All factual IMO but the first 7 of these bullet points simply illustrate how the people involved in this decision got fascinated by isolated trees here and there and missed on the forest -- that fundamentally, his UH program was built on hero ball on offense ( the G5 Cam Newton at QB); his so-called proven ability as a recruiter was skewed by his fluke landing of Ed Oliver; and that fundamentally, Tom Herman's whole run at UH was built on a foundation of Herman's fraudulent persona.
That whole ice-grill, "H-Town Takeover," hip-hop coach Herman "the U"-wannabe shit was pure and simple all sizzle and no steak, as fake as the zirconias in those teeth.
I heard it in person. After Texas had locked in on Herman as the One and Only True Anointed One, but long before it was made official, I started listening to his call-in shows on Houston radio. One red flag went up after the Navy loss. The host asked him what happened, and Herman said words to the effect of "Well, Navy's an option team, the game was on the road, we've had a lot of linebackers get hurt and our backup LBs are terrible and hey -- never let it be forgotten that winning is hard." And then he went and poked the SMU bear (I think because he lurked on Houston Reddit and saw how you get mucho upvotes if you say "Dallas sucks" in any way shape or form) and couldn't back that up even a little. He dared Chad fucking Morris to a fight, and Chad fucking Morris kicked his ass.
On another occasion, one of the hosts asked Hip Hop Tom Herman to name his five favorite H-Town rappers. Not only couldn't he name five of his so-called favorites, he couldn't even come up with five rappers from Houston, period. It was obvious to me that he sold the clueless BMDs on the idea that he was Young Urban Meyer "with a beat," that he "got jiggy" and "spoke jive" via the music of Screwston/Hustle Town/the City of Syrup and thus would be able to lock down Houston recruits for UT forevermore, but it was just flat obvious to me, a fortysomething cracker, that he didn't know shit. It was embarassing listening to him flounder around while the host spoonfed him a few basic names -- "Slim Thug? I bet he's one of your faves," "How about UGK?", "Oh, and Scarface. I bet you like him too." Herman didn't know the basics, much less what the kids on his team were jamming, still less what the recruits were bumping, but hey, didn't he pose for that pic with a mouthful of fake diamonds?
Fraud.
Then there was that time he personally called in to aggy Lopez on sports 610 to defend himself against Lopez's allegation that Herman met with Kyle Allen during the dead period, and then ended up in a Twitter war that Michelle had to intervene in. Herman looked petty, vain, immature and downright stupid, but hey, why let any of that get in the way. We were locked and loaded and he was the only possible savior for the program so we just kept on trucking right past all those red flags.
I know all of y'all are gonna see this as a defense of Charlie but it really isn't. But the problem with this so-called coaching search is it became about "How soon can we fire Strong and hire Tom Herman?" rather than "Why don't we have a set of candidates in place for when we fire Strong?" And that was inexcusable because despite what some posters seem to believe on here, this was not some panic move. The decision to move on from Charlie had been made in year two of his tenure. And the same goes for the name of his successor, sadly. I don't think I've ever seen a so-called "coaching search" like it, one where the whole thing was telegraphed over a year in advance.
(I am also thinking that there might have been another completely non-football angle to this in that McRaven might have wanted to take Herman from Fertitta as payback for Tilman fucking with and ultimately ending the UT-Houston plan.)