Texas Coach Charlie Strong Should Be Worried After Another Embarrassing Loss

Charlie Strong should have seen this coming. That's on him. The Texas job was always a trap for him. Something deep in his brain must have been warning him of that. But it was just too big and shiny of a prize to pass up.     

So he took the job as head coach of the richest college football program in the nation. And now, 20 months later, he's going down. No, Texas' meddling billionaire boosters aren't saying anything publicly yet. There's plenty of fire being tossed around in the nasty Twitter hashtags (#FireCharlieStrong), but only smoke in the comments from former players and alumni.

Former Longhorns (and Green Bay Packers) tight end Jermichael Finley tweeted:

Golfer and former Longhorn Jordan Spieth tweeted:

You can see this coming from a mile away. One season and one game into his tenure, and it's a good bet that Strong is already done. I'll believe he'll be back next year when the ball is kicked off and he's on the sideline.

You don't hire a mechanic to be your top auto salesman. And Strong isn't failing at Texas because he can't fix the program. He's failing because he can't sell it.

2014 opponents	Result
2015 opponents	Result
North Texas	Won 38-7
Brigham Young	Lost 41-7
No. 12 UCLA	Lost 20-17
Kansas	Won 23-0
No. 7 Baylor	Lost 28-7
No. 11 Oklahoma	Lost 31-26
Iowa State	Won 48-45
No. 11 Kansas State	Lost 23-0
Texas Tech	Won 34-13
No. 24 West Virginia	Won 33-16
Oklahoma State	Won 28-7
No. 6 TCU	Lost 48-10
Arkansas	Lost 31-7
No. 11 Notre Dame	Lost 38-3

The Longhorns finished 6-7 last year, closing with a 48-10 loss to TCU and a 31-7 loss to Arkansas. Strong said at Big 12 media days this summer that that can't happen again. So Texas put in a new offense, supposedly, and this time lost 38-3 in the season opener at Notre Dame.

Should this be a surprise? Everyone knows it takes five years to build a program. A few early blowouts are growing pains. Strong kicked some players off the team last year for off-field troubles, and he gave some second chances. He's a compassionate disciplinarian, just what college football needs more of. He's building from a base of character.

But Texas' boosters don't want a coach to build. Billionaires are above that. They wanted to buy a superstar coach to win now.

When the billionaire boys forced out previous coach Mack Brown, the guy who had saved their program, they leaked to the media that they were trying to buy Nick Saban. Asked at the time whether Texas thought it could actually get Saban to make the move, booster Red McCombs told reporters, "All the money that is not up at the Vatican is at UT."

With that money, even if it wasn't going to be Saban, it'd be another big name. McCombs said he was close to convincing a "top five" coach to take the job when the school hired Strong (via CBS' Dennis Dobbs).

And what did McCombs think of Strong? He said on ESPN radio that he might make a good coordinator or position coach, but that the school hiring him for the top job was "a kick in the face."

Strong wasn't the boosters' guy. And now his teams keep getting crushed.

Plenty of coaches have been cut too fast before. Rich Rodriguez was fired after three years at Michigan. Even his replacement, Brady Hoke, who lasted four years, told me Rodriguez would have been winning by now, as Rodriguez is at Arizona. Derek Dooley got three years at Tennessee. Ron Zook three at Florida. Ty Willingham three at Notre Dame.

These are big programs with tradition and entitlement. But they are nothing like Texas. No one is that big. Texas' boosters aren't looking to take pride in building something. They think they can buy it.

On the day Strong was hired, I was working for FoxSports1 TV, and we did a live shot during his introductory press conference. I said he wasn't going to last. He had sat on his hands, mumbled and looked at the table during the press conference. After the segment was over, an FS1 exec took me aside and said that people wanted to know what style of defense Texas would play and things like that—things that would decide whether the Longhorns would win under Strong.

But sitting on his hands during that press conference, mumbling and looking at the table were more important than whether he was a good coach. He wasn't going to last long enough in the job to win.

There was never any question that he could run a defensive scheme. The question was whether he had the personality and political savvy to tie together the boosters, who all had their own ideas and were used to hearing two words: "Yes, sir."

They wanted to tell the world that they were still the biggest and the best. They wanted Saban. And if not him, then Baylor's Art Briles. Jon Gruden. Maybe UCLA's Jim Mora.

In the summer of 2014, ESPN's Travis Haney reported that Strong had made a bad first impression on Texas high school coaches during a 20-minute speech. Strong talked too fast and wasn't making clear points. An anonymous high school coach told the site, "If I was the coach at Texas, I would act like I had bigger balls than that."

Strong ended up recruiting fine. But Texas high school football is a religion. And TCU, Baylor and Texas A&M, even Houston, are now getting players that were previously headed for Texas. All those programs have inroads now with the state's high school coaches, while Strong works through a process, without a clear personality, that takes time.

Brown had mastered the sales job required in being Texas' coach. He had pulled the program back together by somehow getting the power boys on the same page. He had gotten the high school coaches on his side, too. Brown is the kind of guy who remembers everyone's name and story. You see him a year after you first meet him, and he's asking about specifics as if he has a 32 GB memory.

That and the fact that he won a national championship gave Brown a few extra years before being pushed out.

Strong isn't a politician. As an outsider, he can't woo his way in. Coming from Louisville, he didn't have the marquee name the power boys wanted.

And now he's having some inevitable problems, such as trying to make his offense work while he uses a bunch of young players. This year's newer, faster offense flopped. Fans are calling for offensive coordinator Shawn Watson to be fired.

Look, college football needs more guys like Strong. Eventually, Texas would win under him. The question is this: Are people who have all the money that's not in the Vatican willing to wait for a guy they didn't want in the first place?

Greg Couch covers college football for Bleacher Report.