Why Mike Sherman, .500 in 50 games, likely will be back

COLLEGE STATION – There’s a lot of wishful thinking going right now concerning the football head coaching job at Texas A&M. Then there’s reality.

Multiple A&M insiders have told me that coach Mike Sherman, he of the 25-25 record, will be back for a fifth season, and will lead the Aggies into the Southeastern Conference after likely hiring an offensive coordinator (he calls his own plays right now and essentially is consumed with the offense).

The reason he’ll apparently be back after the stunning disappointment of this year’s 6-6 finish to the regular season primarily comes down to money. And in this situation, it’s easy for angry fans to call for his head – but not so easy to come up with the roughly $9 million needed to buy out Sherman. He has four years remaining on a contract paying him $2.2 million annually.

Keep in mind A&M will still have to pay an exit fee to the Big 12, and the athletic department is paying back a $16 million loan to the university. I realize there are grass roots movements among the SMAs and MMAs (Small Money Ags and Medium Money Ags, not to be confused with the Big Money Ags), and I’m a fan of grass roots. But those are going to have to be some serious movements in a fairly short amount of time.

As for any BMAs stepping up? Who do y’all have in mind, especially in these economic times? Again, it’s easy to spend others’ money when you’re mad and want change.

As I’ve written for the past couple of months, the decision makers (and where are they going to get the money to make a change again?) are hanging their hats on the idea that Sherman had five close calls this season, and has put together a strong 2012 recruiting class.

This is one of those don’t shoot the messenger situations, because it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (in other words, my brother) to figure out Sherman has been perfectly mediocre through 50 games. Or about what many expected from a coach who’d been away from the college game for a decade and might have thought it was fairly easy to compete in compared to the mighty NFL (that’s the part where hopefully you smile just a bit).

Anyway, all indications are right now Sherman will get a fifth season, and the main reason is money.

brent.zwerneman@chron.com
twitter.com/brentzwerneman