That is the 2019 story for me this season. Did our leaders drink some snake oil power drink? The question has to be asked. The difference is already beyond beliefs. This major (pun intended) miss can only help us understanding why we are missing or have missed on these recruits. We have no choice but be patient. The early returns looks promising.
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It makes me wonder if applewhite deliberately did what he did for whornâs and LTHâs benefit. I would hope not, but then again, he is a whorn!
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CDH is selling stability with the HC and the assistants. The AACâs stature keeps growing as well.
CDH has:
- stability in coaching staff
- great facilities
- a rising AAC
- a proven track record as a coach
- a more dynamic personality
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Yep was going to post the same thing. Look who CMA got as his coordinators vs CDH. Itâs the same thing. Broyles award winners like CTH and CLR at least had hype before becoming head coaches. CMA? Nope zero none.
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Not totally unbelievable. Killing UH and their ability to recruit effectively might get him back in the inner circle of tu and a future job in the system. He was/is taboo for his indiscretions
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POTDâŠnailed it, dead solid perfect
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Major walks in to a recruits house with a starbucks hot tea. Holgerson walks in chugging Red BullâŠwho are you gonna go withâŠ
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You have a known head coach at a winning Big 12 school leaving because HE WANTS TO BE AT UH. Makes all the difference in the world. High school kids and their coaches arenât blind. Theyâve seen Briles, Sumlin, and Herman jump for âgreener pasturesâ at the first opportunity and knew that would continue unless another Dimel or Levine were hired and fired. Weâre still not going to recruit as well as Texas and A&M, but we may hold our own with the Techs and Baylors and finish at or near the top in the AACâs average ranking per recruit. Having said that letâs remember that Howard Wilson, Steve Taylor, Cam Malveaux, Adrian McDonald, William Jackson, Brandon Wilson, DâJuan Hines, Austin Robinson, etc. were anything but big-time recruits.
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Thanks Applewhite!
Not exactly. Holgorsen saw the writing on the wall at WV. Recruiting had dropped off, the fans had grown tired of great offenses and poor defense, and the administration was tired of him using other schools - including UH the year we hired Applewhite - as leverage for a new contract. This year will be a disaster for WV because Holgorsen left the cupboard bare.
He wants to be at UH, because he is buddies with Tilman Fertitta, and he leveraged that relationship into a massive contract that locked us in with him for at least four years. All we can do now is hope that he doesnât treat us like a retirement job and actually makes some improvement. He definitely has been given the budget, 3 X what Applewhite got.
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I 100% agree with you but thenâŠWhy did we give the job to applesauce?
Why would we give the job to applesauce not knowing that he needed at least a proven DC?
Why would applesauce great recruiting tree (we were told that was the case) then suffer from an unprecedented drought?
What is more than concerning is that both okie Schools no longer have a majority of Texans and Houston area recruits.
uta on the other hand has how many players from the Houston area? 27, yes just 27âŠ
Yes uta and atm have always relied on our area for 4 & 5 stars players. Wasnât applesauce supposed to change that? Our last two years reflect without a doubt how detrimental that hire was. At the same time uta finds itself on the recruiting upswing.
We have seen some gross management all over the place. By all accounts this one defies logic. yuracheck is no longer on Calhoun. That is not a coincidence either. We have had the perfect negative slide since that FSU victory. You can think whatever from it. Mr. Fertitta must be fuming on how bad we have become. Mr. Fertitta had no chance but to get CDH. We now have to play catch up on all fronts with a possible 2025 expansion. The great news is that CDH can correct all of the wrongs. That is why everyone should be pumped up for our future.
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Thatâs not true. Not even close.
Check the math then.
I have. Itâs a little less than 1/3 more from what Iâve gathered. Significant but definitely not 3X.
Budget is one thing. Recognizing great talent is another. There are (were) plenty of great Coaching assistants fully capable of getting to the next level. applesauce hires made no sense at the time. I vividly remember when he had difficulty hiring Assistants. I knew then that we were in dire straits. yurachek convinced Fertitta to hire him. I am 100% sure that Fertitta realised very quickly that he had made a huge mistake. Yes it does happen to even the best business minds. applesauce did a master job messing up our program. We now have five years to turn it around to make us noticeable for a P5 invite. That is how important we need to have the full support behind CDH.
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Letâs dig a little deeper. I thought his hires made perfect sense. They didnât work out, but hindsightâs 20/20. Brian Johnson ran the kind offense we had been running with Applewhite, and the selling point of hiring Applewhite in the first place was not some strange idea that Texas high school coaches would start sending their four and five star players here but rather continuity. Johnson also played his HS football locally, he had been the top offensive assistant under one of the gameâs best offensive minds in Mullen, and he had OC experience at Utah. Admittedly it wasnât really successful experience, but he was in his mid 20s and lost his QB some halfway through the season. So he made sense. I still think that weakness at the QB position was as problematic as play calling in â17. Allen just didnât fit the offense, King wasnât healthy and hadnât practiced, and Postma was really a reserve QB. Be that as it may, clearly things didnât pan out.
Orlando told Applewhite that he would hire DâOnofrio, that he would run a defense most similar to what UH had been running. And DâOnofrio had success at Temple and for a year or two at Miami. So Applewhite, an offensive coordinator, probably leaned too heavily on Orlandoâs advice. But I can see why he would have.
Of course neither worked out, and Applewhite, though he did face a ton of adversity with injuries and locker room issues, really wasnât ready to be a major college head coach. And UH doesnât have time for three years of on-the-job training. Thatâs really it in a nutshell.
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Johnson had been let go for no success at his previous stop. He was even demoted. applesauce had plenty to choose from for his offense. The same goes along with the DC decision. Why on earth would you consider a new DC coming in with a so called highly complicated playbook. You either want continuity or not. The fact that he was out of a job for a period of time with a not so stellar reputation were red flags after red flags. When you get your first gig as HC the first thing that you are looking for are proven or highly thought after assistants. Neither were the case. They were the exact opposite of it. I am sorry Sam but applesauce was a red flag of his own the same week he was hired.
Same. I mentioned when he hired 3 UH GAs as FT assistants that either Herman was a GA hiring wizard or we were in trouble. Maybe it was a little of both.
Itâs sad, but my intial thought of us hiring a former UT QB was that it was some type of Burnt Orange Trojan Horse.
I didnât even have Applewhite down as someone who we should have even interviewed. We were coming off two successful seasons where the narrative was that we had a P5 level program in the G5. I understand Lincoln Riley met with us and passed but there were other options. Whether you think there was a conspiracy, or not, these things did happenâŠ
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Applewhite âsoldâ us on the fact that he had a great relationship with Texas high school coaches and that, in of itself, would lead us to access to top recruits.
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After getting the job, Applewhite barely acted upset that Herman was actively stealing his recruitsâŠnoâŠnoâŠno, quite the oppositeâŠhe was making Hermanâs job easierâŠrenting his house to him while the new UT coach searched for a permanent residence. How sweet of our coach to help one stealing his own recruits.
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Not directly Applewhiteâs fault, but UH offered to waive UTâs buyout of Hermanâs contract. Of course they declined even though Applewhite was now the head guy at UH. Why would they want to lift us up?
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Applewhite hired DC Dâonofrio. He was unemployed and working at the Y. Almost immediately, Miami fans flooded our site to laugh at us. Not only that, they provided screenshots of formations that made zero sense. They were correct.
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Applewhiteâs first recruiting cycle was less than stellar.
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My take is that after our first season, our administration already saw they made a mistake and out of desperationâŠthey forced Kendall Briles on him. Hereâs whyâŠBriles runs an extremely up tempo offenseâŠthis style was drastically different than Hermanâs philosophy and Applewhiteâs philosophy. How did Applewhite handle itâŠhe pouted in a passive aggressive manner. Instead of being a HEAD coach and dictating that Briles offense must work WITH our defense to you know, actually win games, he let Briles do his thing unchecked. He may be doing the same thing at FSUâŠso maybe itâs a Briles thing or maybe their HC will reign him in. Anyway, I got so tired of watching games where OUR offense hung OUR defense out to dryâŠwhere was our head coach?
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Obviously, the Oliver incident on National Television
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The fact that he was the polar opposite in charisma, from Herman killed usâŠespecially since we worked so hard to get even that momentum.
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He proved he could not motivate his team and the effort in the Army game proved he actually LOST the team.
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And then the coaching record because its misleadingâŠI posted in a previous thread a while back about Applewhites actual record against teams that finished with a winning recordâŠit was putrid. Most of his victories feasted on below. 500 teams.
Iâm sure there are more but I knew this was a bad hire the second our AD released that Red Smoke tweet and then announced the new Head Coach of the University of Houston was Major Applewhite. Thatâs when I knew we were taking a HUGE step back.
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Did I not say Johnson did not have success at Utah? He was also like 25 and his QB was injured. He made sense for the reasons I gave. Iâm sure Mullen recommended him. Youâre arguing that he didnât want continuity when he selected coaches most closely aligned with what we had been running, and he brought in a DC the previous DC said he would have hired? They turned out to be mistakes, definitely DâOnofrio (Johnson is arguable because of the QB situation and weak OL), but like I said, hindsight is 20/20. I do agree that some of the position coaches werenât impressive, especially Guiton at WRs. The OLBs coach was questionable as well. Offensive line was a mess as the guy he hired left for the Big 10 a couple of weeks after he came to Houston, and Scelfo, who on paper seemed like a strong hire, was apparently never on the same page as the OC. It didnât work out, and weâre in a much better place now. But I do get a kick out of posts about Applewhite deliberately sabotaging the program to help UT.
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