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Longtime booster Red McCombs is not a fan of Texas' decision to hire coach Charlie Strong away from Louisville, calling it a "kick in the face" during a radio interview Monday. "I think the whole thing is a bit sideways," McCombs said of the selection process during an interview with ESPN 1250 San Antonio. "I don't have any doubt that Charlie is a fine coach. I think he would make a great position coach, maybe a coordinator. "But I don't believe [he belongs at] what should be one of the three most powerful university programs in the world right now at UT-Austin. I don't think it adds up." McCombs, the former owner of the San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Vikings and co-founder of Clear Channel Communications, said on "The Blitz with Dat Nguyen and Jason Minnix" that he was stunned to learn Strong was the choice to replace Mack Brown. He publicly lobbied last week for Texas to hire former NFL coach and ESPN analyst Jon Gruden. "I think it is a kick in the face," McCombs said. "Beyond the fact of what actually happened. We have boosters that have a lot of knowledge about the game. When we decided to go get Mack -- from the time we decided to go get Mack to about 30 hours later to have a press conference here and it was done -- we had a lot of input before we went after him. "So I don't know what the big rush was. I was kind of pleased that [Texas athletic director Steve] Patterson already said that he'd like to get it done in the middle of January. That seemed logical to me. I'm a team player, but I think they went about it wrong and made the selection wrong." Texas named its McCombs School of Business after the benefactor, and he has a statue inside Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. McCombs has donated more than $100 million to UT and is a close friend to Brown. McCombs said he was certain Patterson couldn't go wrong on the hire during an interview with the San Antonio Express-News last week. "I don't see how they can miss," McCombs told the paper. "They can get anyone they want. They can close their eyes and go 'Eeny-meeny-miny-moe' and end up with someone good."
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