When No. 15 Texas upset No. 5 Georgia 28-21 in the 2019 Sugar Bowl in Tom Herman’s second season as the head coach, it seemed the Longhorns were on the verge of turning a corner.

Not only did they win convincingly against a Georgia team many argued was snubbed from the College Football Playoff, but it marked just the first time since 2009 that Texas reached 10 wins in a season.

Then during the postgame trophy presentation, ESPN’s Holly Rowe asked quarterback Sam Ehlinger this question:

“For all of these fans who are in the stands and those who are watching on TV, what does this do to set up Texas for a springboard into next season?”

Ehlinger leaned into the microphone and declared, “Longhorn nation, we’re baaaaaack!”

While an invigorating statement at the moment, that was a critical turning point in the Herman tenure that laid the groundwork for him ultimately being fired on Jan. 2, just two seasons later.

Nearly five months later, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte awarded Herman a two-year contract extension through December 2023 that would pay him an average of $6.625 million a year.

Texas had just completed a season where it beat Oklahoma, reached the Big 12 title game (lost to Oklahoma) and beat a perennial SEC power in a New Year’s Six Bowl. That suddenly became the yearly expectation even though there hadn’t yet been any evidence Herman could sustain that level of success through multiple seasons.

Sure enough, Texas then declined to 8-5 in 2019 before another disappointing 7-3 campaign in 2020. It didn’t help that Herman previously said he had been building toward 2020 since taking the Texas job. He doubled down on those remarks before the season even all the challenges the coronavirus created.

In November, Texas not so subtly flirted with Urban Meyer as the Herman hot seat talk intensified, which picked up steam after the Longhorns lost 23-30 at home to No. 13 Iowa State.

When Meyer withdrew himself from discussions with Texas a couple of weeks later Del Conte crafted an incredibly vague statement about Herman’s future on Dec. 12.

“There’s been a lot of speculation about the future of our football coach,” Del Conte’s statement said. “My policy is to wait until the end of the season before evaluating and commenting on our program and coaches. With the close of the regular season, I want to reiterate that Tom Herman is our coach.”

The statement did not say for how long. When local media outlets followed up for clarification, Del Conte said Herman would be the Longhorns’ coach in 2021.

He did not specify that Herman would be the Texas coach for only the first day of 2021.

After firing Herman on Saturday and hiring Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian in a deal that likely was in progress before Saturday, Del Conte was much less vague about his vision for Texas football.

“We expect to win championships,” Del Conte said. “We want to win championships. That’s what we’re all here for.”

Now Texas joins South Carolina and Auburn in spending eight-figure sums of money to try to “fix” their football programs while also apparently being in a financial crisis as a result of the pandemic.

The total cost of firing Herman and bringing in Sarkisian to replace him will likely be between $40-50 million. Herman’s buyout costs around $15 million, plus an estimated $9 million for the rest of his staff.

Then there’s the additional cost of paying any buyout for Sarkisian at Alabama and giving him a contract at Texas, in addition to the coaching staff he’ll bring with him.

All of these expenditures are being made just four months after Texas laid off 35 people within its athletic department, furloughed many other employees, left 35 other positions unfilled and had almost 300 other employees take a pay cut.

Del Conte at the time said the decisions were “heartbreaking, but necessary”.

These budget cuts are also amid player compensation coming in 2021 with name, image and likeness legislation being enacted. Athletic departments next year will no longer be able to generate huge sums of revenue from their athletes.

A lot of administrations will say they're happy to see the athletes profit for themselves, but athletic departments can’t be happy about the idea of losing even more money after massive revenue losses this year.

Nobody is going to argue Herman is the next Meyer, but keep in mind his .639 winning percentage in four seasons at Texas was far greater than Charlie Strong’s .433 winning percentage in the three seasons before Herman arrived.

Additionally, for as beloved as Mack Brown was during his long tenure at Texas, his success is a bit overstated. In 16 seasons at Texas, Brown won one national championship and only two Big 12 titles. Frankly, he isn’t the same caliber of coach as Meyer is either.

Spending this amount of money would have been more justifiable if Texas had been able to hire Meyer as a replacement. Meyer was a three-time national champion at Florida (2006, 2008) and Ohio State (2014) and, outside of Nick Saban, is maybe the greatest recruiter in the history of college football.

Instead, the next coach is Sarkisian, who isn’t exactly a sure thing.

He’s a great redemption story as a guy who was fired from USC in 2015 for personal issues, mainly alcoholism. He’s done an exceptional job as Alabama’s offensive coordinator over the past two seasons and appears to have rectified his personal issues.

In 2019, Sarkisian’s offense was No. 2 in the country at 47.2 points per game. Four players from that unit (QB Tua Tagovailoa, OT Jedrick Wills, WR Henry Ruggs III, WR Jerry Jeudy) were selected in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft, yet he has somehow found a way to make Alabama’s offense even better at 48.2 points per game this season.

Saban made him the highest-paid offensive coordinator in the nation this year at $2.5 million. Sarkisian also just won the Broyles Award for the top assistant coach in college football. All well-deserved.

However, Sarkisian’s career record as a head coach at Washington (2009-2013) and USC (2014-2015) is just 46-35. Furthermore, his best single-season is going just 9-4 in 2014, which doesn’t exactly live up to USC’s lofty standards. That won’t cut it at Texas either. He was also fired as the Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator in 2018 after two seasons.

This change is worth almost $50 million?

It would be nice if some of that money could have been allocated toward the many far lesser paid employees, who had to take pay cuts because the Texas athletic department claims to be in a financial crisis.

Maybe Sarkisian is much better equipped to run a big-time college football program than he was in 2015, but coaches like him don’t have a very promising track record.

Since World War II, only three coaches have won national titles after being fired by another school:

1. Gene Stallings – fired by Texas A&M in 1971, won title at Alabama in 1992
2. Lou Holtz – fired by Arkansas in 1983, won title at Notre Dame in 1988
3. Ed Orgeron – fired by Ole Miss in 2007, won title at LSU in 2019

Del Conte’s lukewarm statement about Herman’s future was also just five days before signing day. The 18 recruits Texas just signed were locked into their letters of intent under the false assumption Herman would still be their coach.

Those 18 players have quickly been introduced to the world of college football, where there is never enough money to compensate the players but always enough to buy out a coach who isn’t winning enough to meet an AD’s often unrealistic expectations.

The right thing for Texas to do would be to release those 18 players from their letter of intent, but who knows if that will happen?

The enormous amount of money Texas will spend to make a coaching change could also be much less if not for a common error athletic directors make nowadays.

Let’s circle back to the extension Herman received in May 2019. Was it truly necessary?

To answer that question, athletic directors need to examine how their coach has performed in relation to their expectations for the coach.

If all the coach does is meet expectations – but not surpass them – then there is no reason to give him a contract extension unless other teams are pursuing him and you’d like to keep him.

When people go to their local mechanic to get their car’s oil changed, they don’t give the mechanic a raise for correctly changing the oil. That’s what the mechanic was paid to do.

In Herman’s case, he was clearly at least meeting expectations at the time he given his extension. Texas had just completed its best season in almost a decade and appeared to be headed back towards national prominence.

But, was Herman exceeding expectations? Look back at Del Conte’s statement about expecting to win championships after he fired Herman. Herman had not won a Big 12 title or made it to the College Football Playoff at the time, so he wasn’t exceeding Del Conte’s expectations based on his recent statement. There wasn’t anybody else who was trying to hire Herman then either.

Herman basically received this extension due to one year of success without any other program threatening to swipe him.

Without the premature extension, Texas would have owed Herman about $5 million after firing him. That would have been almost $10 million less than what they owe him now.

The mistake Del Conte made isn’t unique to him. South Carolina, Auburn and Illinois all gave their football coaches unnecessary extensions before firing them this season. There are plenty of other examples over the years too.

The difference this year is that a pandemic has prompted athletic departments all over the country to lay off plenty of employees. To declare a state of financial crisis, but then still have more than enough money to buy out a coach after an impulsive contract extension represents an unprecedented level of hypocrisy in the sport.