Prediction: Mike Sherman won't be the disaster that Dennis Franchione was as Texas A&M head coach. But he won't be a rousing success, either. Far from it. The Aggies will finish behind Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech in the Big 12 South next fall, spend another few years in the middle of the division's pack, then Sherman will announce his retirement/resignation.
When that moment comes, the first man A&M athletic director Bill Byrne will call is the guy he should have called before settling for Sherman last November.
Kevin Sumlin.
By then, the former OU assistant will have won 75 percent of his games at Houston, maybe a lower-tiered bowl or two. He will have shown a knack for recruiting, player-coach bonding and booster-club gladhanding. He will have shown impeccable character.
Basically, it will be easy for Byrne to do what he should have done in Franchione's wake. If only he had read something Brent Zwerneman wrote in the San Antonio Express-News last fall:
"Sumlin would be a good fit in Aggieland... Unlike the huge price tag that comes with an established coach, A&M can get Sumlin on the relative cheap – and let the hungry coach prove himself from there.
"Sumlin earned too brief of a shot as A&M’s offensive coordinator in coach R.C. Slocum’s final season of 2002. The results were dramatic – Slocum just should have handed Sumlin, who was the Aggies’ receivers coach, the reins from Dino Babers earlier than four games into that final season.
"Plus, it’s high time one of this state’s major colleges at least took a long look at hiring an African-American coach. About two-thirds of A&M’s roster of scholarship players is black – but the Aggies, along with Texas, Baylor, Texas Tech and on down the line – have never had a black head coach.
"Sumlin, who grew up in Indiana, played linebacker exceptionally at Purdue in the mid 1980s, so he knows that side of the ball, as well.
"A&M fans would love that he’s spent five seasons alongside Stoops, as well. OU’s luminous coach has turned loose some pretty good assistants in the Big 12 in Texas Tech’s Mike Leach and Kansas’s Mark Mangino.
"Sumlin, a sharp and personable sort who’s good with the media (hey, it’s important to us!), should earn at least a consideration."
I say after the Sherman experiment fails in a few years, he'll earn more than that.
-- Guerin Emig
