Texas head coach Tom Herman: 'I don’t have your back, I have your front'
Texas head coach Tom Herman joined Colin Cowherd on FS1’s ‘The Herd’ to give his thoughts on the recent protests.
It lands “Heavy on my heart, I can tell you that. I grew up the only child of a single mom, my dad died in a homeless shelter when he was 52 years old. I say that to tell you that coaches raised me and it’s the reason I got into this job, to have an impact on young men’s lives the way that coaches had on mine and to see the pain, the struggle, the fear, the confusion on my players faces.”
Herman continued:
“We had a three-hour team meeting this morning Colin right before I came on so if I seem a little bit emotional it’s because I am,” he said. “The thing I told our players is ‘this cannot be like it’s always been,’ where a black man is unnecessarily killed by a white police officer. Two people in our southern United States shoot and kill an unarmed black man and we protest and we riot. All of that is great and voices are being heard.”
The ultimate goal of this, “Two weeks from now, three weeks from now, a month from now, a year from now, this has to have meant something. We have to have affected change by not just our words but our actions. I ended our meeting with our players, a very emotional meeting, and I said ‘guys we talk about it in our program all the time, don’t talk about it, be about it.’ And more than ever our society needs a systemic overhaul and it starts with the way minorities are treated implicitly and explicitly in this country.”
“I told our players I don’t have their back, I have their front. ‘You tell me what to do, what wall to run through, I’ll run through it, I’ll make a hole so big that you guys can walk through it.’ Because that’s how passionately we feel, because when you love somebody the way we love our players and you see them hurt and you see them angry and you see them frustrated, much like a parent, you want to take all of that off of their heart and you want to put it all on yourself and be there for them and provide some guidance for them. Hopefully us here at Texas we won’t be forgotten on our message on this topic. In a short few weeks, hopefully us a program and our individuals within our program can help truly affect real change in the system.”
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