Texas fails to come through in close game with Iowa State, leaving Longhorns fans in misery

Dan Wolken | USA TODAY

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Texas fans are going to focus on the losses, but that’s not the real story about the failure of the Tom Herman era. It’s actually the close games.

Over the last two seasons, the Longhorns have played an astounding 16 games that have been decided by seven points or fewer. In other words, among the last 24 games Texas has played, two-thirds of them have basically come down to a coin flip. While that may be a bit of a statistical oversimplification, the larger point is that Texas is playing on a knife’s edge practically every week. And when that happens over and over again, the numbers are eventually going to catch up to you.

So when you consider that Texas has actually done pretty well in those close games with a 10-6 record over the last two seasons, the bottom-line takeaway is that the Longhorns are somewhat fortunate they haven’t lost more.

And that’s a big problem for the Longhorns, who fell to 6-4 after a 23-21 loss at Iowa State.

Though everyone screams “Texas is back!” whenever it shows up for a big game, let’s be real. The measurement for Texas isn’t whether it can beat a Georgia or an Oklahoma in a one-off setting. Rather, we’ll know Texas is back for real when it’s not a life-and-death struggle to beat any Big 12 team that has displayed even a little bit of competence.

In the end, that’s the key to running a program that contends nationally. Nobody plays their best football for 12 consecutive weeks. But what teams like Clemson, Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State and Oklahoma are able to do is build a margin for error so that their B-game is usually good enough to win without getting into an endless series of coin flips.

In the Big 12, especially, you’re going to play a lot of teams that are pretty good but not great. And what Texas has routinely displayed under Herman is that it cannot beat those teams unless it is playing its best football. For a program that has the capability of recruiting like Texas, that shouldn’t be necessary. And that’s why the Longhorns are No. 1 in the Misery Index, a weekly measurement of knee-jerk reactions based on what each fan base just watched.

FOUR MORE IN MISERY

Alabama: Suddenly, all the typical arguments about Alabama seem secondary. It doesn’t really matter at this point whether the Crimson Tide’s schedule has been strong enough to make the College Football Playoff or whether the dynasty is dead. No matter what happens, a sadness has settled over the remainder of Alabama’s season because quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a serious hip injury late in the first half of a 38-7 win over Mississippi State during what looked at first glance like a routine sack. Tagovailoa’s place in the history of Alabama football is secure because of what he did coming off the bench in the second half to bring his team back from a 20-7 deficit against Georgia in the national championship game two years ago. But his season ending like this brings up some uncomfortable questions. Has Alabama been too aggressive with his ankle injuries over the last two seasons, leaving his pro prospects vulnerable to further injury? Should Nick Saban have pulled Tagovailoa before halftime in a game Alabama was winning easily? If he wasn’t moving well enough to protect himself, should he have been playing at all? These aren’t questions Alabama has had to deal with much in real time; the program under Saban has been remarkably lucky in terms of major high-profile injuries. But if this injury damages Tagovailoa’s pro potential, it’s going to be a talking point that sticks to Saban — whether it’s fair or not.

Wake Forest: The perception for much of this season has been that Wake Forest is the ACC’s second-best team. What’s that worth? Well, it could be worth a lot — a trip to the Orange Bowl! But there’s a catch. Assuming Clemson makes the College Football Playoff, the Orange Bowl would get the next-highest ranked ACC team. What happens, though, if no other ACC team is ranked in the top 25? According to CFP executive director Bill Hancock, the selection committee in that scenario would leave up to the Orange Bowl which ACC team it wants. That’s bad news for Wake Forest, especially since Saturdays’ 52-3 loss to Clemson might preclude the Demon Deacons of getting back into the top 25 at any point, even if they finish 9-3 this season. In other words, it seems like old fashioned bowl politics could come into play here. The Orange Bowl has to sell tickets, and if Virginia or Virginia Tech makes the ACC title game, those schools could be perceived as a safer bet to bring fans to South Florida, squeezing out an otherwise deserving Wake Forest team.

Missouri: Last fall, it looked as if the Tigers had found their niche as a program. When Kelly Bryant decided to transfer from Clemson to Missouri for his final college season followed by TCU’s Shawn Robinson also portaling his way to Columbia, Derek Dooley’s offense was credited as a magnet for talented quarterbacks looking for a good system where they could put up numbers. That belief was based largely on the success last season of Drew Lock, who threw for 3,500 yards on 63% completions and turned into a second-round draft pick. But it's hard to imagine a bunch of quarterbacks flocking to Missouri after evaluating its offense this season. Bryant has been just OK, and the Tigers haven’t been fun or compelling to watch lately, as they dropped to 5-5 after a 23-6 loss at home to Florida. Bryant has thrown for 300 yards just twice this year -- against Wyoming and Ole Miss. He’s thrown for fewer than 200 on three occasions. In SEC play, Missouri is averaging 19.8 points. Those are just straight-up facts, and they’re not flattering to Dooley or Barry Odom, whose job security looked rock solid after going 8-5 last year but hasn’t had enough of a breakthrough year to be fully embraced by the Missouri fan base.

Nebraska: Often, it’s the right move for university administrators to show support for a struggling coach. But it’s also possible for that support to go overboard into the realm of recklessness. If you’re a Nebraska fan, do you really want *this* to be the moment that the school quadruples down on Scott Frost? Because that's what happened when a two-year extension to Frost's contract was announced shortly before a 37-21 loss to Wisconsin that dropped the Huskers to 4-6. While it’s certainly possible to write off Nebraska's underperformance this season as the symptom of a bad culture that needs to be overhauled, was it really necessary to add two more years to a contract that still had five left on it? Five years is a pretty standard contract length these days to show that you can rebuild a program, and what has Frost really done up to this point that would lead Nebraska to believe that it should further tie itself to him financially? From all indications, Nebraska merely reset all the same financial terms for this new seven-year contract, which means Frost’s buyout would be back to the original number of around $26 million. That’s just not a fiscally responsible thing to do with a coach who is yet to prove anything on the field.

TRENDING TOWARD MISERY

Arizona State: The Sun Devils’ decision to replace Todd Graham with Herm Edwards was both expensive (to the tune of $12 million in buyout money) and bold in its vision for a much different kind of program. The phrase “New Leadership Model,” in fact, became something of an avatar for what the Sun Devils were trying to accomplish by running an NFL-style organization. But so far, the bottom line looks very much the same as it has been for a long time: It’s all just very mediocre. Edwards was 7-6 last year and is now 5-5 this year after losing Saturday to Oregon State, 35-34. It was the Sun Devils’ fourth loss in a row, and the trajectory of this experiment looks about the same as Graham, who got fired for going 6-7, 5-7 and 7-6 in his final three years. That’s going to a lot of trouble and spending a lot of money to get similar results.

Colorado State: The $220 million spent on a beautiful new on-campus stadium three years ago is largely going to waste under Mike Bobo. Officially, 24,914 people showed up Saturday to watch the Rams' 38-21 loss to Air Force, but you can bet the actual count was much lower. And that’s sad, given the history of that in-state rivalry, which used to bring out the best in both fan bases. Colorado State was considered among the best Group of Five jobs when Bobo was hired, but the program has eroded to a distant third place in its own state as Bobo is 0-5 against Colorado and 1-4 against Air Force. He’s also 1-3 against the other key rival, Wyoming, which will be favored to win again next Friday in Laramie. All in all, its hard to do much worse in the games that matter if you’re the coach at Colorado State.

UNLV: In a town where it’s considered a good thing to roll the dice, hiring Tony Sanchez made some sense after the 2014 season. Sanchez had been a well-connected, highly successful local high school coach, and UNLV needed someone to change the game for a school that lacked financial resources and has historically struggled for football relevance. But it’s probably time to wind down this experiment. Sanchez is just 18-40 overall and 11-27 in the Mountain West following Saturday’s 21-7 loss to Hawaii. UNLV, in fact, could very well be headed to its first winless season in the league since the Mountain West was formed in 1999. With a new practice facility opening up and fans needed to fill seats as a tenant in the new Raiders’ stadium next year, it's hard to imagine fans getting behind another year of Sanchez.

Georgia Tech: It was hardly unexpected, but this has been a take-your-medicine season like none other for the Yellow Jackets. For all of his strengths, former coach Paul Johnson was just not particularly invested in recruiting, which meant he was reliant on his triple-option system to produce victories. Under Geoff Collins, however, trying to play more conventional football with players who are largely not ACC-level recruits is producing disastrous results like Saturday’s 45-0 loss to Virginia Tech. While the Yellow Jackets have had some moments of apparent competence, they are still a 2-8 football team that doesn’t score a lot of points and it’s now clear that this process of turning over the roster is going to take years. It won’t be fun to watch for quite a while.

Akron: One of the cool things about the MAC is the parity among the schools. In fact, one of the reasons it’s considered a cradle of coaches is because nobody’s got recruiting or resource advantages, so those who do the best work tend to get noticed. In that sense, most people thought Terry Bowden was doing a pretty good job at Akron, keeping the Zips competitive, even winning its division in 2017 and making a pair of bowl games. For some reason, though, Akron decided it wasn’t enough and fired Bowden last December. What’s happened since, however, isn’t pretty at all. Akron is 0-10 and has been out-scored 218-47 in conference play under first-year coach Tom Arth. For a program that had been middle of the pack in the MAC under Bowden, that's a stunning turn of ineptitude.

FIVE TOTALLY REAL AND IRRATIONAL MESSAGE BOARD THREADS

“Tom Herman is Jason Garrett” - orangebloods.com

“If this team has to go with Mac as the starter they are done” - BamaOnline.com

“If Barry really loved his alma mater wouldn’t he step down?” - tigerboard.com (Missouri)

“You play to lose close” - SunDevilSource.com

“Please for the love of god may that be the final nail” - ramnation.com