There are two trends in new Texas A&M coach Mike Sherman's hires for his staff.
First, on the offensive side of the ball, there's a lot of NFL experience. Sherman has been gone from the college game for a long time. Offensive coordinator Nolan Cromwell came from the Seahawks and has never coached at the college level. New running backs coach Randy Jordan is a nine-year NFL veteran and then went to Nebraska in 2004 under coach Bill Callahan.
Which leads us to the second trend. Jordan is the fourth hire from Nebraska. The first hire by Sherman was Tim Cassidy, who has strong A&M ties and was brought in to be the associate athletic director for football, a similar position as he held at Nebraska. Since then, they've hired the strength and conditioning coach, the defensive line coach and the running backs coach from Nebraska. All of those coaches were under Callahan, who went to Nebraska from the NFL before he was fired after this season.
One concern about the hires is if there might be too much of an NFL flavor on the new staff. The coaches in the NFL get a lot more time to work with the players than they will in college. Callahan brought and NFL-type of offense to the Cornhuskers and one criticism of him was that it was too complicated for the players, especially given the time constraints.
It will be interesting to see how it all works in College Station.
_ John Miller
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