Bush played for Levine at TXST. I think Tony always planned to hand the keys back to Bush at some point. Not sure that he thought it would be a year later but he thought really highly of him.
Some quotes after the announcement below:
Levine said Bush is a creative thinker. “I am extremely confident in his play-calling abilities and his commitment to the University of Houston,” Levine said. “His work last season, taking over after the season had started and improving our offense drastically, speaks for itself. He has an outside-the-box mentality and a creative football mind, and having been a part of this system for the past two seasons, I’m excited about the possibilities moving forward.”
Levine also had no real budget to hire a decent staff. I may be off here but if I’m not mistaken Levine himself was only making ~$600k. Probably couldn’t lure many real OCs with a budget of $100k or so. That’s how you end up with Nesbitt. I remember it being a big deal that they gave him $300k to go out and get Meach as OC his 2nd year.
Like I said my memory may be off but it’s hard to build a staff on pennies. UH went real cheap when they hired Levine. I think given the time and a real budget he could have had above average success here.
UT needs to recognize that they’re no longer a player in college football. They’re OU’s whipping boy on their best days. They need to accept that 6-3 seasons are the best they can hope for. If they keep canning coaches like this they’ll end up going the way of Nebraska.
Levine probably accepted less across the board to be a head coach also. He knew he had no real negotiating power so whatever the admins said he wasn’t going to fight. Unfortunately when you go that route the risk for bad results magnifies
Nope. That title goes to Holgorsen this year, and Applewhite’s one full class was ranked essentially the same as Holgorsen’s first full class. Sorry to ruin your narrative.
This years class is Holgorsen’s 2nd. You can’t call what he got in 2019 his 1st, since he started after early signing period. And this year’s class isn’t finished. You know that, but choose to ignore it because it doesn’t fit your narrative.
This year’s class is Holgorsen’s second full class; his third signing period (2019 shared with Applewhite, 2020 - his first, 2021 - his second, which we signed 9 so far). So… not ignoring anything, just understand graduating class years.
…and yes, I am projecting how the class of '21 is shaping up, but less than month away (Feb 3, IIRC) and we aren’t seeing a bunch of commits rolling in. I assume we will probably have at least one more impact signing in Feb (hopefully, that RB), but I am not holding my breath. My guess is that we are going to fill out the class with a few more JUCO/HS signings, transfers, a couple of walk-ons get scholarships… that sort of thing.
I agree. In my opinion, he had the leeway from admin to suck for a couple of years if he thought we needed a roster overhaul, but he chose the path of trying to bring in whatever he could immediately.
He could have recruited HS exclusively, let the departures bounce out of the program, sign 25 true-freshmen/year, play and develop them, but… He decided to do that redshirt thing in year 1 - which from all appearances to have massively backfired - and go heavy on transfers and JUCOs. To me, it is trying to plug a leak in a dam - it gives you a temporary reprieve, but in the end, you are making the problem worse by not going after the source. The dam that is our roster will eventually break and it will take a long time to rebuild after he is gone.
We are committed to it now though. There is no turning back for better or for worse.
…but… if he had chosen to recruit HS exclusively, that would have resulted in a series of anywhere from 0-12 to 3-9 seasons for at least 3-4 years before UH would have been able to resume winning again (that is if most of those HS only recruits even panned out).
There is no way that the powers-that-be at UH would have accepted such a slow-build approach with that kind of serial losing record(s). So intelligently, he’s taking the fastest and best approach to rebuilding the UH FB roster through ANY and EVERY means possible.
IMHO, to suggest that he should have done otherwise is beyond ignorant.
Levine told me that Nesbitt was his 8th choice and he finally got his guy with Meacham who wanted to wait until his daughter graduated from Stillwater HS.
I remain unconvinced that was entirely his idea. I think it was driven by King, who was most likely about to get benched. CDH did right by his players by making it sound like it was his idea in case King actually decided to stay and also to prevent further defections.
Cmon H town…The HS players we signed are really good. We are still in on a whole lot of really good HS players, from Texas and Louisiana. We are going to get some of them. Including that great RB from Conroe…And we will continue working for transfer OL’s to help us, as well as talented transfers like WR Cam Scott from Mizzou. Carter is a total stud WR, better than anyone we have…
In 2 years CDH and staff have taken a defense that was worst in the country, a laughingstock, and made it respectable again.
Why would we see a bunch of commits roll in? Feb signing day still a month away…
and we have 2 commits who wont sign until late Spring…plus the Garner kid who will sign in Feb…He inherited a program that had profound weaknesses in several areas and transfers and JUCOs have to help shore things up. Certainly they helped with the defense. Easy enough to see that. Now we got some help coming on offense, with hopefully more help on the way…Copp is the best QB prospect we signed since Greg Ward…How long we have to wait to see him? I dont know…Hopefully, not long…The thing is, you can literally see the program being built again, with the kind of talent we need. We are going to see a turn around next year…
That was more or less my reaction when this happened.
I thought that the RS thing was really just a polite cover for King’s BENCHING, a benching that occurred because he was, for whatever reason, not the same QB that he had been the season prior.