Well, Texas A&M Athletic Director Bill Byrne’s “nationwide search” for a new head coach to replace Dennis Franchione took a couple of days and extended all of about 100 miles southeast of College Station as A&M hired Houston Texans assistant head coach Mike Sherman as its new head coach yesterday. The deal is for seven years at $1.8 million per year. Ryan over at TAMaBINPO has a nice overview of Sherman’s coaching career.
Although some in the Aggie nation were disappointed that A&M didn’t hire a “big-name” coach de jour, my sense is that hiring Sherman is a reasonably good move. A&M is currently in the latter stages of a somewhat divisive search for a new president, so the A&M Board of Regents doesn’t need more faculty flak from another flank. Moreover, A&M overpaid badly to hire Franchione, so the buyout of Coach Fran’s contract is going to be expensive, even by A&M standards. Under these circumstances, eschewing a high-priced, big-name coach is certainly understandable.
Within the coaching profession, Sherman has an excellent reputation as a hand’s-on coach, which frankly Franchione did not have when A&M hired him. The only negative comment that I’ve heard about Sherman is that he was not a particularly good evaluator of talent as Green Bay’s general manager from 2001-04. That trait has certainly reared its head during his stint with the Texans — Sherman was among those who blessed the questionable decision to pick up an expensive option to keep former Texans QB David Carr around for another year and he lobbied hard for the Texans to overpay old and injured RB Ahman Green. Those two decisions are costing the Texans big-time in terms of salary cap space.
Nevertheless, Sherman will have plenty of assistance in picking talent for A&M’s football program and he inherits one of the richest bases for recruiting good football players in the U.S. The initial problem that Sherman faces in the recruiting wars is that three Big 12 South programs — Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech — have been clearly superior to the Aggies’ program for a prolonged period now, although the reasons for each program’s superiority are different. UT and OU have had better overall talent than A&M, while Tech has simply outcoached A&M while deploying comparable talent.
At this point, the OU and Texas programs are two of the select few big-time college football programs that are recruiting almost entirely high school prospects who project to have the potential to develop into players capable of playing in the National Football League. A&M does not yet have that luxury in recruiting players into its program, so Sherman will be dealing with a talent deficit to programs like OU and UT for at least the first 2-3 years of his tenure at A&M. With the exception of A&M’s last two victories over UT, Franchione’s A&M teams did not generally compete well against teams that had superior talent. How Sherman’s teams deal with that talent deficit during his initial A&M seasons will largely determine whether Sherman succeeds or fails in Aggieland.

(Jay Janner/Austin American photo; previous weekly reviews here)
Texas Aggies 38 Texas Longhorns 30

For the second straight year, the Aggies (7-5/4-4) upset the Longhorns (9-3/5-3), this time as a resignation present for Aggie head coach Dennis Franchione. I trust that dirty look that Franchione gave to A&M athletic director Bill Byrne at the post-game press conference when he announced his resignation is an indication of how buy-out negotiations have gone. A&M officials have scheduled a news conference for 11 a.m. today to introduce Texans offensive coordinator Mike Sherman as the Aggies’ new head football coach while hoping that Aggie fans didn’t notice the Texans’ offensive gameplan in yesterday’s game (see below).
At any rate, the Aggies dominated this game as the porous Longhorns defense made A&M QB Stephen McGee look like Joe Montana, and that’s really hard to do. But the irony of the victory is that the Ags gameplan was precisely what A&M fans thought they were getting when A&M hired Franchione five years ago — diverse offensive production, forcing turnovers, creating big plays, exciting trick plays and consistent wins over top tier teams of the Big 12. Unfortunately, this second straight win over the Longhorns came way too late for Coach Fran.
Meanwhile, almost as interesting as the Aggies’ coaching search is the quandry that faces Longhorn coach Mack Brown. With the defeat, the Horns have now lost to Texas A&M and Oklahoma in the same season for the first time since 1993. The Horns have also lost two straight games to unranked and underachieving Aggie teams and have squandered BCS bowl berths in two consecutive seasons. And that’s even after the Horns played one of the their easiest schedules in recent history.
However, most troubling for the Horns is a defense — and even more precisely, a pass defense — that has plummeted over the past year far below UT standards. As noted above, the Horns defense made McGee, who is a mediocre college QB, look like an NFL prospect while throwing for 362 yards. And that was not particularly unusual, either. Against a weak schedule, the Horns defense gave up an average of 533 yards in its final three games, gave up 28 points or more in half of their games as well as 35 points per game over their last four. My sense is that Coach Brown will be taking a hard look at whether staff changes are in order this off-season.
The Aggies and Longhorns now await bowl assignments, although it appears likely that the Aggies will meet Michigan or Penn State in San Antonio’s Alamo Bowl. The Longhorns are probably ticketed for yet another appearance in the Holiday Bowl, which was their typical destination before the now fading-in-memory 2005 National Championship.

Browns 27 Texans 17

I’m not making this up. After the Texans’ (5-6) recent two game winning “streak,” the Texans’ cheerleaders in the local mainstream media were actually mentioning the word “playoff” in their media pieces. Then, the Texans in this game proceed to score one TD in the first 57 minutes against the NFL’s worst defense, convert only two third-downs all game, and commit three turnovers, giving the team 29 on the season, four more than last season’s 6-10 team. Message to local mainstream media — the words “playoffs” and “Ron Dayne, starting running back” are incompatible. It would also be nice if the Texans defense didn’t make the Browns’ (7-4) RB Jamal Lewis look like he had just become five years younger. The Texans travel to Nashville next Sunday to face Vince Young and the fading Titans (6-5) before returning home for three of their last four games of the season.

Tulsa 48 Rice 43

The feisty Owls (3-9/3-5) made a game of it, but ultimately simply did not have the horses to stop Tulsa (9-3/6-2) and win the Todd Graham Revenge Bowl. It would have been a nice victory for the Owls and the Houston Cougars, who would have won the C-USA West Division for the second straight year if Tulsa lost. But Rice returns its offensive nucleus of QB Chase Clement, WR Jaret Dillard and HB James Casey, so next season’s Owls will still be able to score some points. Now, if they could just find someone to tackle . . .

Houston Cougars 59 Texas Southern 6

Remind me again — why was this game scheduled? It seemed absolutely appropriate that the game ended up being played in a mush pit caused by a cold, driving rainstorm. The Cougars (8-4/6-2) have accepted a Texas Bowl berth at Reliant Stadium on December 28th against probably a Big 12 team, either Oklahoma State (6-6/4-4) or Colorado (6-6/4-4). If the Big 12 qualifies two teams for BCS bowls, then the Coogs will play an at-large opponent such as TCU (7-5/4-4).

Although the 113 year-old rivalry game between the Texas Longhorns and the Texas A&M Aggies is always interesting, this year’s edition at 2:30 p.m., CST today in College Station (ABC) has an added element of intrigue over the typical UT-AM slugfest.
First, just a season removed from arguably saving his job by guiding the Ags to an upset of the Horns in Austin, embattled A&M head coach Dennis Franchione will almost certainly be coaching his final game for the Aggies. Franchione did not fit in at Aggieland and never seemed capable of winning big games consistently — his Aggie team followed up that big win over the Horns last year with a humiliating 45-10 loss to Cal in the Holiday Bowl. You never know what to expect from players who are playing their final game for their coach. Could be good, could be bad.
Second, the 13th-ranked Horns (9-2/5-2) need a win if they are going to keep their slim BCS Bowl game hopes alive. With a win and an Oklahoma loss on Saturday against Oklahoma State, the Horns would win the Big 12 South division and play either Missouri or Kansas in the Big 12 title game in San Antonio on December 1st. But a loss to the Ags not only would end those hopes, it would earmark the Longhorns to a middle-tier bowl game for the second straight season.
The Horns are a 5 1/2 point favorite, but there really is not much difference between the two teams this season. Texas throws the ball more effectively than A&M, but that’s not saying much because the Aggies act as if the forward pass is a new-fangled innovation that cannot be perfected until some uncertain date in the future. Both teams run the ball with about equal effectiveness and neither team’s defense has been particularly dominant. Although the Horns have reeled off five straight wins since their loss to Oklahoma, the wins came over teams with a combined conference record of 12-26.
The Horns have dominated the series with an overall record of 73-35-5 record, but that record is a bit deceptive, particularly with regard to how close the series has been in recent decades. If you back out the Horns’ dominant 31-3-1 record during the period from 1940 through 1974 when A&M was being transformed from a small, male-only military institution into a large, co-educational state university similar to UT, the record is a more balanced 42-32-4. In fact, since 1975, the Aggies actually lead the series 17-15.
Finally, for once, the UT-A&M game will not be the biggest game in the Big 12 this weekend. That moniker goes to the Border War showdown on Saturday night in Kansas City between no. 2 Kansas (11-0/7-0) and no. 4 Missouri (10-1/6-1). Take a moment to read this fine Joe Posnanski column on KU head coach Mark Mangino, a fellow for whom it is really easy to cheer.