Tom Herman’s Houston lost an instant classic against Memphis in maybe his final game

At the time of initial publication, Tom Herman is Houston’s head football coach. The fact that I have to couch that sentence the way I did should tell you a lot about the simple strangeness of the game. There’s no way to divorce the backdrop of this game from the proceedings themselves. Like the LSU game Thursday night, perhaps what happened on the field could be expected to pale in comparison to the drama off it. Not a chance.

Cougars QB Greg Ward Jr. had a career-high passing with 489 yards on 46-of-66 passing, and the highest passing yardage total of any American Athletic Conference QB this season. Ward did it all despite having his helmet literally ripped off at one point and being spun like a helicopter at different times in the afternoon.

The Cougars stormed back from a 34-17 halftime deficit with ping-ponging TDs. Houston took its first lead with this.

And Memphis responded with this.

Not to be denied, Houston scored late when Ward hooked up with Chance Bonner on this pretty pitch and catch.

But perhaps the Cougars left too much time on the clock because in the next 1:10, the Tigers marched down the field 72 yards on five plays to take the lead they would not relinquish.

For those following along at home: We had four lead changes in the last seven minutes of this thing and nearly 1,200 total yards. It was also pretty clean with only two turnovers, although one was the fumble at the end of regulation on Houston’s hook and lateral last-ditch attempt to win the game.

It is the bizarre state of the industry that sets up weird snow globes like what we saw in Memphis today.

With all the rumors blizzarding around him, Herman manned the sidelines and coached his current team. Our Steven Godfrey reported during this game that Herman and Ed Orgeron were the two in the running for the job at LSU.

Last week, through his representatives, Houston offered Herman a contract “competitive to any Power 5 program,” in an effort to keep him at UH, a source said.

Herman didn’t inform Houston of a departure for any other job before Friday’s game, a source said. Texas is also interested in hiring him, but Charlie Strong’s still the Longhorns’ head coach as of Friday afternoon.

A coach can compartmentalize what’s going on around him, but one cannot assume that the players on his team could simply ignore the environment. Charlie Strong (who Herman may end up replacing when all this dust settles at Texas) said he felt like his team was playing tight because of all the hearsay. Strong had to address Herman rumors himself before his team’s game against Kansas last week.

“[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.”

Before the Memphis game, we got Herman addressing the most current rumors in the frank terms you would expect him to. It’s not just his denial. It’s the way he denied anything was going on. And it’ll be the thing everyone points to, if/when he leaves, to try and drag up some storyline about morals or whatever.

Herman showed today, again, why everyone wants him. He got his players to buy into his vision and what he was selling despite outside noise in the system. He got them to play together and to believe, even though they ended up falling short. Now where’s he going to do those things next season?