How credible is Chris Landry?

Saturday morning University of Texas officials will meet with Charlie Strong to go over the termination of the final two years of his contract.

Between Strong and his staff they will have to shell out $18M minus any offsets if they find other employment.

After some internal disagreement over which direction to go, it appears as though they are united in getting a deal done with Houston coach Tom Herman.

Texas officials believe they have a leg up on LSU because they believe Texas is Herman’s “dream job.”

LSU has been trying to close in on a deal with Herman since they lost out on their first choice, Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher.

As I said last evening, the LSU conversation was leaked by Herman’s camp in an effort to expedite the Texas talks. The decisive lost to TCU today eliminated any hope that anyone in the Texas administration could save his job.

In speaking with Herman’s camp tonight, Herman preference is to hold off LSU until he can see what Texas has to offer. If those talks don’t go well, then he is expected to take the LSU offer.

Herman’s agent Trace Armstrong has LSU’s offer in his hands and I am told that things are a go if the Texas situation doesn’t work out for whatever reason.

LSU interim coach Ed Orgeron is likely be the frontrunner for the Tigers’ head-coaching job if they lose out on Herman.

LSU’s administrators believed strongly that they were going to land Fisher, telling me on Tuesday that he was as good as theirs. Knowing Fisher as well as I do, I never got that impression so at least LSU was prepared to move quickly in an alternate direction.

Of course, LSU struck out on Fisher last year as well and found out on Wednesday that Fisher was not going to be pulled away from Florida State barring an unforeseen sort of deal. They quickly turned to Herman and put together a package before having that information leak out by Herman’s camp to increase his options with Texas.

LSU administrators don’t have a great feel for the coaching landscape and at this point are most concerned with what their fan base will think. Unless they were to land Fisher or Herman, the most popular candidate amongst the fans is Orgeron. Not feeling they can sell a more proven coach to their fan base over Orgeron, they are not expected to go beyond him in the process.

So here we are. Herman has the leverage of having both schools wanting him.

While some Texas boosters wish to shoot for the likes of Dabo Swinney and Jimbo Fisher, they appear to be in agreement that those are longshots and any delay on Herman could result in being shut out again like in the last coaching search where they turned to Charlie Strong after striking out with other more prominent candidates.