It didn't take long for new Texas coach Charlie Strong to collect his first critic.
Texas businessman and Longhorns booster Red McCombs called Strong's hiring a "kick in the face" during an appearance on ESPN 1250 in San Antonio on Monday, the day Strong was introduced as the Longhorns' new coach. McCombs previously championed current ESPN analyst and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Jon Gruden as the man Texas should hire.
"I don't have any doubt that Charlie is a fine coach. I think he would make a great position coach, maybe a coordinator," McCombs said. "But I don't believe [he should be head coach at] what should be one of the three most powerful university programs in the world right now at UT-Austin. I don't think it adds up."
McCombs co-founded Clear Channel Communications and lent his name to the McCombs School of Business at Texas. He previously owned the Denver Nuggets, Minnesota Vikings and San Antonio Spurs and founded an automotive group in San Antonio.
His net worth is estimated at $1.4 billion, according to a 2012 report by the San Antonio Express-News.
"Beyond the fact of what actually happened. We have boosters that have a lot of knowledge about the game. When we decided to go get Mack -- from the time we decided to go get Mack to about 30 hours later to have a press conference here and it was done -- we had a lot of input before we went after him," McCombs said. "So I don't know what the big rush was. I was kind of pleased that [Texas athletic director Steve] Patterson already said that he'd like to get it done in the middle of January. That seemed logical to me. I'm a team player, but I think they went about it wrong and made the selection wrong."
