up with John Mackovic . Mackovic wasn ' t actually given winning championships as a priority . He was told to clean up the academics of the football team , win enough games to go to bowls , and if he won a conference championship every now and then , that would be good , too . There simply wasn ' t an emphasis on winning championships among the decision makers at UT , where the emphasis was going to prestigious academic conferences that might look down on someone being from a football factory . In the 90 s George Bush won the election as governor of Texas , and he appointed two important people to the Board of Regents Tom Hicks and Donald Evans . When Mackovic had his final season at Texas a season where he never thought he would be dismissed , I did everything they told me to do , was his response to me at one point Tom Hicks told everyone that Texas was going to go out and hire the best coach available , and that the goal of Texas football was to win national championships . Mack Brown was the first hire since Darrell Royal where the emphasis was actually on winning championships . At the time , Gary Barnett who was performing miracles at Northwestern was considered the favorite . Mack Brown wasn ' t even thought of to be an option early on . Without going into all the gory details , basically Gary Barnett made a bunch of demands on what kind of control he would be given if he was named the football coach , whereas Mack Brown talked about how excited he ' d be at the opportunity , and what a privilege it would be to become the next head coach at Texas . Mack Brown got the job . Fast forward to Charlie Strong . Boosters have been working behind the scenes to get Mack Brown to step down for a couple of years . Finally they succeeded in doing so . But the people who managed to get rid of Mack Brown were not able to take control over the hiring process . I understand why the story of Saban to Texas gets made fun of . But the fact is , a cadre of boosters felt like they had a shot , and that it was worth taking regardless of whether it panned out or not . Neither Brown nor school president Bill Powers wanted anything to do with Saban taking the position , so they delayed making any kind of announcement regarding Brown stepping down until after Saban signed his contract with Alabama . It was a purposeful act , although it ' s still extremely questionable whether Saban actually would have pulled that trigger . With longtime AD Deloss Dodds having expressed for a long time no interest in being involved in the next coaching hire for football at Texas , it was left to new AD Steve Patterson to pull the trigger . I don ' t know if there was a better candidate out there than Charlie Strong that would have been a good fit at Texas . It ' s easy to second guess at this point . They made overtures to Fisher and Malzahn and were rebuffed by both of them . None of the instate coaches held any interest to Texas . Briles was successful enough , but as is apparent to everyone now , was never considered a good fit for exactly the type of reasons he got in trouble over . Outside of HarbaughMeyerSaban , there aren ' t any real can ' t miss type of selections . Tom Herman is a pretty good choice . He has the backing of the boosters . I ' ve heard some rumors that he might have a drinking issue , but as long as it ' s not Steve Sarkisian level , that won ' t actually matter . But it seems that school president Fenves and Chancellor McRaven are determined to take control over this hiring , which means they may not go after Herman immediately . It won ' t matter if they land him eventually , but if by widening the search in ways that makes Herman consider taking another job or staying at Houston , they ' re putting their own positions under threat . We ' ll see how it turns out . That was a long winded answer , obviously , but those are some of the issues that have plagued Texas , and why it ' s failed to reach its potential in football so often . It ' s always about finding the right coach , but if you ' re not even using the right criteria , or you ' re not investing the resources required to bring in the best , then you ' re hoping for blind luck , like what occurred with USC when they brought in Pete Carroll .