We’ve been “sold” that CDH is our stable program builder. Here’s my problems with that.
His temperament with the fans does not engrain trust and comfort. Remember the F U? Not a way to build up the fan base. From very on it was clear the crowds did not get behind him like Herman for sure and even Applewhite (who admittedly was largely riding Herman’s fumes). How many 30K games prior to this year did he deliver for us?.. not many. Not a program builder.
He doesn’t function well as a hype man. I think it’s clear a Herman type can help cut through the noise in Houston and get some eyeballs on the Houston football product. Not a program builder.
His heavy reliance on transfers instead of home growing talent from the ground up doesn’t let most of your players stick around for years and build up homegrown talent and a reliable culture. I know this is tricky in transfer/NIL. In general though in 5 years he has not recruited one single HS QB that he has proven can be solid for us. Not a program builder.
His personally disheveled look and chaotic demeanor (especially on the sidelines) and notorious ‘get out the door to the party’ mentality doesn’t emanate stability and focus to his players. Not a program builder.
His lack of flexibility in his overall approach especially offensively leaves us vulnerable as we strive for whatever offensive utopia he believes he is building which causes much collateral damage along the way. Think two years of poor play by Tune and sub .500 records. So far we are on repeat in year 5 with Smith at QB but he will be a senior next year so the timeline to succeed compressed compared to Tune and the schedule MUCH harder being in the Big 12 now! (See #3 above). We are hearing the exact same excuses - ‘only our starting QB is “game ready” and we will just have to ride him through all the lows.’ Not a program builder.
You see folks he is not and never was the actual person to get the job done right for us in terms of rebuilding for the long haul. The only thing he has provided to us is a willingness to stay, which news flash, every subpar coach feels the same way since they don’t have options and would like the money spigot to keep flowing. Doesn’t matter what his allegiance is if he can’t get the job done. Feel free to add your “not a program builder comments”. I’m sure there are plenty more.
My daughter, who is not a student of the game but is an astute judge of character, watched part of the game with me yesterday. After viewing a couple of CDH’s rants, she commented, “why would you want your son to play for a man like this?” She then followed with a quote from Buddy the Elf - “he’s an angry elf.”
We both laughed, and football knowledge or not she ain’t wrong.
Mack Brown once said it takes a new coach 5 seasons to know if the program is moving in the right direction. Well…we have our answer about Dana Holgersen. This ain’t it.
Bingo, this was my concern with Dana was head coach at WVU. I asked myself, my love of WVU football off the table, would i trust him with my son’s future. My personal answer was not encouraging.
This quote set me on fire this morning, especially after what we’ve seen so far this year:
Holgorsen has not been shy about the reality that it will be a ramping-up process – to put it nicely – to bring Houston’s human and physical infrastructure up to a Big 12 level.
“What we’re dealing with now on a day-to-day basis is going to be dead last in the Big 12,” he said last month. “That’s just facts. We’ve got to progress when it comes to that. It takes time, and it also takes money. We’re not quite there yet.”
Four years of building a program just to get us to “dead last” in the Big 12? FU and GTFO
If Dana had 5 or 6 four star players committed, I’d be arguing we all bear with him and stick with the plan for another couple of years. Reality is he and his staff can’t recruit for sh ! t and our roster has roughly the same talent level as it did 5 years ago. That’s all on him.
By that metric yeah. I was thinking more in terms of average class ranking and number 0f 3/4 star players on the team without factoring in this staff is doing an even worse job of finding NFL caliber players than Applewhite’s crew.
Sumlin was great here but only bc of coordinators and he had the charisma to hire good ones one of which back then was Dana. Dana could try that route but Dana seems to lack the charisma or willingness to get an off coor or change his philosophy on offense so I don’t know. UT seems to have our old off coor and it’s working so far however Bama ain’t Bama of old so we shall see.
Stop insulting us.
How long is it taking Colorado to turn things around and how many players through the portal agreed to come?
Now let’s look at the 247 ranking. https://247sports.com/Season/2024-Football/CompositeTeamRankings/?Conference=Big-12
Where are we? Next to last in recruiting. Who’s fault is that? Is that us?
No let’s look at UCF, BYU, Cinci and US.
Where are we?
UCF 9(4*) and 9(3*)
Cinci 1 and 19
BYU 1 and 11
Us? 1 and 7
Stop insulting us DH and start doing your job. Recruiting is major part of why you got hired. You are not even doing it through regular or the portal. Five years and you have known we were playing in the BIG12 in 2023. What do you have to show for it?
If we had given Tony Levine five years to figure out how to be a head coach and hire competent assistants, I strongly suspect the product at this point would be better than what we’re seeing.
I’m it advocating for hiring a tot greenhorn again, but that dude worked hard at recruiting and he was great at it. He just didn’t know how to run a successful program to take advantage of that strength. But he wanted to learn, and I assume he would have adjusted to improve.
I’m not seeing much adjustment or improvement in our offense. The defense is better in a lot of ways, but it’s useless without some semblance of offense, and it’s hard to really evaluate them. Our “offensive genius” has turned into a stubborn old man with a bad temperament.
How many transfers from p5 programs have we gotten have the same impact as Case, Ed, Hall, Lathon, Ware, Klingler etc. None from my recollection… Most transfers are not All americans at UT, A&M, Ole Miss that are coming here. Im glad to have some for depth purposes but to rely on them for IMPACT has not happened yet.
They were great but not P5 transfers. Most of our success has been developing high school talent. Now that we are in the Big 12 we should get our share of amazing talent
Maybe, but that world has changed with the portal and NIL game. Depending on developing high school talent may not be the best approach, and our fans definitely don’t want to wait for that.
