NTXCoog

With Tillman Fertitta doing the negotiating, I'm not going to question how he does it.

Interesting. Houston's assistant pool is $2.113 million this year. Should increase next year if we keep our coaches. Doubt it would hit that $3.4 million though.

I question the credibility of anyone who says Applewhite is the OC at Texas.

Just so much lost this season. 3rd string QB (was WR earlier this year) started. 2nd string RB out before the game and 1st sting RB injured during the game. So 3rd string RB played much of the game. 3 OL out for the season so starting 3 freshman OL including 1 who was playing DL earlier this season Leading tackler ejected early in the 1st quarter Still they gave their all and came close. Now on to Navy. Hopefully the starting QB will be back. Leading tackler will be back. It will be tough, but a win puts us in the conference championship game. Win that and it's access bowl. Most of the top 10 complaints were in comparison to Baylor. Everyone said UH's schedule was too weak to deserve it, but Baylor hadn't even played a ranked team or team with a winning record, but somehow they were top 10 and UH wasn't even ranked. Same could be said for OSU. Just need consistent ranking criteria.

No contract has been offered yet. This was a BOR meeting allowing the university to offer a $3mm contract. Board member Tilman Fertitta said this is a staring point.

Yep. Shows that Levine wasn't bad at recruiting, just didn't coach them up enough. Herman is going to be light years ahead of Levine on recruiting though assuming he can sign most of the commits he has.

Technically a winner at 56.4% (22-17) with 2 winning seasons and 1 losing season. Still wouldn't recommend him as HC though. Herman has basically the same roster as last year and is 10-0. Levine was 7-5 with BAD losses to UTSA and Tulane. Good guy. Great assistant. Not a good HC.

42,159 tonight. Capacity 40k. New on campus attendance record. Overall home attendance record is 72k vs UT in '77 at Rice Stadium

Tonight is going to be a sell out for Memphis. Navy is almost sold out for Black Friday Before that (reverse chronlogical) Cincinnati 33k in the rain Vandy 30k in the rain on Halloween night SMU 25k on Thursday with Texans playing at same time in town and Astros in playoffs out of town (horrible scheduling) TX State 35k Tennessee Tech 30k No excuses for not having more sell outs, but we've had some challenges this year that we've failed to overcome.

A more recent article that just came out this week. A little less focused on Applewhite than the other article because a lot of it is the relationship with Herman, but it's new instead of 7 months old.

When UH hired Briles, he was a RB coach for a couple of years at the college level and was most known as a high school coach. Houston took a flyer on him because he came cheap and played football there. It worked out pretty well for both UH and Briles, but it was definitely no guarantee of success.

For clarification, are you saying that was a poor showing by UH fans, UNT fans, or both? I thought it was pretty decent attendance by UH fans considering there is not much of a history or rivalry between the 2 schools. Quite a bit of red in this photo. (So creepy how my head is chopped off on the photo when I zoom in) Baylor has Liberty scheduled for 2017. Houston has Lamar for 2016, although our AD has said we will do our best to no longer schedule FCS school.

I've had several debates with Tech fans during the SWC days about this. Tech was always 1 or 2 games around .500. Never a horrible team, but never an amazing or championship team either. Meanwhile UH would have 1 or 2 win seasons, but also have championship and top 10 seasons. Yes, those 2 win seasons are horrendous, but it's all forgotten when you win that championship and knowing that you can compete with anyone.

Herman might take him along for the ride. But if not, that's only $100k difference in salary from his current, although he might expect a bigger bump depending on how this season goes.

It will take some time to change that defensive culture. TT hasn't focused on defense since before Mike Leach. They were 124 last year before Gibbs. In 2012 before Gibbs, UH was 113th in total defense. When he left, we were 18th. And we became a turnover causing machine. With Kingsbury and his offense, they may never have a great total defense stats. Too many plays. But if he can get PPG stats down and turnovers up, total defense really doesn't mean anything.

If it happened, I wouldn't expect Applewhite to take over. If it was anyone on the current UH staff, I'd think it would be DC Todd Orlando who makes $500k vs Applewhite's $300k. Applewhite's salary is even the same as Asst Head Coach/Co-DC/Safeties coach Craig Naivar. So just going by current salary, Applewhite isn't considered the top assistant. But I would bet if Herman left, it would be another up and comer from outside the current staff.

Quite the opposite. Sumlin is solid, especially compared to Levine, but even he dropped to 5-7 after a 10 win season after losing Keenum. And I'm not saying Sumlin left because he was losing Keenum. I'm saying if he had stayed, he wouldn't have had as many offers because the team would have had another big drop off after losing Keenum

I don't know about the other schools, but at UH at least part of it is assistants. Briles had some very good assistants, especially after the AD forced out the bad ones. Sumlin and Herman also had several great assistants. The one failed coach had pretty poor assistants other than the one DC and OC for 1 season. So paying the head coach is important, but getting and paying good assistants is right up there.

I have to completely disagree here. They not only lost Keenum, but they also lost their entire WR corps. (Edwards 4500 career yards, Justin Johnson 1200 yards his senior year, Tyron Carrier 3500 career yards). The leading returning WR had 16 catches. And if you want to say losing Keenum shouldn't drop UH to 5-7, what was Sumlin's record when Keenum was out due to injury? Dropping from 10-2 regular season to 5-7 with the same QB replacing Keenum but with a much better WR corps. Levine didn't make it better and he probably should have won another game or two, but Sumlin got out knowing the talent level would drop dramatically.

He's a great guy and a good assistant. He wasn't ready to be a head coach though. I don't know if he can be in the future, but he wasn't for UH at that time. To me, one of his biggest issues was the inability to hire quality assistants. I don't know if it was all him or if he had budget restraints, but some of his hires were horrible. His first OC (Nesbitt) quit/was forced out after his first game. His interim OC (Bush) who kept the job later was hated by most UH fans. Then Doug Meacham became OC. A big improvement, but nothing like at Okie St and TCU. Was that because of Levine or was it because Meacham has had great co-OCs at those 2 schools.? After Meacham left for TCU, we got Bush again. Ugh. OTOH he did have a darn good DC in David Gibbs for 2 years. I don't know why that guy has never had a head coaching chance.

Trouble in Aggieland. "Spavital should not be let off the hook by any stretch. In fact, his ridiculous insistence calling plays that suit him, rather than those that best-fit his quarterbacks’ skills, has crippled the offense. The next time Spavital calls for Kyle Allen to sprint left and throw across his body to the flat, he should be fired, too. Allen truly is an extremely talented NFL-type quarterback, no matter recent evidence to the contrary. But there are certain throws he simply cannot make. Meanwhile, why Spavital seems to believe Kyler Murray is nothing more than a Wildcat quarterback is baffling. Murray has every throw in the bag, but every time he’s been on the field his skill set has been handcuffed."

Doubtful. He won't schedule the school where he played football, where his son played football, and that gave him his first college head coaching job.

If you want to say Briles runs a spread offense, I will agree with you 100%. The original disagreement was that he runs Leach's offense. While Leach's Air Raid is a spread offense, not all spread offenses are Air Raid. Briles was running a non-Air Raid spread in high school before he got to Tech as you noted. And he's run a non-Air Raid spread since leaving Tech. If you want to say Briles' has some Air Raid elements, I'll agree to that too. But I can't agree that Briles runs the same offense as Leach. There are similar elements, but they are not the same. It's like saying the Wishbone and the Veer are the same. They are both triple option running offenses and have similar concepts and elements, but they are different.

Numbers don't convince you? I'll go with a better argument. A sample news article, this one from the Eugene Register Guard. "Briles' last season in the prep ranks was 1999 in Stephenville High School. Kevin Kolb learned the offense that year as a freshman quarterback at Stephenville, and this year he enters his third year running it for Briles as the starter for Houston." ... "Unlike Oregon, which balances its spread passing game with an option rushing attack out of similar formations, the Cougars occasionally rely on the veer. Invented by legendary Houston coach Bill Yeoman in the '60s and a precursor to the wishbone, the veer gives the Cougars a triple-option rushing game to complement their base spread offense." Keep in mind that Briles played for Yeoman in the '70s. So to counter your arguments: 1) If Briles runs the same offense as Leach, he was running it at Stephenville prior to coming to Tech since Kolb learned the same offense in high school as used at UH, prior to Briles going to Tech 2) Show me any proof that Leach has ever in his career used any Veer components in his offense.

Do I even watch football? I'd bet I've watched more Art Briles games than you since I watched every game he coached at UH for 5 years. You say he has a top OL now? Do you think he had a top OL in 2008 his first year at Baylor? In that year Baylor was #21 in the nation rushing. Tech was 94th. Baylor was 4-8. Tech was 11-2. I'd guess Tech had a MUCH better line than Baylor that year. But Baylor still averaged 66% more rushing yards per game than Tech. And that was Tech's highest rushing year with it's highest ranking under Leach. There's an apples to apples to comparison with Briles having a worse line and team with a similar schedule. Briles runs the ball MUCH more than Leach ever has. Briles coached teams and their rushing offense rank: 2003 - 12th 2004 - 76th (Tech 112th) 2005 - 39th 2006 - 28th 2007 - 10th 2008 - 21st 2009 - 108th (but still ahead of Tech at 115th) 2010 - 24th 2011 - 10th 2012 - 14th 2013 - 13th 2014 - 29th I don't care whether it's UH or Baylor, with a few exceptions, good or bad teams, he has a very good rushing offense. Leach has NEVER had a very good or great rushing offense even with his best teams. Even Briles' worst rushing years are better than Leach's best rushing offense.