THE ANGELO FOOTBALL CLINIC is a three-day Mardi Gras for high school football coaches, an only-in-Texas operation featuring a never-ending stream of lectures and PowerPoints and question-and-answer sessions on the best way to prepare your big'uns to pick up a line stunt. The clinic is held in mid-June, in the basketball arena at Angelo State University, and to reach the stands it's necessary to pass through a mazelike trade show, a cubicled left-right-left haunted house of gimmicks and gear.

It's booth after booth of men and women hawking a better artificial turf, a better video system, a better helmet, a better ankle brace. They've got jerseys, letterman jackets and chin straps. There's a training tool that looks like a reverse straitjacket intended to keep a quarterback's throwing hand eternally above his waist. There's a new and improved blocking shield worn like a vest. ("Keep your hands free!") There's an enormous plastic cylinder filled with sand being marketed as a leg-drive trainer by former Texas All-American and NFL All-Pro defensive tackle Doug English, who says he was inspired to invent after watching his son roll round hay bales on the family ranch.

Into this windowless dungeon of earnest hucksterism strides Texas football coach Charlie Strong, flanked and followed by several assistants. Strong's Longhorn-orange polo is buttoned to the neck, just tight enough to leave no doubt about weight-room habits that produce forearms funneling from four-lane below the elbow to two-lane at the wrist. His shaved head shines brightly under the fluorescents, the Mississippi River of veins running from above his right ear. Barely 5-foot-8, looking 10 years younger than 53, Strong is the kind of man whose posture -- a chiropractor's dream -- seems to have its own personality.

His presence creates something of a stir, and his bearing -- upright and formal -- prompts everyone around him to stand at attention while he shakes hands and poses for photos and makes all the right introductions. He listens patiently to the reasons that each of the products laid out before him is destined to revolutionize the game. He tells coaches he'll be on the lookout for that big sophomore when the time comes.

After telling one high school coach, "You come down and visit us," he passes a booth extolling the virtues of a flat-sided football -- which allows receivers to throw it against a wall and practice solo -- and shakes hands with English.

"Everybody keeps asking me if I've met Charlie," English says. "I have to tell them I've met him so many times I'm already sick of him."

Strong laughs along with the joke and says, "I've gotta be as many places as I can, you know? Gotta keep moving."

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THE FIRST BLACK head coach of any male sport at the University of Texas is something of an anomaly. He studied under Lou Holtz, considers Bear Bryant an influence and yet encourages his players to dance and trash-talk, within reason, if it suits their personalities. The "Core Values" he posts on the wall of the locker room include NO DRUGS, NO GUNS and TREAT WOMEN WITH RESPECT. Since March, Strong has cut loose seven total Longhorns -- including five in the last two weeks -- and suspended three others who failed to fall in line. He tells parents of potential recruits, "Your son will graduate, win championships and become a better person." He is the oldest of the old school, except in the areas where he is the newest of the new.

After two hours of roaming the halls in San Angelo, Strong retires to what amounts to a greenroom, happy for the quiet. Today, as he does every day, he woke up at 4 a.m. after four or five hours of sleep and was on a five-mile run by 4:45. (He alternates five- and six-mile runs six days a week, then rests on Sunday with an hour on the elliptical. "My runs are my time," he says.) Sitting in a desk chair in the greenroom, he prepares for a 20-minute speech by looking absently at a couple of index cards. Defensive coordinator Vance Bedford interrupts by asking him to speak to a recruit on the phone.

Suddenly quick and demonstrative, Strong takes the phone and reels off a series of questions: "What are you doing, cap'n? ... How's your hand? ... When are you going to come back and see us? ... Tell your mom I said hello."

The transformation -- Strong in repose to Strong engaged -- is startling, as if he summoned some ancient skill. The phone call is tangible. The phone call is real. The phone call is work.

There is no doubt the man can recruit: He persuaded topflight players from South Florida, including Teddy Bridgewater, to attend Louisville. There is no doubt the man can coach: He earned unqualified endorsements from former bosses Holtz and Urban Meyer. Still, the all-encompassing atmosphere at the Angelo Football Clinic symbolizes the central question surrounding Strong as he prepares for his first season in Austin:

Can he handle the job?

THE HEAD COACH at Texas leads a culture as much as a team. The job is to coach and recruit and schmooze, mingle and glad-hand and sell. And Charlie Strong is taking over after 16 years of some of the best schmoozing, mingling, glad-handing and selling the college football world has ever seen.

Mack Brown was an icon of the culture, a one-man public relations campaign. He was folksy and charming, his words stretching out like one long taffy pull. He made time for everyone, from the most inexperienced reporter to the biggest donor. He was a master politician at a time when circumstances -- the rejiggering of the Big 12, the destruction of the rivalry with Texas A&M, the advent of the Longhorn Network -- demanded one.

Strong's manner does not lend itself to casual interplay. He is disciplined, ordered, linear. He is concerned mostly with reviving a program that hasn't reached double-digit wins or gone to a major bowl in four years. He seems to be in a perpetual hurry, perhaps a quirky byproduct of his overly long tenure as an assistant. He struggles to suffer fools, as he showed in San Angelo when a halting, unprepared and clearly intimidated local reporter was left to fend for himself as he attempted to formulate a coherent question. During conversation, Strong can occasionally retreat to inner thoughts, detaching from the moment to make a mental note before re-engaging, giving the impression that his words are undergoing a constant edit. And you can bet he'd rather hunker down over a practice plan than feign interest in a newfangled mouthpiece any day.

Holtz, who hired Strong as defensive line coach at Notre Dame and as defensive coordinator at South Carolina, says, "Charlie's not a chairman of the board. He's not a glad-hander. Mack Brown was chairman of the board, and he was great. Charlie is very involved with football and the players. He will do what has to be done to be successful."

The world Strong now enters is vastly different from the one he left. He got his first head-coaching job four years ago, and he rebuilt Louisville, winning 37 of 52 games, including the 2013 Sugar Bowl over Florida. He coached in topflight facilities and graduated his players at a rate that approached wizardry. He took over a program in 2011 that was stripped of three scholarships because of academic failings and turned it into one of two schools, along with Texas, with a perfect academic progress rate. He was hired by Texas a few months before three of his Louisville players were drafted in the first round and, for the first time since 1938, no Longhorns were drafted at all.

But when it comes to demands and expectations, Texas makes Louisville look like a cornfield Division III school. The number of media members who cover the Longhorns, from every portal and platform, can be overwhelming. That throng now includes Brown; the former coach turned down a benign title at UT to become an analyst for ABC. Strong says Brown, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told him, "It's your team now. Go run it."

On the topic of Brown the commentator, Strong laughs and says, "If I don't take care of my business, then they have a right to critique me and say what they need to."

Coaching at Texas can feel like yelling into an endless series of echo chambers. Portions of every practice are televised live and subsequently regurgitated on myriad message boards. Brown allowed Longhorn Network cameras in as he addressed his team at the end of each practice. Bank on this: The new guy, who often limited his players' exposure to the media at Louisville, will not allow such intrusion. "Everybody's asking, 'How's he going to handle the media?'" Strong says. "People don't really approach me. They think, 'If we ask, he won't give us an answer.' But I've given them answers. It's no issue to me at all. I'll talk when I need to talk."

His speech to the high school coaches at the Angelo clinic, a tight 20 minutes without notes, was occasionally disjointed as it hit his recurring themes. "The thing about young people is that they're always watching you and reading you to see what you're really all about ... because if you don't trust yourself, they're not going to trust you."

Shortly thereafter, an ESPN blog quoted unnamed coaches criticizing Strong for not tailoring his speech to high school coaches (although he clearly did) and for leaving San Angelo quickly after he finished. One coach went so far as to say: "He obviously didn't want to be here." They were apparently unaware of the two hours Strong had spent glad-handing before his speech and the fact that he requested to speak and shoehorned it into his schedule. No matter, he is the coach at Texas, and the perception of his performance -- unfair as it may be -- was viewed as a victory for every other Division I coach in the state, none of whom made his way to San Angelo.

Can he handle the job?

Maybe there's a more pertinent question: Is there any possible way to prepare for it?