Tom Herman wants to win in paradise, but can FAU keep him there?

Note: rankings for this series are set by TERSE, a D1 college football metric designed to imitate human rankings. These will shift as the offseason goes on, with more transfer data becoming available over time.

For a coach whose maturity was always in question at Texas, Tom Herman really seems to have come out looking like the bigger person in the end. His tenure was by no means an unqualified success, but we haven’t really seen better from the Longhorns at any other point since 2010. Herman was fired after falling slightly from 14th in the preseason AP Poll to 19th in the final—as good as any Texas finish in the seven seasons before his arrival—and winning his bowl game, all so the Longhorns could strike out on Urban Meyer and go 5-7 with Steve Sarkisian.

Okay, so things have gotten better at Texas lately. But Herman’s ouster, following a perfectly fine 7-3 season that included an overtime win over #6 Oklahoma State and a combined 124 points against Kansas State and Colorado in the last two games of the year, was transparently ill-timed. Combined with Auburn levels of booster meddling after Herman stood with his players during the “Eyes of Texas” controversy, he at least ended up less immature than his employer. Whether his firing is justified still depends on whether the Longhorns’ belief in themselves as a true top-ten program is accurate, but despite feeling overdue to almost everybody in the sport, it turned out not to leave such a bad mark on his résumé after all.

Herman at Texas is a pretty simple story, all things considered. There’s some ambiguity about how it ended and who was truly in the right—neither came out looking great, that’s for sure—but we’ve seen it before. Coaches with local ties ascending at a G5, battling high expectations at a demanding P5, and eventually running out of time are a dime a dozen.

It’s what happened next that threw a wrench in things. It’s not so surprising for FAU to hire Herman; their last two hires, Lane Kiffin and Willie Taggart, both hit most of the same beats in their coaching journeys before ending up in Boca Raton. But, as with last week and Kevin Wilson’s decision to take on the Tulsa job, looking at things from the new coach’s perspective is much more fascinating and instructive.

It wasn’t even a given, after all, that Herman would go into coaching again—not because he’s a poor coach, more because he ended up at the theoretical destination job for any coach as deeply connected to Texas as he is. Kiffin, ever the drifter, had plenty of options if and when he made it big at FAU; Taggart, a Florida man through and through, certainly could’ve considered the Gators, the Hurricanes, or even those newly-P5 Knights over at UCF. But Herman? Well, what’s the move if this works out? The most obvious high-level Power 5 job is obviously off the table, and any plans of making something happen in the NFL have rather sputtered out.

Now, of course, this could all be moot if Herman turns out to be exceptional at FAU. Local recruiting isn’t exactly the cornerstone of his identity as a coach, and he certainly could work at a far-flung job on the same level as Texas. But the path to a P5 future looks very different than it did when he was at Houston, and it’s hardly clear that this job is the best way to get back into the inner circle.

I’m making an assumption here, of course—one that’s typical when we talk about coaches at “stepping stone” jobs like Florida Atlantic. Because, after all, this is a stepping stone, isn’t it? That’s clearly what Kiffin had in mind, considering that he ended up in a cushy SEC job, and it’s probably what Taggart was hoping for, had he found success with the Owls. It’s natural to assume that Herman is here for the same reason.

There’s been pushback against the seeming necessity that good G5 coaches jump to the P5, though. Really, one has to wonder how it took so long for this traditional move to be questioned, considering how rarely it works. Good coaches in the Group of 5 have much better job stability, aren’t usually wrangling with too many internal forces, and have the luxury of waiting around longer if there’s a particular P5 spot they really have their heart set on. The pay is obviously worse in almost all cases, but there are definite upsides, which HCs like Jeff Traylor (extended through 2031 at UTSA for $28 million) are buying in on.

Why not Herman? If any program could use the stability, it’s FAU—they’ve gone from 9-3 to 2-9 to 8-5 to 1-11 to 11-3 to 5-7 to 11-3 to 5-7 in less than two decades at the FBS level. And for a coach who prefers the coaching side of the gig to the CEO role that most high-profile P5 jobs have become, winning games on the coast of southeast Florida might as well be an idyllic working retirement.

Of course, Herman does have to win for this to work, but the G5 underdog role does seem to suit him better than managing egos and high-profile recruits (often both) at Texas, where he never really seemed quite comfortable. The Longhorns had the local ties, but the Owls really do seem like the right team for Herman. For once, maybe the story isn’t about where he’s going next, as it seemingly always was during his rise and fall in the Lone Star State. The story of a supposedly over-the-hill coach coming back to win in paradise is just as fascinating and exciting, if you ask me.

The Last Five Years

The blueprint is UCF. Herman openly described them as such, saying the Knights are “ten years ahead of us” in a story for The Athletic. It’s another indication that he does want to stay and build something here, as he describes the possible arc FAU could follow to establish itself as a premier institution and reach the heights that got UCF into the Big 12. Kiffin’s tenure offered a taste of this program’s potential, but it’s certainly not just anyone who can make it work here; Taggart flamed out in three years without ever getting much of anywhere.

2022 and 2023

Last year was defined by three close calls against opponents that should’ve taken care of business against FAU. The Owls made a late comeback against Ohio but ran out of time in a 41-38 loss, then watched the Bobcats go 10-4. A few weeks later, they nearly stunned eventual Big Ten West champion Purdue in a 26-28 defeat. The last loss cam at season’s end, a nailbiting upset bid against 9-5 Western Kentucky that came down to a game-winning two-point conversion in overtime by the Hilltoppers. Flip any of those and FAU makes a bowl; flip all three and they go 8-4. Alas, it was not to be.

That also means this roster had potential, of course, and it has potential—the Owls rank third in SP+ returning production at 83%, bringing back the core of a team that had legitimate conference championship potential at its best. Of course, it wasn’t always at its best, but a year of experience and a bit of luck could do wonders right away. The critical factor is a smooth transition from N’Kosi Perry, who tossed 25 touchdowns and only 5 interceptions last year, to Nebraska transfer Casey Thompson or CMU transfer Daniel Richardson. (There’s more of a battle there than you might assume, though Thompson definitely has the inside track given his P5 experience.)

The Next Five Years

If Herman is still here in five years, this hire is a success for FAU. It’s as simple as that. For that to happen, though, they need to win under him and keep him from bolting for an attractive P5 offer. Under the circumstances, the latter seems like less of a concern that it was with Kiffin and Taggart, but it’s not like we can ignore the possibility. Texas is too proud to even consider bringing Herman back, but plenty of other well-paying positions could be persuaded to see his Longhorns tenure in a better light following some strong seasons at FAU.

On the Owls’ side, the path to making that happen requires investment, as is so often the story with these hires. You want to be the next UCF? Well, it’s pretty obvious the Knights wouldn’t be headed to the Big 12 if not for a staggering $130 million paycheck written for football back in 2021. FAU has the resources to do something on that scale—their endowment is, in fact, bigger than UCF’s—but the university isn’t necessarily bought into pouring that level of money into football. Winning with Herman might be what the program needs to change that.

Football is changing, and the nature of the way teams make hires is changing along with it. Stability at the G5 level has been a foreign concept for so long, but Herman could be part of a wave of coaches who elect for long-term builds at low-level jobs rather than flaming out at the top echelon. As someone who’s been to the peak, his experience might be what this program needs to feel confident they can break the cycle of rise and fall to establish themselves in the AAC. The Owls thrive amid change and uncertainty; Tom Herman thrives when punching up and leading the charge. As long as those forces are combined, there’s no telling what they can do.