If native sons like Ken Hatfield and Houston Nutt can get run off at Arkansas, then what chance did Charlie Strong ever have at Texas?
Hatfield, who was part of Arkansas' 1964 national championship team, made it six seasons at his alma mater.
Nutt was advised to get all he could while he could, that coaches are hired to be fired.
That's the climate of college sports when everyone is ESPN-educated.
Strong, who was fired by Texas last Friday after losing badly to TCU, is definitely more than a coordinator, and he proved that at Louisville.
Strong was a finalist for the 2009 Broyles Award, named in honor or famed Razorbacks football coach and Athletic Director Frank Broyles and given annually to the top assistant coach in America. That same year, he accepted the head coaching job at Louisville, a program in bad shape, having gone 15-21 in the three seasons since Bobby Petrino had left.
Strong went to work. His first two seasons he went 7-6 and led the Cardinals to the Beef O'Brady and Belk bowls.
In his third season, finally surrounded by mostly his recruits, Strong led Louisville to an 11-2 record and a showdown in the Sugar Bowl against Florida, where he had been an assistant since 2003 until he was hired at Louisville.
The Cardinals were a two-touchdown underdog but won 33-23.
His fourth season, the Cardinals went 12-1 including a 36-9 victory over Miami in what is now called the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla.
The 37-15 record, 20-9 in conference play and 3-1 in bowls, thrust him atop of Texas' list to replace the popular Mack Brown, who had retired under pressure.
Strong's first season at Texas was a struggle, very similar to what Will Muschamp endured at Florida in 2011. It seemed like twice a week, three times in a bad week, Strong was suspending or releasing players for breaking team rules.
Just how little discipline was on that team was obvious when they showed up in Houston to play the Arkansas Razorbacks in the Texas Bowl.
The Hogs won 31-7, and it wasn't as close as the score. The Longhorns players seemed to think they were too good for that bowl.
Strong went out and signed the 20th-best recruiting class in America, moving deeply into old recruiting grounds in an attempt to restore the Longhorns program sooner than later.
He followed that up with the 12th-ranked recruiting class and was on track this year to sign the nation's No. 7 class before he was fired, something that was not a surprise.
Now Razorbacks fans are asking if Strong could be hired to coach Arkansas' defense.
Charlie Strong is a head coach now. He's a proven winner.
He will get a $10-million buyout, and that's more than enough to assure he can take a year off and wait for the right head coaching job next year, or he could tell the Houston Cougars he'll be their head coach right now.
Strong will be a head coach, and it will be at a place where he and his family can be happy.
Being the head coach at Texas -- along with Alabama and Ohio State -- is difficult. A coach's life is lived in a fishbowl. The alumni have unreasonable expectations and they are arrogant.
Strong, a native of Batesville and a graduate of Central Arkansas, is fine with unreasonable expectations, but arrogance is not in his DNA.
Tom Herman will do fine at Texas. He's a players' coach who is taking over a program that was getting back to being pretty talented at every position.
And Charlie Strong, who may have been hired to be fired at Texas, will be OK, too. He knows how to build a winning program; he's done it before and he'll do it again if given the time.
Sports on 12/01/2016