The same day Texas A&M entrusted its program to one former NFL head coach, Georgia Tech decided to end the tenure of another.
Coaches were coming and going around college football yesterday:
* Georgia Tech fired Chan Gailey, the ex-Cowboys coach.
* Texas A&M hired Mike Sherman, the ex-Packers coach.
* Arkansas’ Houston Nutt and Washington State’s Bill Doba both resigned days after emotional wins.
* Indiana gave interim coach Bill Lynch a four-year contract after he led the Hoosiers to their most successful season in 14 years.
* Duke fired Ted Roof, who went 2-3 as an interim coach in 2003 to earn the full-time job then won just four more games the next four seasons.
* Southern Miss’ Jeff Bower resigned after 14 straight winning seasons.
* Colorado State has offered Sonny Lubick a job as an associate athletic director but stopped short of saying he has been fired or has resigned.
Sherman, an assistant head coach with the Texans for two seasons, will return to the school where he was the offensive line coach from 1989-93 and in 1995-96 under R.C. Slocum. He replaces Dennis Franchione, who resigned Friday.
Sherman signed a seven-year contract that will pay him $1.8 million a year.
Gailey was 44-32 in six years at Georgia Tech and 7-5 this year. He never lost fewer than five games in a season and was 0-6 against rival Georgia.
Defensive coordinator Jon Tenuta will take over as interim coach for the bowl, and he will be a candidate for the job permanently.
Trouble mounted for Nutt after the Razorbacks lost their first three Southeastern Conference games. Arkansas rebounded to finish the regular season 8-4 and knocked LSU out of the nation’s No. 1 spot with a 50-48, triple-overtime victory Friday. Defensive coordinator Reggie Herring will coach the team in its bowl.
Nutt went 75-48 at Arkansas since being hired in December 1997.
In what was called a mutual decision, Doba and WSU athletic director Jim Sterk said Doba decided during a morning meeting he would step down after five seasons. He was 5-7 this year, 30-29 overall, including Saturday’s 42-35 win over Washington, which gave him a 3-2 record against the Cougars’ rival.
Bower spent 29 years at Southern Miss as a quarterback, assistant and head coach. He was 119-82-1 in 17 seasons and had been in the same job longer than all but three coaches in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Only Penn State’s Joe Paterno (42), Florida State’s Bobby Bowden (32) and Virginia Tech’s Frank Beamer (21) have longer tenures.
The season had been a disappointment for Bower and Southern Miss. Picked to win Conference USA, the Golden Eagles stumbled to a 2-3 start and finished 7-5.
A terse Bower did not sound like the resignation was completely voluntary.
“I want you to know there’s a lot of fight left in Jeff Bower, and I am not done yet,” the grim-faced coach said.
Colorado State president Larry Penley said the school and Lubick are in “retirement” talks.