Certainly something is working. Houston, a member of the American Athletic Conference, concluded last season at 13-1 and ranked eighth nationally, the program’s highest end-of-season ranking since 1980. This year’s team was ranked 13th before its home game Saturday night against Tulsa, which Houston beat, 38-31, to bring its record to 6-1. The program also hopes it is on the verge of an invitation to the Big 12 Conference.
Herman’s rite has earned praise from psychologists for its frank articulation of the emotion that inevitably develops on teams and glues together the best of them.
“He’s disrupting a stereotype about boys and men, a notion of masculinity that says boys and men are only driven by the desire for competition and autonomy,” said Niobe Way, a psychology professor at New York University. “All the research — not just mine — emphasizes that humans are actually not driven by competition and autonomy. What we’re driven by is the desire to be in connected communities.”
McCloskey, a senior and a team captain, said the practice fit comfortably into a program where “any day you walk into the facility, you have no idea what’s coming down the pipe.”
At Houston, coaches knight players with swords. Game-day breakfasts have been known to feature random smoke bombs — part of what is known in the program as “training for chaos.” Before last season, Herman promised to get a diamond grill — dental jewelry popular in hip-hop circles — if his Cougars won their conference. When they did, he kept his word.
The kisses are part of a larger message of brotherhood that Herman has made the core of his coaching style. The players have responded to a story he has shared — one also told by Herman’s former boss at Ohio State, Urban Meyer — about a soldier who confided that what most compelled him to fight was not self-preservation or hatred or patriotism, but love for his comrades.
As at Ohio State, Herman said, Houston players who score touchdowns are instructed to find an offensive lineman and hug him. “We require a two-handed embrace,” Herman said.
Herman reckoned he has kissed his players for more than a decade, going back to his days as the wide receivers coach at Sam Houston State.