It was not a banner year for college football in the state of Texas. The final AP/Coaches poll hasn’t been released yet but a Texas team won’t be included in the rankings.
No power five team was able to win more than eight games, Texas A&M had a chance, but went typical Aggie down the stretch after they started 6-0 to finish 8-5. Texas, by all accounts was back, after the 2OT win over Notre Dame on opening weekend but they lost to Kansas and went 5-7 again this year. Baylor will everything that was swirling around their program this year started out 6-0 but lost their last six to finish 6-6 in the regular season and beat Boise State in its Bowl game to go 7-6.
Houston was the only team to win nine games, going 9-4, and they lost their last two games of the season and finished third I the AAC west, so really how good were the Cougars this year?
For a state that produces so much talent, why the heck did pretty much every university have subpar years?
Well, at the G5, three schools had new coaches, North Texas, Texas State, and UTSA. Two of the schools- UTSA and North Texas- went to bowl games this year and are rebuilding the program so a good start for them.
At the P5 level it is even more head scratching how nobody in the Big 12 won more than six games, and Kansas St. beat every single Texas school. No school had a new coach this year, two schools had newcomers at QB (TCU and Texas) but that play was incontinent not terrible.
So what can fix the problem? I really have no idea. “Play better” is probably a start, because the talent is on the teams. Better coaching you might ask? That could be it and with Herman at Texas and Ruhle at Baylor they should be able to crack the top 25 soon. Maybe it’s just a fluke year, but time will tell on that.
Whatever it was, 2016 was not a banner year for college football in Texas.
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