Let's just all take a deep breath for a moment.
What we've just experienced this week was roughly the equivalent of four Red Banquets rolled into six days. Nothing like it has ever happened in the modern era of the Texas football program, and I say that as someone that has covered this team professionally since 1994 when I worked in the Texas Sports Information Department (yes, John Bianco was my boss). I've seen a lot of things, but I haven't ever seen this.
So, let's just woo-sah it out. It's been a long week.
We're getting ready to go down quite a road, but we have to start by addressing the biggest elephant I've ever seen in any burnt orange room I've ever metaphorically stepped into.
At the end of this incredibly exhausting first six weeks of the football season, which has included one mishap after another related to the playing of The Eyes of Texas after three separate games (including the Sam Stands Alone moment), along with a massive behind-the-scenes impact on fund-raising for the South end-zone project during the middle of a pandemic...You got all that? Woo-sah it out again if you need to.
In the backdrop of all of this mess, a massive implication emerged on Thursday through a combination of multiple online media reports, an athletic director's letter to Texas fans and a general rush from various corners of the Orangebloods.com universe to provide cover for Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte following my own report on Wednesday that Del Conte had made mistakes since July that had exasperated the problem.
The implication that exists out in the universe right now, which hasn't completely been flushed out, is that Texas head coach Tom Herman has defied Del Conte's very specific, very detailed and very unmistakable directives with regards to what each coach, coaching staff and set of players in each sport across the entire UT athletics globe needed to be doing with regards the playing of The Eyes of Texas following games.
The implication is that everything from the last couple of months is Herman's fault, that if he had been following the very clear orders that Del Conte had given everyone else, the mess from the last few months wouldn't have quite existed the way that it has.
Perhaps most importantly, the implication is that what happened on Saturday against Oklahoma and all of the fallout from that disaster would never have happened.
Those are the implications and they are not small. In fact, a strong case can be made that if Herman's alleged flagrant insubordination has created a sizable portion of the mess, it would register as grounds for immediate dismissal.
When I say the implications are serious ... I mean they are that serious. If you thought that I wasn't going to recognize the reporting of a former Orangebloods staff writer, Del Conte's own words and everything that has happened since Wednesday morning ... I'm not sure how well you know me because we are absolutely going to TALK ABOUT ALL OF IT.
