Who's worse off: Florida v Texas?

[CU-UF]

Instead of constantly harping on our awesomeness or suckiness, lets share the love and bring in another program. I don't know much about Texas, other than perception wise to me they seem to be having a similar period of struggling as us. I know despite Herman being the 'it" coach, his recruiting class sucked this year. But is the needle for Texas pointing up and ours down? Same? I see alot of parallels between Texas and Florida, thought it would be interesting to get folks insight/opinion.

 

[MJMGator]

Texas has a much easier path to success due to the conference they play in. Baylor is a dumpster fire, so the only real competition is Oklahoma and we all know they are no more than a top 10-20 team each year. We have to navigate a weak SECE, face a few SECW foes, FSU and try to stay on the field with Bama when/if we make it to Atlanta. Obviously, our program SHOULD be in much better shape since our HC is entering his third year while theirs is entering his first but the results remain to be seen.

 

[Okeechobee Joe]

The Texas program seems to have lost some of its luster since Texas A&M joined the SEC. A&M has been out-recruting the Longhorns. There was a time when the old Southwest Conference was Texas and the seven little sisters. Texas owned Texas A&M. All that has changed. Being part of the best football conference in America has helped Texas A&M greatly.

http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/t...s-to-block-texas-from-ever-joining-sec-072915

Here's a link to an interesting article. I don't know if it is true. The writer claims that four SEC schools - - Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Kentucky have a gentleman's agreement where these schools would vote against any school joining the SEC if that school was from any one of those four states. In other words, Florida, Georgia, SC, and Ky. would vote to keep FSU out of the SEC or they would band together and vote against Clemson joining. Since you need 3/4 of schools to vote to allow a new member to join the league those 4 would have the required votes (in the old 12 team SEC) to block expansion into those 4 states. Now that the SEC is 14 members, the writer speculates that A&M would join the other 4 schools to block Texas from ever joining the SEC.

 

[Gator Fever]

Hard to say this upcoming season because Strong's last 2 recruiting classes were pretty good and maybe the best in the Big 12 or at least tied with Oklahoma. If we get some decent QB play I think we would be the better team next season.

 

[ATXGator]

I'm not sure how you can even say Texas is pointing up and we are pointing down... that makes absolutely no sense.

Yes... Texas hired a hot commodity in Tom Herman and while I think he is a good hire, he is not a guarantee. He lost games at Houston that he should have won.

Texas was 5-7 last year and 3-6 in a much easier conference. THEY LOST TO KANSAS!!!

We won our division and beat LSU on the road. McElwain pulled in a Top 10 class.

I do think Texas has talent that Charlie left, but that talent has yet to actually perform. We had a great D, but we have seen that our offense can perform with a QB (which is our big question). Our young players on defense showed they can perform well and while we won't be dominant we should be OK on defense.

I will say that Texas has a lot of money, but they are also behind on facilities. They have a bubble for indoor practice that is 50 yards. I don't believe they have any fancy stand alone facility here. Texas A&M joining the SEC has very much hurt them from a recruiting standpoint and Baylor and TCU were hurting them some, but I expect that to stop some with Herman. That said... when Mac came in as a transition class he pulled the #23 class in the country and that was a situation where he was hired later in the year that Herman... didn't know the state (Herman was coaching at Houston and has worked at Texas in the past) and had one recruit left to him from Muschamp. Herman pulled the #31 class this year.

In every metric we are trending up over Texas. Texas may have a superstar head coach and may surpass us, but it has yet to be seen if Herman can do that. Another issue Texas has is the Big 12... the Big 12 did not expand this year (I have no idea why... should have added Houston and Memphis)... so now the question is what is the future... is the Big 12 destined to get pulled into other conferences and Texas ends up in the Pac 12 or ACC? A&M won't let them come to the SEC.

The reality is that both Texas and Florida are flagship schools in their state who have gone through down turns in football mostly because they have both continuously missed on QBs and made at least one bad hire (Muschamp and Strong) as a HC. Both programs are too good to stay down and both will rise up again... I see that happening with Florida before Texas if things continue to trend in the right direction.

 

[BMF]

Here's a good quote from Herman on his first signing class (from coaching search):

Tom Herman knows the odds of his first Texas recruiting class becoming great aren’t super high, because it’s the case for every new head coach.

The Longhorns only signed 18 players and had the No. 26 class. But Herman pointed to Urban Meyer’s first Ohio State class.

“We knew through all the metrics, all the analytics, all the numbers that point to most of the time in years of transition in coaching staffs, that signing class has the highest rate of attrition,” Herman said on Longhorn Network. “Meaning kids that quit, has the highest rate of off-field issues including academics, drugs and social, and has the highest rate of guys that can’t play, and don’t ever see the field.

“I even went back to check, and when we took over at Ohio State in 2012, we signed 19 guys, and it was considered the fifth-ranked recruiting class in the country, and I went back five years later and looking back at it, there were only three of those 19 that saw significant playing time for us at Ohio State. I didn’t want to fall into the same trap.”