AUSTIN, Texas (AP) Texas fired football coach Tom Herman on Saturday after four seasons of failing to win a Big 12 championship and only one league title game appearance.
Herman still had three seasons left on a guaranteed contract that was due to pay him more than $6 million per year, and the move means Texas will soon be on its fourth head coach since its last Big 12 title in 2009 under Mack Brown.
Herman was supposed to end that drought. He was college football’s hottest young coach when Texas brought him from Houston to replace Charlie Strong in 2016. But Herman’s results never matched his swagger: He never had a losing season and won four bowl games at Texas, including last week’s Alamo Bowl. But he couldn’t return the Longhorns to consistent league or national title contenders. He was just 1-4 against the archrival Oklahoma.
In a statement Saturday, the school said while the program has made ”measured progress,” it was time to change. The decision came just a few weeks after athletic director Chris Del Conte said Herman would be the coach moving forward.
The statement said that after a review of the program’s strengths and weaknesses, Del Conte recommended to school leadership that Herman be fired.
Herman’s best season was 2018, the only time the Longhorns made the Big 12 title game while he was there. They finished that season with a dominating win over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl that prompted quarterback Sam Ehlinger’s now-infamous ”We’re ba-aack!” statement to a national television audience.
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