AUSTIN, Texas -- The Charlie Strong era at Texas is over, and while brief, is not easily explained. Strong will be remembered as a good man and a great recruiter, one who has Texas well-positioned to compete for Big 12 titles again soon. He just won't get to lead that run.
His bosses and players badly wanted Strong to succeed at Texas. He won huge games against Oklahoma, Baylor and Notre Dame that, for a moment, suggested his turning point was coming. He was fired, quite simply, because he didn't win enough games. Too many blowouts early in his tenure. Too many close losses late. Two completely inexplicable losses against Iowa State and Kansas.
"In the end, the results over three seasons were not there," university president Greg Fenves said in a statement. "It was not clear the future was going to be at the levels expected of Longhorn football."
He went 6-7, 5-7 and 5-7. You don't get to coach at Texas for long with those results. He will leave with the worst winning percentage of any coach in school history. The patience ran out when a season that started with so much promise ended up being more of the same.
Strong left Louisville at the end of 2013 ready for a big challenge after a wildly successful rebuild of the Cardinals. At Texas, he stepped into an objectively messy situation, joining an athletic department in the middle of a major leadership transition.
He was hired by Steve Patterson, the unpopular new athletic director who'd be forced out 20 months into Strong's stint. Longtime UT president Bill Powers retired during his tenure. And, of course, Strong had to replace a legendary coach in Mack Brown who'd let the proud program slip.
Texas can be a hard place to coach, with the many cooks in the kitchen and the many factions to appease. Strong wasn't brought in to play the politician role like Brown. His job was to rebuild and win.
It's difficult to contend that Strong was set up to fail, considering he put himself in trouble with the hiring decisions he made in his first 10 days on the job. He ended up demoting, firing or losing eight of the nine assistants he hired in 2014. He handed out in-season demotions to two coordinators -- Shawn Watson and Vance Bedford -- who'd helped him build a contender at Louisville. His poorly handled hire of offensive line coach Joe Wickline led to an Oklahoma State lawsuit and regrettable depositions. Continuity eluded Strong throughout.
Toward the end of his debut season, after clinching a bowl bid at 6-5, Strong promised a five-loss season "will never happen in this program." Texas lost its next two games, including a 31-7 blowout against Arkansas in the Advocare V100 Texas Bowl, to finish 6-7.
Strong was a year late on figuring out a real offensive direction in the high-scoring Big 12. After the Arkansas loss, he fired two coaches but kept Watson for the entire offseason. He asked Watson to redesign his West Coast-style offense into an up-tempo attack more similar to their conference foes.
And when that "new offense" produced 3 points and 163 yards in a 35-point loss at Notre Dame to open 2015, Strong benched Watson and quarterback Tyrone Swoopes and Texas had to spend an entire season trying to survive offensively.
When the Longhorns finally got that side of the ball right this season with offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert, the No. 1 rusher in college football (D'Onta Foreman) and an exciting freshman QB (Shane Buechele), it was Texas' play on defense that slipped.
Strong responded with more change, putting himself in charge of the Longhorns' defense four games into the season. The defense did improve. The results didn't change much.
Strong operated the program with a steadfast belief that, once he brought in enough talent, a turning point would come soon that proved Texas was ready to get back on top of the college football world.
He and his staff succeeded on the talent acquisition front with two loaded top-10-ranked recruiting classes. From his 2015 and 2016 classes, he added 29 ESPN 300 recruits. He's an impressive relationship-builder who won over moms and dads with his low-pressure, education-first approach. And he was a confident closer, one who did his best work in January and February.
And there were days when his team converted all that young talent into big statement wins. A 1-4 Texas team stepped up and stunned Oklahoma, a top-10 foe that would win the Big 12, in a 24-17 slugfest a year ago. The Longhorns finished that season in unexpected fashion with an upset of a quarterback-less No. 12 Baylor team in Waco.
Strong believed the program was one big win away from finally taking off, and Texas got that win in a double-overtime thriller against then-No. 10 Notre Dame to open this season. His team jumped from unranked to No. 11 in the AP poll. The morning after knocking off the Fighting Irish, Strong vowed: "This can't be a one-night wonder. It won't be." But it was fool's gold, both for Texas and the 4-7 Irish.
The difference with Strong's third season in Austin is that it wasn't undone by blowout losses. He endured nine of them by margins of 18 points or worse in his first two seasons. These setbacks occurred in big-time games (48-10 and 50-7 against TCU) and supposedly easier ones (24-0 at Iowa State). Five blowout losses in 2014, four more in 2015.
Blowouts weren't the problem in 2016. This season, it was close losses. He was 5-5 a week ago with four of those losses coming by margins of 7, 5, 3 and 4 points, respectively. Had Strong finished out 7-5, Texas president Greg Fenves and AD Mike Perrin likely would've been inclined to give Strong another year. A 7-5 season would've shown some growth.
But Texas lost the one game it absolutely couldn't Saturday, blowing a 21-10 fourth-quarter lead and falling 24-21 in double overtime against a Kansas team that was 1-9 and hadn't won a Big 12 game in two years. By losing to Kansas, Strong lost his ability to prove he's making progress.
During his first two years on the job, Strong's failures were met with finger-pointing at Brown about what he did or did not leave behind for his successor. Seven players that Brown left Strong are on NFL rosters today, while 10 were kicked off the team in Strong's first year. Strong never took part in that blame game and probably wouldn't indulge it today. He took on a big, hard job. He did things his way, to the best of his ability, and it didn't work out.
Strong's lone legacy at Texas will ultimately be his young players. In all, 48 players on Texas' roster are underclassmen who signed in the past two years. Twenty of them, led by players like Buechele and freshman All-Americans Malik Jefferson and Connor Williams, have started games this season.
These players love Strong and respect him and bought in fully. They'll take this coaching change hard, especially because they're sick and tired of the constant tumult at Texas. As sophomore defensive end Breckyn Hager passionately argued midway through this season: "We love him as a coach. Getting a new coach is just going to set the program back. We've got one of the best in the business. We've got to keep him."
The amount of talent Strong brought in should've bought him more time and security. It didn't, but whoever replaces him is inheriting a lethal supply of young talent, enough to start winning a lot of games in 2017 and 2018.