The Pecan Park Eagle

UH Football Coach Tom Herman Gets a Raise to $3 Million as 1st Step in Gradient Annual Increases in His Pay from Donor Sources.

When UH Board of Regents Chair, Tillman Fertitta, spoke of Cougar Football Coach Tom Herman‘s raise to $3.0 million dollars a year, he described the action as essentially “a good start” in a plan for annual increases from private donors that would both enhance the university’s prospects of keeping their present “hot prospect coach,” but to also establish, once and for all, finally, that the University of Houston no longer has any intentions of being a stepping-stone position for talents like their two previous head men. Former Cougar player Art Briles used his UH coaching tenure to land his current successful gig at Baylor. And Briles, of course, was followed by Kevin Sumlin who rode his Cougar horse, aka an inherited UH QB named Case Keenum into the  “hot coach” limelight. Jumping from UH to College Station, Sumlin walked into the presence of another QB inheritance at Texas A&M in his first season on the job there. Freshman QB Johnny Manziel would lead the Aggies to an impressive start in their first year in the SEC . In the process,  Manziel would win the 2012 Heisman Trophy.

By comparison, Tom Herman didn’t inherit any “ready-to-go” national talents when he took over this year, 2015, at UH, but he came here from his National Championship year as offensive coordinator for Ohio State as being something akin to a “quarterback whispering” mentor with young talent like the Cougars’ Greg Ward, Jr. Herman’s talent for teaching, and his wisdom of what college age players do not yet know about themselves, have been almost as amazing as a magic show. In less than a full season, Ward has learned the joys and dangers of being a running QB who could also pass with skill and accuracy into one of those rare bird leaders who almost compiles as much running yardage per game as he does passing. And what happens if Ward gets hurt? We found that out last Saturday night in a most amazing way. Back up QB Kyle Postma came on in relief when Houston got way behind Memphis, 34-14, and he led the Coogs to a crazy, but exciting 35-34 win at the wire.

Houston is now 10-0-0 and ranked as high as #13 in the country by AP. They may or may not go undefeated, but the jury is already in on the man who established the winning focus culture at UH. It’s like none we’ve really seen since the days of our revered Bill Yeoman, but even Yeoman never tasted this kind of success this early in his first season at the helm.

Tom Herman appears to be one of those once-a-generation phenoms. And, even if that impression is something of a waltz into hyperbole, we will happily settle for the next level of appraisal: There may be other young coaches out there who are just as talented as Tom Herman, but “nobody does it better!”

UH knows it – and so does every other big school looking for magic at their own place. Hopefully, the difference this time is both the actual character of Tom Herman and all he said at his UH hiring about wanting to be part of Cougar Nation and that special thing we are building, plus, this time, UH donors are finally putting their money where their mouths always are.

Words are beautiful, but action is the real speaker of the house in all lands of opportunity..

OK, we know that Herman can get more than the $3 million we will be paying him, but this increase, as Fertitta made clear, is just the first step in an annually increasing plan for making sure that Tom Herman’s salary remains competitive with the rest of the field. The other part, of course, is our man’s passion for being the Moses who leads UH out of the desert of football’s second tier competition.

The following is simply a table which compares Tom Herman’s old salary to some of the top head coaching salaries, coming into the 2015 season. The new “3 mil” starting point figure will give UH a position that fits the company of all others. And, to borrow our university motto, – “in time” – we will reach that goal of being on parity with all others.

My source for the other salary data  in  is this chart is the  Dallas Morning News. Unfortunately, this source does not include data for private schools like Baylor or TCU:

http://res.dallasnews.com/graphics/2015_04/collegesalaries/

Some of the Highest Paid Coaches in College Football in 2015

• Steve Spurrier resigned during the 2015 season.
• Gary Pinkel resigned after the 2015 season.

** Tom Herman’s salary for 2015 was the first one above $ 1 million a year for UH. His raise to $3,000,000 is a major competitive jump for UH..

The above tabular chart is not intended as an accurate display of all the national salaries in this range from top man Nick Saban. It leaves out the west coast schools, the Big Ten, Notre Dame, Baylor TCU, and Stanford from the private school sector.

Bottom Line: The Herman raise had to take place for UH to become the serious force in college football they were becoming prior to the collapse of the Southwest Conference in 1995.

Have a nice weekend, everybody!

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Tags: UH Replaces Words with Action.

This entry was posted on November 21, 2015 at 2:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.