No one ever said that the first season would be easy for Charlie Strong, but the new Texas football coach has certainly hit a rough patch this week.
After appearing at the Big 12 Football Media Days on Tuesday to discuss the future of Texas football, the week quickly soured for Coach Strong. The biggest blow came on Thursday with the arrests of two UT wide receivers on charges of sexual assault. Both were quickly dismissed from the team, but just a day after their removal, the Austin-American Statesman is reporting that four other players have been dismissed from the program, including running backs Jalen Overstreet and Joe Bergeron.
And to cap off the week of humiliation for Texas football, it seems that Strong may have to dismiss a copywriter, too. Spreading across the Internet are copies of the official media guide for the 2014 Texas Longhorns football team, which feature a pretty glaring typo.
At the footer of several players’ biographies, the official website for the University of Texas Athletics is misspelled as TexsaSports.com. (Obviously, the website should read TexasSports.com.) According to KXAN, the typo only appears on odd-numbered pages, a total of 32 misspellings.
The typo turned into a moment of schadenfreude for some Oklahoma fans. An anonymous Sooner has purchased the misspelled domain name, leading users to a site that proclaims in all-caps “OU IS BETTER THAN TEXAS. LEARN TO SPELL PLEASE, HRONS” with an embedded video of “Boomer Sooner.”
Along with a Twitter handle, the owners of the site promise that, “In the coming weeks of the remaining offseason, [the website] will be updated.”
Typos aside, the sudden purge of players isn't a very big surprise. Strong has long said he is looking to change the attitude and culture of privilege at UT.
While some players have obviously not accepted the new levels of discipline, other leaders of the team seem to have embraced the change. During Big 12 Football Media Days, senior cornerback Quandre Diggs said, "I told Coach Strong that I just feel like we had guys on the team that just didn't love football the way they should. That's something that I've always sensed since I've been here. We had guys that just didn't love football."
With six players gone in the span of 24 hours, Charlie Strong is sending his strongest message yet: Welcome to a new era of Texas football.
After the arrests and dismissals of two Longhorns football players, three other players have been dismissed, including running back Joe Bergeron.
