Tom Herman focused on winning as Texas football coach

FRISCO, Texas — In the first team meeting Tom Herman held when he became the head football coach at Texas, he asked for a show of hands.

How many players in the locker room have been on a winning Longhorns football team? He scanned the room and found only three hands in the air, all of which belonged to redshirt seniors.

Changing the perception of Texas, which has seven losses in each of the last three years and missed qualifying for bowl games the last two, was and is Herman's first order of business.

'We're well on our way,' Herman said Tuesday at Big 12 Media Days. 'All of you are going to ask me about expectations. I don't know. I know that these guys are going to be trained as well as anybody in the country, and we're going to play to our maximum potential.

'What that is, I don't know right now, but I feel good that these guys are willing to do whatever we ask them to coming off the three-year stretch that this program has had.'

Herman, Iowa State's offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach from 2009-11, has developed a reputation for creating some of college football's most prolific offenses. He won a national championship as Ohio State's offensive coordinator and was 22-4 in two seasons as the head coach at Houston.

At Texas, the 42-year-old Herman is building from the ground up again. His philosophy is not unlike that of Iowa State Coach Matt Campbell. Competition among the players, in anything they're doing, raises the standard and breeds success. Losing, he said, has to be uncomfortable and never normalized.

'It's not just, oh, well, we'll get them next week. No, this is like the sky-is-falling-type stuff,' Herman said. 'And so every time we have a competitive situation, we're going to make sure that the people that don't win in that competitive situation, that they feel awful about it and that it's not funny and it's not hokey or corny, that it's really, really bad for them to lose, as well as it being very, very cool for the guys that win and very rewarding for the guys that win.

'Because that's what happens on Saturdays and that's what happens throughout the season.'

Iowa State won 18 games in Herman's three years in Ames, went to two bowl games and won one. His team's never averaged more than 22.7 points per game, but quarterback Austen Arnaud became the Cyclones' No. 2 all-time leading passer with 6,777 yards and 42 touchdowns.

The building project Herman has at Texas is different from his other coaching stops because of the Longhorns' brand recognition and tradition, but that hasn't changed his approach. Switches can't just be flipped, but habits can be instilled.

'I remind people that throw on some; they love to throw on their burnt orange sunglasses and have all these crazy expectations,' Herman said. 'The Texas that (recruits) know is a lot different from the Texas that people in my generation know. So it's our job to show them what Texas is capable of, what Texas has been in the past, and what we're planning on being again in the future.'

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