Most of the college football world seems to agree that Charlie Strong was the right candidate for Texas’ vacant head-coaching position. One Longhorns booster isn’t so sure.
Red McCombs, a former owner of the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Vikings, is a longtime booster for the University of Texas, donating more than $100 million to the school over the past half-century.
After openly lobbying for Longhorns athletic director Steve Patterson to go after big name coaches like former NFL coach Jon Gruden last week, McCombs wasn’t exactly pleased to find out the school hired Strong over the weekend. McCombs even went as far as to say that the hire was a “kick in the face” to him and other boosters.
“I think the whole thing is a bit sideways,” McCombs said on ESPN 1250 San Antonio on Monday. “I don’t have any doubt that Charlie is a fine coach. I think he would make a great position coach, maybe a coordinator.
“But I don’t believe [he belongs at] what should be one of the three most powerful university programs in the world right now at UT-Austin. I don’t think it adds up.”
While McCombs was directly critical of Strong’s ability as a coach, outside of the minor “position coach” slight, he did explicitly say that the school made the wrong choice in hiring him as Mack Brown‘s successor.
“I don’t know what the big rush was,” McCombs said. “I was kind of pleased that Patterson already said that he’d like to get it done in the middle of January. That seemed logical to me. I’m a team player, but I think they went about it wrong and made the selection wrong.”
McCombs has been such an important contributor to the university over the years that the school even renamed its business school after him. The Longhorns also have a statue of McCombs inside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.
Have a question for Luke Hughes? Send it to him via Twitter at @LukeFHughes or send it here.
