AUSTIN, Texas – The conga line of assistant coaches kept coming down the hallway Wednesday morning, phones pressed to their ears, searching for the boss.

When they found Tom Herman, they handed him the phone and let him make his pitch.

“I’m doing fan-TAS-tic,” Herman would boom into the ear of a recruit, talking and walking, radiating energy. “As excited as I am about our 2017 class, the 2018 class is going to break some records. We’re closing the borders and keeping the best players in the state of Texas.

“I’m looking forward to building this relationship. We want you, we need you, and you’re going to have a spot in a historic recruiting class.”

At Texas, an anticlimactic National Signing Day 2017 was primarily devoted to working on National Signing Day 2018.

“We definitely made a concerted effort to do that today,” Herman said.

At 8 a.m. Wednesday, as Class of ’17 letter-of-intent faxes were rolling in, Herman was playing the latest popular phone game, 8-ball pool, with a handful of ’18 prospects. By late afternoon, the coach estimated that he had spoken with 20 or 25 prospects from the ’18 class.

That’s partly because the ’17 class could be considered a table scratch.

This is the difference in Tom Herman’s world from one signing day to the next. A year ago as the coach at Houston, he was celebrated for landing what Rivals.com ranked as the No. 41 recruiting class in the nation – considered one of the best hauls ever for a program outside the Power Five conferences. This year at Texas he signed what Rivals ranks as the No. 31 class, and nobody is celebrating.

“Little different expectation level,” he observed.

By blueblood Texas standards, Herman’s first class here is a bit of a bust on paper (that may prove otherwise on the field). It’s the lowest rated the Longhorns have ever been in the 17-year history of the Rivals rankings; previous classes had never been lower than 24th.

Texas signed zero players in the Rivals Top 100, and just three in the Top 250. Two of those three originally committed to previous coach Charlie Strong.

Herman declared at his signing day news conference, “We don’t sign role players at the University of Texas.” But he also noted the naturally shaky nature of most transition classes between coaching staffs. Given what the ‘Horns brought in Wednesday, a few role players could be considered a successful class.

This slippage is a natural byproduct of two things: seven straight undistinguished seasons under Mack Brown and Strong; and the coaching change. Despite the ready explanations, watching all the top Texans migrating elsewhere is a difficult reality for Longhorns fans to deal with.

Strong didn’t win much in the fall, going 16-21 in three seasons at Texas, but he did in February. Signing Day was the annual highlight of the Strong Era, stoking hopes for a breakthrough season that never came.

Now Herman will be tasked with taking those solid recruiting classes and turning them into on-field winners. His résumé suggests a quick upgrade is possible.

After helping Ohio State to the 2014 national title, Herman took over a Houston program that went 8-5 that year and led the Cougars to a 22-4 record in two seasons. Which is why he wound up here, armed with a $5.25 million-a-year salary at the age of 41.

But for anyone who expects Texas to immediately compete for a national title, patience is advised.

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As you leave the airport and turn onto Texas State Highway 71 toward Austin, a sign flashes on the right side of the road:

“Welcome to Austin, Please don’t move here”

That sentiment is understandable. For several years, Austin has been the fastest-growing big city in America, with a population well in excess of 1 million. The weather is great, the economy is healthy, the tech industry is booming here and this also is the Texas state capital, which itself is a huge source of jobs.

That has led to some overcrowding issues. One of America’s hippest cities has morphed into a traffic nightmare.

But here’s the irony: The more popular Austin becomes, the less popular it is with top football players. Primarily in-state stars.

This is a Texas problem. And a Lone Star State problem.

A staggering statistic: According to Rivals ratings, the top 13 prospects from Texas all signed with out-of-state colleges Wednesday. Three are going to Ohio State, three to Oklahoma, two to LSU, and one apiece to USC, Arkansas, Notre Dame, Arizona State and Stanford. That’s quite an exodus.

It hurts the Longhorns, obviously. But also Texas A&M, Baylor, Texas Tech, TCU and the Big 12 as a whole. Outside of the Sooners, nobody else from that struggling conference got a top-16 Texan.

From a Texas perspective, Strong spent his final season on the job trying to solidify the on-field product and remain employed. He left a much smaller pool of committed talent (seven players) than the group he inherited in 2014 from Brown (22). Recruiting suffered, in part because every rival could negatively recruit against the Longhorns by instilling doubt about Strong’s chances of remaining in Austin.

Upon arrival, Herman took a swing at several of the top players in the state. He made a run at offensive tackle Walker Little, a national top-10 prospect and the No. 2 player in the state, but officially lost him to Stanford earlier in January. On signing day itself, Texas missed on the No. 16 Texan, defensive lineman K’Lavon Chaisson (LSU) of Houston, and No. 38 Stephan Zabie (UCLA) of Austin.

There were a few late successes, most notably junior college linebacker David Johnson and former Georgia commit Toneil Carter at running back, but for the most part this was a band-aid class. Especially within the state.

“It has to be our mission to keep the best players in Texas,” Herman said.

That mission will gain greater urgency going forward, with a foundation being built right now.

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In addition to working the phones, Herman and his staff spent part of Wednesday working the present and the program infrastructure.

There are 6 a.m. conditioning workouts scheduled on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – “big squat Wednesday!” Herman shouted at one point in the office. Several current players filtered through the staff offices between classes, some of them picking up packets of coverage schemes from safeties coach Craig Naivar.

“Learn it, understand it,” Naivar told a couple of players. “I don’t expect you to remember all of it right away, but we’re going to go after this hard. This has your name on it, which means it’s damn important.”

Quarterback Shane Buechele, who threw for nearly 3,000 yards last year as a true freshman, said he and his receivers have received a similar dossier of route combinations for them to practice on their own.

“We’ve already been at it,” Buechele said.

Despite Buechele’s successful first season, his position atop the depth chart is not secure. In fact, there is no depth chart. Herman said not even star linebacker Malik Jefferson has been guaranteed anything in 2017.

Herman told his assistants to watch film on their position players, but he’s avoiding the 2016 tape. Everyone is starting from scratch with the head coach.

“There’s no starters on this team,” Herman said. “Zero. None.”

Meanwhile, the inevitable facility overhaul is underway. Late Wednesday morning, Herman disappeared for a meeting with athletic administrators about renovating the locker room. After that, athletic director Mike Perrin and his wife, Melinda, made a stroll through the coaches’ offices.

“This is my favorite day,” Melinda Perrin said.

There also will be a renovation of the weight room, some work done to the training room and a graphics makeover for the entire facility. A sales rep for a graphics company was in the house Wednesday.

Herman has made a point of saying that the administration hasn’t vetoed any of his renovation ideas yet. As much as Texas has to offer, it no longer is on the cutting edge in many areas.

“There does need to be a ‘wow’ factor,” Herman said. “[The facilities] have to be the best at Texas. They have to be.”

Beyond the physical plant, Texas is working to modernize its staff. Herman has added six or seven members to the support staff – the fastest-growing part of the college football industrial complex – and ramped up the increasingly important social-media aspect of the Longhorns’ recruiting.

Much of the graphics and hype videos that Texas is blasting out at recruits are the work of a 26-year-old former bartender named Bryan Carrington. He latched on to Herman as a volunteer at Houston, earned his undergraduate degree in December and was brought to Austin as a staffer shortly thereafter.

Tuesday afternoon, Carrington showed Herman a video he put together for recruiting purposes. The head coach approved it, suggesting a couple additions from Chance the Rapper to top it off.

On Wednesday, between phone calls with recruits, meeting with staff and appearances on the Longhorn Network – which was camped out all day at the football facility – Herman did squeeze in enough time for a salad at lunch. But even that wasn’t easy. He made three trips up and down the hallway talking with assistants with a bottle of Newman’s Own balsamic vinaigrette dressing in his hand before settling down to eat. Later in the afternoon, he squeezed in an up-tempo trip with his wife, Michelle, to look at a house. (There’s been no time for serious house hunting yet.)

“He’s a high-energy guy,” Buechele said. “He’s intense. He’s always on the move.”

By 4 p.m. Wednesday, Tom Herman had finally stopped moving. Almost. He wearily settled into a chair in the staff meeting room, then bounced out of it to retrieve a picture from his office.

It was from 1999, and it showed Texas star running back Ricky Williams on a parade float in downtown Austin. He was being honored for winning the Heisman Trophy, and the team was being feted for winning the Cotton Bowl. Sitting behind Williams on the float was 24-year-old Texas graduate assistant Tom Herman.

Herman reflected on what it was like coming to Texas then.

“I said, ‘Wow, this is Mecca.’ … It was like ‘Field of Dreams.’

“Is this heaven? No. This is the University of Texas.”

The University of Texas is a long way from football heaven at present. It’s Tom Herman’s job to get it there.

In order for that to happen, Signing Day 2018 is going to be a lot more important than Signing Day 2017.

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