Of the 41 states in the union that have a Football Bowl Subdivision team within their borders, none have more than Texas.
For 12 days, as teams nationwide dig into preseason drills, USA TODAY Sports’ college football reporters are traversing the state of Texas and visiting each of its one dozen FBS programs. Presenting Two Weeks in Texas …
Day 3: Houston
HOUSTON — Early on an already sultry morning, the rookie head coach stops practice and gathers his team. It is the fourth day of the University of Houston’s preseason football camp. It is hot. First-year coach Tom Herman is not happy with the effort he’s getting from his players.
“The price of championships is really high,” he says, raising his right arm high over his head to indicate how high the standard should be, raising his voice to indicate how hot he is on the subject. “It will never come down to your level. To do the things you want to do on gameday, it’s doing it over. And over. And over. And over. And over. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. We have some who are ready to pay the price — but not enough. Not enough.”
Coming from a guy who freely admits his new job means, “I’m a salesman,” this should probably be categorized as truth in advertising. Or maybe just being real. A few hours later, at a dinner for several hundred donors held just a few steps from the practice field, Herman preaches a similar message, saying he’s running the “hardest training camp in college football,” because “in order to win championships you have to practice hard — and we embrace that culture.”
RELATED: Big 12 in the future?
But then he adds a challenge. It’s time, Herman says, for the city of Houston to embrace his team.
“As hard as this training camp is and will be for our players, please make sure it’s worth it for them,” he says. “A half-filled stadium is unacceptable. These kids have worked too hard. So spread the word. Spread the gospel. We want the stadium rocking.”
University of Houston player treasure their breaks with their new coaching staff. (Erich Schlegel / USA TODAY Sports)
Welcome to Herman’s attempt at an H-Town Makeover. He calls it “H-Town Takeover,” and he’s referring mostly to the Cougars’ recruiting emphasis on locking down local players in the talent-rich metro area. But the sales job also encompasses building a new culture within the program, built on constant competition and continual trust — and freely cribbed, Herman admits, from the blueprint he learned as an assistant at Ohio State under Urban Meyer. And it extends, in perhaps the most difficult task, to energizing a sometimes fickle fan base.
The very ambitious goal — but what good are goals, Herman would say, if they’re not ambitious? — is to become to the Houston area what the University of Miami long ago became to South Florida.
“There is the depth of talent of football players within an hour of our campus,” says Hunter Yurachek, Houston’s vice president of intercollegiate athletics. “ … I think we have an opportunity to build something special.”
***
In his attempt to build, Herman is also making the most of the credibility that comes from winning the national championship as an offensive coordinator — and doing it with a third-team quarterback.
“He brought the hard evidence,” senior running back Kenneth Farrow says. “He was just there. I think it made it a lot easier for us to buy in.”
Cougars running back Kenneth Farrow (35) says the buy-in to Herman was automatic. (Erich Schlegel / USA TODAY Sports)
So did hiring a staff with extensive Texas ties (and with big salaries, at least by comparison with other Group of Five programs). Thirteen years ago, when Art Briles (now at Baylor) took the head-coaching job at Houston, he made $250,000. Now, three Cougars assistants make more. Couple that with the $120 million TDECU Stadium, which opened last season, and with plans for an indoor facility, and there appears to be a different level of commitment to football success from the administration than in the recent past.
The community, at least the portion that’s inclined to pay attention to Houston football, appears enthused. When Herman was introduced Monday night at the donor dinner, he received a standing ovation, illustrating Yurachek’s observation: “He hasn’t coached a game yet, but so far, Tom Herman is a rock star. If we start winning some games, things are really gonna take off in this community.”
For the kind of commitment Herman wants, there’s this scene from the latter part of Monday’s practice, when Herman carries around a mangled, misshapen facemask. A freshman linebacker had collided with a running back during a physical inside drill, warping the metal bars to distortion.
“That is us!” says Herman, and begins making plans to display it in a team meeting room. That evening, he shows it to the assembled donors as an illustration.
“We’re willing to hit people so hard, we bend our own facemasks,” he says. “That’s the kind of culture we’re starting.”
This bent facemask epitomizes the aggressive play Herman expects from his team. (Erich Schlegel / USA TODAY Sports)
It’s a culture designed to create competition in everything, and to reward success. Offensive and defensive players regularly compete — in all sorts of things — for a WWE-styled championship belt. When the Cougars arrived last week for the start of fall camp, players deemed to have won their battles during offseason conditioning work were treated to steak and trimmings, served on nice tablecloths with comfortable chairs. Those who fell short ate beans from industrial-sized cans, no tablecloths, metal folding chairs. The message is simple: Compete in everything, and “winners get really cool stuff,” Herman says.
“Last time I checked, that was what life is like, and what Saturday afternoons are like,” he says. “You win, I’m gonna give you some real cool stuff, whatever the NCAA will let me give.”
And despite Herman’s dissatisfaction Monday with the effort, he’s been mostly satisfied with the buy-in. As practice ends, he calls the team up again, this time with encouragement.
“As things get harder — and they’re going to get harder-er than they are now — it’s not us against you. … We are trying to build you. Build you into champions. If you just trust us. Open your heart up. Rip your heart out. Give it to the coaches. Trust us.”
Meanwhile, not too far away on the sidelines, a group of players from Lamar Consolidated High School have been watching. It’s the first day Texas high schools can work out in shirts and shorts, but Lamar’s new head coach, Rick LaFavers — who coached with Herman several years ago at Rice University — chose instead to bring his team to campus. For most of the high school players, this is as close as they’ll get to participating in a FBS-level college practice. But there might be one or two — “or they’ve got a brother or a cousin or something,” Herman says, grinning — who have a big future in the game.
“It’s free marketing,” he said.
***
The day after Herman arrived in Houston, which was the day after the Buckeyes beat Oregon to win the national championship, he took a driving tour of the city. Or more specifically, a handshaking tour of its high school coaches. He’d recruited the area as an assistant at Rice, Texas State and Sam Houston State. This was just a way to get reacquainted. During spring practices, as many as 100 high school coaches daily crowded the Cougars’ sidelines. It’s part of the strategy to mine what Herman calls “the best football-playing city in the best football-playing state in the country,” redirecting its talent pipeline to flow into the city’s namesake university.
Last spring, the Cougars invited several dozen of the top recruits in the greater Houston area to campus. They showed a highlight film that was a collage of practice highlights and scenes from the ESPN documentary “The U,” on Miami’s rise as a football power.
“We drew the parallel, and said if it was good enough for Ray Lewis and Michael Irvin, it’s probably good enough for you,” Herman says.
Not long afterward, Ed Oliver, a five-star defensive lineman from Houston Westfield, made a verbal commitment to Houston. It helps that his older brother Marcus is already on the team. And the commitment won’t be secure until signing day in February. But for now, at least, Houston’s recruiting class is ranked No. 24 nationally by 247Sports.
Herman is preaching intensity and a bright future to his new team at Houston. (Erich Schlegel / USA TODAY Sports)
“Are we gonna go toe-to-toe with Alabama and Ohio State and Texas A&M on every kid?” Herman says. “No, we’re not. But there’s gonna be a select few that we’re right for them. We’ve got to stop the Oklahoma States, the Iowa States, the Kansas States and the Kansases from coming into Houston and taking a kid because they have a Big 12 logo on their chest.”
Even if Houston wins big — and the Cougars have mostly been winning in the last few years — that might not be enough. The school remains part of the Group of Five conferences, separated in perception from the Power Five.
“The only thing that we battle,” Herman says, “is the conference. I tell kids, ‘If you are not competing for a national championship — because let’s be real, we’re not gonna do that here in the near future — our job is to compete for relevance and a New Year’s bowl game. So at the end of the day you’ve got just a good a chance here as … at some of those other places I mentioned.”
But there’s a quiet sense around campus that football success — and to a lesser extent, men’s basketball under coach Kelvin Sampson — is imperative to compiling a complete résumé to entice, say, the Big 12 to extend an invitation. (As Houston president Renu Khator told the donors Monday evening, “We have a short window,” saying the next two years are “very, very, very important for us,” and telling the players: “You are playing not just for yourself, not just for your coaches, but for every alumni.”)
Still, nothing is certain, and certainly nothing is imminent. And never mind that, Herman knows the Cougars must win for any realistic hopes of completing the makeover, or the H-Town Takeover. But like any good salesman, he expects success.
“All signs point that way,” he says. “The trajectory is damn near vertical right now.”
