The Texas Longhorns fired Charlie Strong so they could hire Tom Herman to coach Texas football as if Strong had never left Austin. They’re just not good.

The Texas Longhorns are back and not back in the way that Texas football was ever hoping to go back to. After beating the Georgia Bulldogs in a Sugar Bowl the Dawgs had absolutely no interest playing in, Texas went from being almost back, like Mack Brown-level back, to being back to Charlie Strong-level of not great under Tom Herman. The Longhorns are now 6-5 after a loss to Baylor that represents the worst point of the Herman era. How did this happen?

This was a team that everybody in Big 12 country thought would challenge the Oklahoma Sooners for a conference championship. Instead, they’re getting their brains beat in by a Baylor Bears team that blew a 28-3 lead at home last week to Oklahoma and decided it was a good idea to dress in exclusively mustard yellow.

Texas may be bowl eligible, but the Longhorns are just another mediocre team in the Big 12. This was the year that Herman was supposed to bring Texas back to being back. Now, we’re looking at a decade of Texas playing football that nobody outside of Austin really even remotely cares about. Baylor has been a superior football program twice in the last decade since Texas hasn’t been back.

So will Texas ever be back and deserve having its own network? Well, that all really depends on if Herman can stop doing his own coaching impression of Strong in Austin years later. Strong is still coaching in the way that he does in Tampa leading the South Florida Bulls in The American if you want to call it that. What exactly is Herman bringing to the table that Strong never could?

Under Herman, you can certainly go to bowl games, which wasn’t necessarily always the case under Strong. So Texas has some meaningless bowl game to look forward to this holiday season, so that’s super exciting, unlike Texas football in 2019. Had Texas lost to the Kansas Jayhawks, they would need to win at home vs. the Texas Tech Red Raiders to even be eligible. That’s crazy.

Almost a crazy as people thinking that 2019 was going to be the year that Texas was officially back, like, for real this time. Well, we won’t keep getting fooled again, unless we decide to buy into some ridiculous preseason hype that is simply not justified for Longhorns football at this point in time. Texas is just back to being a perennial disappointment in the Big 12 and nothing more.

For more NCAA football news, analysis, opinion and unique coverage by FanSided, including Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff rankings, be sure to bookmark these pages.