Ahead of the 2017 season, Houston hired Major Applewhite to be its head coach. Applewhite replaced Tom Herman, who left for Texas after one 13-1 season that included a Peach Bowl victory and one 9-3 season after that.
Major Applewhite’s now had 2 firing-worthy seasons, per this quote by his boss
Upon hiring Applewhite, Houston’s president said the school will fire coaches at 8-4. The Cougars just went 8-5.
Photo by Will Newton/Getty Images
When hiring Applewhite, Houston president Renu Khator said verbatim:
“The winning is defined at University of Houston as 10 and 2,” she told faculty and staff at the annual holiday party at her home. “We’ll fire coaches at 8 and 4.”
Then in 2017, Applewhite went 7-5, including a bowl loss (with one game canceled).
Then in 2018, Applewhite went exactly 8-5, including the Cougars’ epic 70-14 blowout loss to Army in the Armed Forces Bowl. The numbers in here are now even worse:
This score also tied the bowl record for most points scored and tied the biggest margin of victory in bowl history!
That’s Applewhite averaging a half-win less than what his boss set as the bare minimum standard for a firing, when she hired him. More practically and probably more troublingly, Houston’s lost out to Memphis for an AAC title-game berth two years in a row. And this bowl loss to Army was brutal, even accounting for the Cougars not having defensive lineman Ed Oliver and quarterback D’Eriq King.
The thing is that Houston does not really fire coaches with eight wins.
In 2013, Houston fired Tony Levine. He’d just gone 7-5. He did go 8-5 (8-4 before a bowl game) the year before, but he was fired at 7-5.
In 2002, Houston fired Dana Dimel. He’d just gone 5-7, his best mark in his three years.
In 1999, Houston fired Kim Helton. He’d just gone 7-4. I guess he might have gone 8-4 if the season had been longer back then, but those were different times.
Houston coaches don’t typically get fired. More common lately is them leaving for Power 5 jobs in Texas, as Herman, Kevin Sumlin, and Art Briles have all done, and as Houston tried to prevent Applewhite from doing by loading his contract with ultra-specific buyout language discouraging him from taking another job at all, especially one in the Lone Star State.
So if Houston does fire Applewhite at 8-5, it’ll be a surprise.
If it doesn’t, it’ll be a tacit acknowledgement that maybe Houston should not expect its coaches to regularly do better than 8-5. In the whole modern history of UH football, only Herman and Sumlin have left the job with better winning percentages than an 8-4 average, and they weren’t leaving because the Cougars decided they weren’t good enough.
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