Longtime Texas booster Red McCombs is not happy about Charlie Strong being named the the new head coach of the University of Texas, calling it a “kick in the face” during a radio interview according to ESPN.
“I think the whole thing is a bit sideways,” McCombs said of the selection process during an interview with ESPN 1250 San Antonio. “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.”
McComb, who is the former owner of the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs and Minnesota Vikings publicly lobbied for the university to hire former NFL coach and ESPN analyst Jon Gruden and said he was stunned when he found out Texas hired Charlie Strong as their new head coach.
“I think it is a kick in the face,” McCombs said. “Beyond the fact of what actually happened. We have boosters that have a lot of knowledge about the game. When we decided to go get Mack — from the time we decided to go get Mack to about 30 hours later to have a press conference here and it was done — we had a lot of input before we went after him.”
“So I don’t know what the big rush was. I was kind of pleased that [Texas athletic director Steve] 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.”
The school of business is named after McCombs and there is a statue of him inside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. The benefactor has donated over $110 million to the university so I understand why he’s mad. He feels like his opinion was undermined. At this point the only thing Charlie Strong can do to shut his critics up is win and bring Texas back to the glory days when it was one of the top schools in the nation.