Either Charlie Strong has a chance to pull a Les Miles or Texas is doing him wrong

The only person who hasn’t been told that Charlie Strong is fired (or at least will be very soon) seems to be Charlie Strong.

Last season, Les Miles was in a similar situation regarding his job tenure. Of course, both men arrived at their precarious job states by different roads, but each was dealing with wacky institutional cultures that couldn’t figure out when or how to effectively pull the trigger and left themselves open to looking inept.

Both looked like they were going to meet their ends after death-knell losses the week before Thanksgiving. Miles lost three in a row in 2015, culminating with a blowout at the hands of Ole Miss. Strong’s Texas took an embarrassing L to Kansas in overtime Saturday.

For Miles, the end was swiftly reported as imminent, if not yet official. Sunday, the sharks started swirling around Charlie.

It wouldn’t have been earth shattering to officially fire Strong with only one game left and give him the option to coach the rest of the season. Perhaps UT could’ve used Sunday’s leaks as a chance to give Strong a positive sendoff in his final game, by announcing ahead of time that it’d be his last game, as it had with Mack Brown.

But instead, they’ve set up a potential post-victory scene that looks like this, whether it results in Strong keeping his job (as Miles did, through the first month of the following season) or not:

And don’t tell me Strong can’t win a big game with his back against the ropes, because ...

Strong said Monday — during his regular weekly presser, which hadn’t been canceled — that his team has suffered on the field because of all the rumors.

And he said he even had to deal with it in advance of the Kansas loss because of this report about Houston’s Tom Herman, a rising star and potential successor.

“[Players] all have Twitter, you know that, and they get an ESPN alert, something that had been said, and it’s all they’re talking about, and you need to say something to ’em,” he said Monday. “So now you have to address that before a game.”

Players began to react on Twitter immediately during the Sunday afternoon news, and Strong said that when he walked into his Sunday team meeting, his charges looked like they had “seen a ghost,” because they had been reading everything online and assumed he was already out the door.

If this team has been searching for something to tether itself to, they 100 percent now have a rallying point.

And as usual, Strong handled himself with respect and dignity.

And because of that, it’s not hard to imagine someone in Texas’ power structure having a second thought, if Strong’s being carried off the field after a win over TCU.

Strong’s engineered a lot of goodwill across the sport. He’s well-liked by media and hasn’t done anything off the field to embarrass the program. I could see part of the tide turning again this weekend, though the obvious differences between his situation and Miles’ are that Miles had won a national championship at LSU and had been there far longer than Strong’s been at Texas. Miles also didn’t have a candidate like Herman to contend against, instead primarily being pitted against a fellow expensive coach, Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher.

So while we likely won’t see this kind of fan display at Texas on Friday ...

... Texas’ boosters and administration are still human.

No matter which sources were telling local and national media that Strong was done, their hands were tied by president Greg Fenves, according to ESPN’s Adam Rittenburg.

Perrin is being heavily criticized right now, but I’ve been told university president Gregory Fenves is driving the decision to wait until after the TCU game to make the decision on Charlie Strong. Fenves has consistently supported Strong and really wanted to retain him. While the Kansas loss makes that highly unlikely, Fenves on Sunday make it clear no decision would be finalized.

What concrete knowledge Strong was able to give to his situation Monday shows that his meetings with his bosses have toed the post-TCU party line.

If the Longhorns beat a 5-5 TCU, we’ll get the ultra-awkward postgame hug and show of affection between Strong and members of an administration that wanted to fire him just days before. Then what?

And at this point, if Strong somehow managed to keep his job despite rumors leaking from boosters, Texas would look exactly like LSU did a year ago, when Miles managed to win his final game, be carried off on his players’ shoulders, and keep his job despite reports he was gone. That would mean another offseason of even more intense Strong hot seat talk, considering how Miles followed up that performance in 2016.