RSS
Home
For A&M, Sherman, next year will be the key
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
One of the hardest things to do is judge when a coach should be fired, especially in college football. Recruiting cycles can take as much as five full seasons.
But alumni are impatient. School presidents are impatient. Fans are impatient.
Some schools hit home runs by getting great coaches that are perfect fits for their respective schools. Pete Carroll at USC. Jim Tressel at Ohio State. Mack Brown at Texas. Bob Stoops at Oklahoma.
Some are fortunate enough to get coaches who would be stars anywhere -- Urban Meyer at Florida, Nick Saban at Alabama.
For everyone else, it's guesswork. Even the best coaches at one school fail miserably at another.
Texas A&M just had one of those in Dennis Franchione. Aggie fans are starting to wonder if they have another in Mike Sherman.
Conventional wisdom says a coach should get at least three years. In reality, coaches that have two bad seasons rarely have a good third.
In truth, you will know if you have the right coach by the end of a coach's second season. Good coaches make players better. Then they bring in more talent.
If coaches can't make players better by the end of the second year, they are unlikely to ever get it done at that school. And then it's buyout time.
It's just the first year for Sherman, but there is reason for concern.
These Aggies are bad. No Texas A&M team should EVER be last in the Big 12 South. Yes, Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Tech are four of the best teams in the country.
But A&M losing to Baylor? By 20? After being down 41-7 going to the fourth quarter?
Texas A&M should be comparing itself to Texas, OU, and OSU and Tech. Not Baylor.
The first-year coach excuse doesn't fly -- Baylor also has a first-year coach.
Sherman is 4-7 in his first year with losses to Baylor and Arkansas State on his slate. A&M has beaten Texas two straight years, but will not this season. So he will be an inexcusable 4-8.
Art Briles at Baylor is also headed for a 4-8 season. But Briles has done a decent job. He inherited a team with marginal talent and has had them competitive all year long. His freshman quarterback, Robert Griffin, has been spectacular. Briles' expectations are not near what Sherman's are. He simply doesn't have the same advantages at Baylor. Baylor fans would be ecstatic if he could get them to a bowl someday. That is a realistic goal.
Briles' replacement at Houston, Kevin Sumlin, has also done a terrific job. He inherited a .500 type team that lost its two superstar offensive players. Sumlin has his squad on the verge of playing for a conference championship.
Sumlin has less talent than Briles had last year, but the team is playing at the same level. Give both Briles and Sumlin A grades for Year 1.
Sherman gets an incomplete.
The Aggies have regressed even from the dismal Franchione era. It is one thing to fail to compete with Oklahoma. But Baylor?
The Aggies are on the verge of becoming completely insignificant regionally. They have been insignificant nationally for a long time.
Is there hope?
We will examine the 2007 coaches who were new to their jobs. Jeff Jagodzinski (Boston College), Dennis Erickson (Arizona State), Brian Kelley (Cincinnati) and Todd Graham (Tulsa) all won at least 10 games in their first season.
All have been successful again in year two, except Erickson, whose team has a losing record.
Nick Saban went 7-6 at Alabama and is unbeaten this season.
Aggie fans have other examples from last year, however, that are more pertinent than Saban.
Butch Davis was 4-8 at North Carolina. David Bailiff was 3-9 at Rice, a year after Graham had taken the school to its first bowl. Tim Brewster was 1-11 at Minnesota.
Davis is a proven commodity, so there were no real concerns. This year, the Tar Heels are 7-3 and in the ACC title hunt. Davis, like Sherman, came from the NFL. Unlike Sherman, Davis was a successful college head coach before he went to the NFL.
Bailiff's team was injury-riddled last year. This year, the Owls are on the verge of their best season since the 1960s.
Minnesota is 7-4 and headed for a bowl game.
So it is possible to have a disastrous fist season and bounce back.
But it is not possible to have TWO disastrous seasons.
What do we need to see from Sherman?
A competitive game with Texas would be a start. His team has been no match for teams with superior talent; Texas is in a different stratosphere from A&M in that regard.
But it won't tell the whole story. And that brings us back to a question that is already gnawing at the Aggies.
Is Mike Sherman the right man for Texas A&M?
We don't know. But we will by the end of next season. And Aggies have good reason to be nervous.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
