How Tom Herman plans to make Florida Atlantic 'the cool place' to play college football | D'Angelo
BOCA RATON — The bright red WINNING IN PARADISE shirt turned a few shades darker as Tom Herman emerged from the field after his first fall practice at Florida Atlantic University.
The folders in his back pocket were soggy and the ink - Herman is a fanatical note taker - was faded and smudged. But still legible.
"I'm a little wet," Herman offered.
Still, the man tasked with FAU football living up to that Winning in Paradise rallying cry was in a good mood, despite those notes that reminded him of "mental issues" and "busted assignments" especially from the newcomers, and the lack of intensity as the sun intensified during the morning practice.
"We got sloppy at the end," he said, vowing everyone soon would heed his message.
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This was the start of the Tom Herman era at FAU, where paradise will only go as far as your next winning season. FAU Athletic Director Brian White made this happen, convincing a man who has won more than 70 percent of his games in six seasons as a head coach (two at Houston, four at Texas), is 5-0 in bowls and four times has finished in the final Associated Press poll to get his football program back on track.
"As much as we love to talk about paradise and the beach and the ocean, he wasn't coming here to go to the beach," White said. "He was attracted to Florida Atlantic because he thinks he can win at a high level here."
One of college football's bright young minds
Herman, 48, is intelligent, he is demanding. He is focused, he is energetic. He loves crossword puzzles and reads … a lot. Reads about leaders and business people and others who've been successful in all facets of life, like Vince Lombardi.
His favorite book: "When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi."
His favorite fiction author: John Grisham.
And did I mention he's a smart guy? Because he is a member of Mensa International, the oldest society of high IQ individuals who score in the 98 percentile for intelligence.
Herman would never think he's the smartest person in the room. But chances are he is, no matter the room. After all, how many football coaches first thought of being an orthopedic surgeon coming out of high school?
Urban Meyer once said Herman "has one of the bright young minds in college football." That was when Meyer hired Herman as his offensive coordinator at Ohio State in 2012.
"In our regular communication and the way he interviewed and the way he runs his program, you can tell he's very thoughtful and there's strategy behind everything he does," White said. "There's data behind all the decisions he makes."
Remember those notes? Herman keeps them in a binder, after they have dried out, of course, and refers to them each camp. They are detailed down to the time practice starts and temperature of each practice.
"I write notes: Hey we were dragging ass the last 30 minutes of practice. We got to do a better job motivating them," he said. "Here it's different because of weather."
And now, after stops as the OC at Rice, Iowa State and Ohio State, and running the show at Houston and Texas, Herman comes to FAU at a time when the athletic department has great momentum, part of that being the school entering its first season in the American Athletic Conference.
Herman was fired after those four years at Texas, where he was 32-18 and never lost a bowl game. Herman did not have a losing season, overall or in conference, at Texas. The year before he arrived and the year after he left the Longhorns were 5-7, 3-6 in the Big 12.
But Herman is not one to waste time or energy reliving something that cannot help him going forward. Nothing to gain. What gets him pumped is talking about this roster; the talent on offense, molding young talent on defense, his coaches and the support he has received from the administration.
"We just decided the job needed to check two boxes: Will my family be happy living there, first and foremost? And can you win championships?" Herman said about the conversations with his wife, Michelle, about returning to the sideline.
"Those are two very rare boxes in college football to be able to check. And this was the one."
The living part, that's easy. It's South Florida. Paradise. Something called the Atlantic Ocean sits about two miles from FAU Stadium. The championship part? That's been the rub. With the exception of two Conference USA titles under Lane Kiffin, the program has underachieved with three winnings seasons since 2008.
"We have to make FAU the cool place to go play your college football," Herman said. "Just almost being a carnival barker. You know, 'Hey, everybody step right up. Come see the Owls.' Just going out and promoting who we are and what we can provide.
"We're gonna get some of the celebrities that have deep South Florida ties (to practice). It's about exposure. The move (to the AAC) will help being on big boy ESPN.
Herman sees the potential. And Kiffin proved it can be tapped into. All of which was part of the draw that got him back into coaching after a year as an analyst for CBS Sports. The other was just feeling out of place not being in a training camp in 2022 for the first time in about 35 years.
"I felt like Brooks in 'Shawshank Redemption,' like, institutionalized," he said. "I didn't know how the real world even worked."
He was not looking at the size of the program, or the budget. Working for a school with an athletic department budget of around $40 million, about $150 million less than Texas, does not bother Herman. After all, he wasn't always hanging with the bluebloods of college football. Herman was a wide receiver at Division III Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oak, Calif., about 20 miles from his home, and made his bones in the business at Sam Houston State for three years, Texas State for two years and Rice for two years.
For Herman, it's not how much. It's how. He said he has never been told "No," when he's asked for something from White.
"We've been creative in our spending," he said. The best example is in nutrition. Herman has made nutrition a priority and hired Addie Quinn as the team’s director of football performance nutrition.
"A young rock star as a nutritionist," is how Herman describes Quinn. "A freakin' stud."
Selling program in recruiting hotbed
The lifeblood for any program is recruiting. And a program in South Florida, one in which the Atlantic Ocean can be seen from the upper tier of FAU Stadium, and one sitting in the middle of a recruiting hotbed should not have struggled to break .500 in Conference USA for the last decade.
Name recognition will not be an excuse for Herman. Defensive tackle Ed Oliver could have signed with any football powerhouse in 2016, but Herman convinced Oliver to join him at Houston, then in the same conference in which FAU plays now. Oliver told Herman he knew if he got the right coaching and held up his end it did not matter where he played; he would one day be in the NFL.
Oliver won the Outland Trophy and was selected ninth overall in 2019 by the Bills.
"You sell the uniqueness of the ability to play in front of friends and families and fans," Herman said.
"I've never met a general manager or head coach that said we're going to draft this guy because of the patch on his jersey, because of the conference that he plays in. It doesn't happen. If you're good enough, the NFL is going to find you."
Just like Herman found Texas in 1999 to land his first job as a coach. Herman was at Texas Lutheran and kept hopping in his Honda Civic to make the less than one hour drive from Seguin to Austin to watch spring practices and bowl prep.
"I was just kind of a pest," he said.
Finally, he was hired as an offensive graduate assistant. But getting his master's in education was not his most important degree from Texas. It was his degree in Football Coaching 101 from Longhorns offensive coordinator Greg Davis, the man Herman calls his mentor.
"Those two years learning from him were really kind of what shaped my love and the way I saw the game of football from a tactical standpoint," Herman said.
Davis, 72, retired in 2017 after 47 years in coaching. He recalls an ambitious young coach willing to work with all facets of the offense and eager to sit in on every meeting, whether with Texas staff or high school coaches.
Oh, and very smart.
What stood out to Davis?
"How quickly he was able to understand and grasp concepts," Davis said. "It's not that you have to be a genius to be a football coach. But at the same time, there are some guys you can go over and over it with and you get on the field and it's not coming off the way you want it to come off. You have to go back and go over and over.
"He was with Mack Brown. He was with Urban Meyer. I think he's at a point now where he could really be himself. I'll be shocked, I'll really be shocked if he doesn't do an outstanding job."
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: FAU Owls football counting on Tom Herman to bring back Winning in Paradise
