Just before it was announced that Texas A&M had fired head coach Mike Sherman following another disappointing season, word of the decision broke over Twitter via Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman, “but [A&M] has not yet notified him.”
Sherman was out on a recruiting visit when the message spread over social media, and the story was that A&M athletic director Bill Byrne notified Sherman of his termination over the phone while Sherman was in the driveway of his targeted recruit.
“My family found out before I did,” Sherman said at his final press conference, “because it was released (through a leak in the media) before I was told. I think we’re better than that.”
In his weekly insider letter, Byrne wasted no time addressing the reports:A lot has been written about the events of last Thursday. We were surprised to see news breaking on Twitter of a change with the head coach of our football team. What we believed to be a confidential decision was becoming public quickly. The last thing I wanted was to inform Mike Sherman of the decision via telephone, but with the news breaking and Mike on the road recruiting, I had no other choice. I’m extremely disappointed someone felt empowered to tell the media of this sensitive information before our head coach was informed. This action only hurt good people and their families. Social media reaches everyone these days, and this information reached the children of some of our assistant coaches before I could inform Mike, and before Mike could inform his staff and players.
Mike deserved to hear from me before he heard the news from anyone else. Needless to say, calling Mike on the phone was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. That’s not how I like to conduct business.
That last line is especially true. Sherman deserved better than what he got, even if Byrne wasn’t malicious in his intent.
It’s also a tough situation for Byrne, who obviously understands that information -- some of it true, some of it not -- is shared in real time and who he shares that information with can have resounding consequences.
Someone was informed of the decision to fire Sherman who shouldn’t have been.
That stinks.
But I still believe that Byrne had the choice to handle the situation differently considering it was a premeditated decision. Tell Sherman to skip the recruiting trip because they need to have a meeting -- whatever the reason may be.
If firing Sherman with honesty and integrity was truly that important to Byrne -- and this isn’t to say it wasn’ t-- then he has the power to control that.
I understand this was supposedly an unforeseen circumstance, but there are always, always choices.
