Tom Herman Is Altering Texas’ Program — and How People Bet on the Longhorns

Line movement for Texas this offseason shows that head coach Tom Herman doesn’t just have the Texas fan base riled up — he’s got bettors excited about them, too.


“Losing has to be awful.”

Texas head coach Tom Herman dropped that line to reporters last summer during his first appearance at Big 12 Media Days as the man in charge of the Longhorns’ football program.

Texas was coming off three straight losing seasons. It was understandable why Herman’s first priority was to change the toxic culture that had infected the locker room.

Behind a 7-6 season that culminated with a Texas Bowl victory, Herman began building a solid foundation for a once-storied program that had fallen on hard times.

The oddsmakers in Las Vegas took notice, setting Texas’ win total at 8.5 for the 2018 college football season. It has since moved up to nine.

If the Longhorns hit the over, it would be the first time since 2009 that they won nine or more games in a season.

What does Herman think of his team’s chances of taking the next step this year?

“We lost six games [last season] and in four of them we had the lead in the fourth quarter or overtime,” Herman told The Dallas Morning News. “There’s no moral victories, especially not at Texas. I think it points to how close we are, but it also points to the fact that we got to develop and coach the ability to finish.”

Texas begins this season as a 9.5-point favorite against Maryland. It’s an opportunity to not only show their growth, but also to get revenge on the team that’s responsible for an embarrassing start to the Herman era in Austin.

That 2017 matchup, a season-opener against the unranked Terrapins, featured an air of excitement surrounding #23 Texas. The Longhorns were 19-point favorites.

That enthusiasm quickly vanished as Maryland handed the Longhorns a 51-41 loss in front of their stunned home crowd at the Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

As deflating as the loss was for Herman, the coach learned an important lesson from the unexpected defeat.

“What was going through my mind was, ‘I’ve got to do a better job of finding out what’s real and what’s not real,’” Herman revealed to ESPN’s Jake Trotter. “I had believed that, for the most part, the team had bought in and we’d done a good job of coaching them to our level of expectation of how to play. But I saw things in that game that I hadn’t seen since the first day in pads at spring ball, in terms of effort level and technique and all that stuff.”

The loss also resulted in Herman turning the offense over to dual-threat QB Sam Ehlinger, who’s one of 12 starters returning for 2018.

“He was really headed in the right direction,” Herman said of Ehlinger, who battled concussion issues during the latter half of his freshman season. “We’ve got to do a better job of making sure that he plays as consistent as we know he can.”

Having 247Sports’ #3 recruiting class for 2018 should help Ehlinger continue to develop as a signal-caller.

Professional bettors clearly like the talent that Herman and his coaching staff have assembled around Ehlinger, which is why the lines for three of Texas’ earlier games have moved in favor of the Longhorns:

*Week 3 vs USC: Line moved from USC (-1) to Texas (-4)

*Week 4 vs TCU: Line moved from a pick’em to Texas (-3.5)

*Week 6 vs Oklahoma (in Dallas): Line moved from Oklahoma (-12) to Oklahoma (-5)

In regards to that Red River Showdown with rival Oklahoma, Herman has a history for coming out on top as an underdog.

During his time as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator (2012-’14) and Houston’s head coach (2015-’16), Herman’s teams were underdogs in 11 games. They covered the spread in all 11 matchups. They also won every one of those games straight up.

While he rarely came out victorious as an underdog during his first year in Austin, he did continue to dominate against the spread, with Texas going 5-1 as the ‘dog.

The underdog Longhorns could quickly progress from longshot to Big 12 contender due to personnel changes in the conference, like Oklahoma QB Baker Mayfield and Oklahoma State QB Mason Rudolph.

But those personnel changes are irrelevant to Herman. And if you ask him about his own personal expectations for 2018, he’ll give you a cliché “coach speak” answer.

“Our expectations have never lowered, have never changed, but there was a whole lot less screaming and yelling and getting mad [during the past spring] because everybody was meeting those expectations on a much [more] regular basis,” said Herman during Big 12 meetings in May.

Does that mean he’s close to returning Texas to its glory days?

“[University of Texas president] Greg Fenves hired us to not build a team, but restore a program, and I think we are well on our way to doing that.”

We’ll find out if the losing ends for good in September.