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Texas fires AD Steve Patterson, is Charlie Strong next to be fired?

By Patrick Schmidt

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Texas fired athletic director Steve Patterson on Tuesday morning, but is Longhorns head football coach Charlie Strong next to face the firing squad?

After two embarrassing years as the athletic director at Texas, university president Gregory L. Fenves fired Steve Patterson, according to Kirk Bohls and Brian Davis of the Austin-American Statesman. The move comes three days after a banner flew over Darrell K. Royal Stadium for the game against Rice saying, “Patterson must go.”

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Texas hired Patterson away from Arizona State when it could have had Oliver Luck and have since seen their fan base grow angry over increased ticket prices for football and basketball games, longtime Texas employees were pushed out, the athletic department had a loss of $2.8 million in 2013-2014 and his arrogance was too much.

Patterson was lauded for his hire of Charlie Strong to replace Mack Brown two seasons ago but Strong is 1-8 against ranked opponents and is 1-1 to start his second year after going 6-7 in his first year in Austin. The hire was one that met with praise but 15 games into the Strong regime and fans are getting restless and wondering how long they’ll need to be patient for the team to get back to national prominence.

So with Patterson’s firing, does that mean Strong should be worried about his job status?

Not according to Davis and not according to Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News who think Patterson’s termination has little to do with the job security of Strong.

Granted, the rest of the season and success or lack of success Texas has will be more telling, because 15 games is too small of a sample size to judge Strong, especially after his first year was spent weeding out the players from the Brown regime and instilling a new culture.

Strong has a depth chart littered with freshmen playing big roles so this year’s record could be similar to last year’s 6-7 mark so two losing seasons in two years won’t be a great resume for Strong to show the new athletic director, but he should at least get another year or two to see if his rebuild can work in Austin.

Although it would be interesting to see Strong’s predecessor, get the athletic director position, which is the rumor floating around after Brown met with Fenves last week. The AAS reports Brown isn’t being considered for the full-time AD job, but Fox Sports’ Bruce Feldman tweets there will be a push to make Brown the AD.

Former Texas linebacker Mike Perrin has been named the school’s interim AD.

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