Before we get to the inevitable ascent of Tom Herman, let’s be real: Charlie Strong never stood a chance at Texas. Almost from the moment he set foot in Austin his tenure felt embattled, like a man pushing against a boulder while bystanders shook their heads in disappointment at its failure to budge. Sure, we kept hearing, Texas fans like Charlie. Everyone so badly wanted him to succeed — just look at the outpouring of goodwill on the few occasions that he did, all of which were greeted as the beginning of a potential breakthrough. Strong’s players were with him to the bitter end. It’s just that… well… It was clear very early on that this particular marriage was not working. For one thing, Strong always seemed like an awkward fit with the luxury-box set, less for who he was than for who he wasn’t. In 2012, a year before Strong was hired, a clique of deep-pocketed boosters impatient with the direction of the program under Mack Brown made a quixotic run at Nick Saban to replace him, and still had high hopes of landing Saban or a similarly proven, high-profile successor after they finally succeeded in forcing Brown into the talking-head business in December 2013. Instead they got Strong, whose hiring was perceived as an anticlimactic affront to the notion of Texan Exceptionalism. Billionaire donor Red McCombs, a former NFL and NBA owner whose name is on both the football stadium and the business school, became the accidental spokesman for the skeptics when he publicly described Strong’s hiring as “a kick in the face.” “I don’t have any doubt that Charlie is a fine coach,” said McCombs, who claimed he’d personally lobbied Jon Gruden to take the job. “I think he would make a great position coach, maybe a coordinator. But I don’t believe [he belongs at] what should be one of the three most powerful university programs in the world right now at UT-Austin. I don’t think it adds up.” McCombs promptly apologized for those remarks, not least because they carried more than a faint whiff of racism. But with that kind of reception from the donor base, and with administrative turnover that claimed both the university president and the athletic director who hired Strong in the span of just a few months, it was never going to add up. Strong bet on a long-term, tough-love approach when he kicked eight veteran players off the team prior to the 2014 campaign; instead, the subsequent 2-4 start put him on a hot seat barely halfway through his first season that, with institutional leadership divided and in flux, only kept getting hotter. It also didn’t help that Strong had no apparent ties in Texas, or readymade connections with Texas high school coaches, the gatekeepers to the nation’s most reliable pipeline of incoming talent, especially at a moment when historical bit players within a few hours’ drive — namely Texas A&M, Baylor, and (to a lesser extent) TCU — were beginning to look like ascendant threats to the Longhorns’ grip on the best local players. The SEC was expanding its territory, as well: By the end of Strong’s second season Texas, and the Big 12 as a whole, was losing more of the state’s top prospects than it kept. The Longhorns’ roster was almost totally devoid of star power, even of the up-and-coming variety.

And no wonder that teenage recruits seem to be, too. Unlike Strong, Herman has some local ties: He began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Texas, under Brown, and spent the next decade in the state as a small-school assistant. At Ohio State, he was largely responsible for luring Texas native J.T. Barrett to Columbus after the Longhorns passed. Within a few months of his arrival at Houston, Herman landed a stunning commitment from one of the most coveted prospects in the state, five-star defensive tackle Ed Oliver, the catalyst for a recruiting class that ultimately ranked higher than the majority of classes in the Big 12. (In his first year Oliver has already emerged as the most disruptive interior lineman in the country, to which Lamar Jackson can attest.) At his introductory press conference on Sunday, Herman echoed Brown’s silver-tongued overtures to local prep coaches, reassuring the stewards of the “best high school football-playing state in America” that Texas “is their football program.” With a little more than two months left in the 2017 recruiting cycle, six of the state’s top 15 prospects according to 247Sports remain uncommitted and on the Longhorns’ radar. But the momentum also stems from the sense that Herman (again, unlike Strong) will inherit a roster that is built to win right away. Among Texas fans, in fact, that’s one of the primary reasons so many of them were genuinely rooting for Strong to survive the turbulence of this season: If he could just make it to year four, the outlook for 2017 was considerably brighter than it was for any of his first three, no mater who happened to be the coach. Instead, it’s Herman who stands to reap the rewards of the “rebuilding” phase, and if recent history is any guide the initial payoff could be the first step toward the ascendance he’s being paid to deliver. As I’ve written elsewhere, these days coaches who win big at places like Texas tend to win fast, almost invariably within their “first term” — of the 10 head coaches who have won national championships this century, all but one of them claimed his first title within four years of his arrival, on the strength of his initial recruiting classes. (The lone exception to the rule, coincidentally: Mack Brown, who was in eighth season at UT when the Longhorns finally broke through in 2005.) For all its struggles, Texas remains essentially an up-and-coming outfit. The starting lineup in Saturday’s loss to TCU included just four seniors, and only one really notable departure: 2,000-yard tailback D’onta Foreman, who decided he’d rather get paid for next year’s workload after logging more carries in the regular season than any other FBS back. Otherwise, the 2017 lineup will feature this year’s starting QB, eight of the top nine receivers, four-fifths of the starting offensive line, and 17 of the top 20 tacklers on defense. The quarterback, true freshman Shane Buechele, had a weird trajectory for a rookie — he started fast, immediately winning over the fan base in UT’s opening-day upset of Notre Dame, before fading a bit down the stretch — but did a passable enough Colt McCoy impression in his first year on the job to entrench himself in a position that’s been a revolving door of disappointment for the better part of a decade. Running back Chris Warren III was 1a. in the backfield alongside Foreman in September, before the former went down with a season-ending knee injury, and when healthy offers the same workhorse potential behind a veteran line. And although there was no week-in, week-out headliner among the wide receivers, there will be at least six returning candidates legitimately vying for the distinction. For a team that lost five games by a touchdown or less, there’s no mistaking the opportunity for a quick turnaround. And from there, who knows? • • • It’s easy to assume that Texas, with its history, money, and location, is a program with so many inherent advantages that once some of the initial heavy lifting is done the operation can almost be set to automatic. That was certainly the case under Mack Brown, who was perceived as being so hands-off during his run of nine consecutive 10-win seasons that he more or less pioneered the image of the big-picture, “CEO coach.”