ProdigalHorn
10,000+ Posts
I was at Texas as a student when they fired Akers for the first losing season in 30 years. Then McWilliams had three losing seasons in five years. It made no sense to me in 1986. I’ll compare that moves with firing Les Miles....
That was my window as well. I remember vividly my freshman year sitting in an empty student section watching us lose to a mediocre Stanford/BYU/Arkansas/SMU and thinking to myself, "This is just not what UT football is supposed to be." It wasn't so much we were being out-coached (although we might have been.) We simply did not have athletes that were able to step up and win games against quality teams.
How much of that was lack of support from the donors, and how much of it was the rampant cheating going on at other schools, and how much of it was that when we DID get top talent, we didn't really use it that well (Terry Orr, anyone?) - i suspect a little of all of it.