4 things UT coach Tom Herman said at Big 12 media days

University of Texas head football coach Tom Herman speaks during a news conference in August 2018. (KPRC)

The Texans Longhorns are in year three of the Tom Herman era and had a three-win improvement in 2018.

This season, it’s all about quarterback Sam Ehlinger and the Longhorns' chances of winning in the Big 12, which has been dominated by Oklahoma in recent years.

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Check out 4 interesting things Herman said during his media days presser this week:

On loyalty

"You don’t necessarily have to come from that extreme of a background to be loyal. I think the better relationships that you build, and we’re a very relationship-oriented program between our players and between our players and coaches. So I think the stronger (the) relationships that you have with your fellow teammates and your coaches, the more loyal you’re going to be. You’re loyal to people, much more (than) you are a university.”

On Sam Ehlinger

“The freshman Sam Ehlinger was different than the sophomore Sam Ehlinger. The freshman Sam Ehlinger thought there were 13 guys on defense -- it was coming at him so fast, like drinking water out of a fire hose -- and then the game slowed down for him and that’s when I realized just how much the game makes sense to him.”

On UT-Texas A&M rivalry

“I’d love to see the rivalry renewed. I think it’s great for college football. It’s great for Texas. There’s plenty of other interstate rivals that are in different conferences that find a way to play each other. Clemson-South Carolina, Georgia-Georgia Tech, Florida-Florida State, Iowa-Iowa State, I mean the list goes on and on. I don’t know what needs to happen because I don’t know what happened in 2011. I wasn’t in those meetings, but I do think that we’ve got some really smart people in both universities administrations. We could find a way to make that game happen. I think that it would be great for Texas fans, we don’t play a historic rival at home anymore, ever. We (have) got to drive to Dallas to play our lone remaining historic rival. For our players, I’d much rather know that every other year, our longest nonconference road game is going to be two hours down the road instead of getting on a plane to Los Angeles to play a night game in Pacific time … (I) would love to see it. I think it would be great for recruiting, it would be great for the families of our players to be able to drive to a nonconference road game, but I have no idea what needs to happen to make that happen.”

On off-season workouts

“The weight room and then off-season mat drills. I know, obviously, you can’t hit anybody till you put pads on in the spring. You can develop that mental toughness, that fight-or-flight mentality by really pushing guys to the brink, having them redefine what their best is. When we put the pads on that first spring, it was a bit of a culture shock for a lot of these guys in terms of how physical our practices were.”


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