So there’s a lot of talk about how swift the hiring process was for the Texas A&M and Ole Miss head coaching vacancies. Some claim that minority candidates should, at least, have been interviewed for the jobs à la the NFL’s Rooney Rule. I can’t fathom the logic of those arguments.

I feel the need to preface this post by saying that I think minority candidates should always be interviewed and given equal consideration for any and all jobs based on their qualifications. That being said, this is college football, folks. You have recruits that have found out that the guy they committed to playing for has just been shown the door and you have to get into those households and assure them that the program isn’t going down the toilet. You simply can’t afford to go on a month-long artificial coaching search when the guy you want to hire is ready to accept the job. I undertstand the argument that interviewing minority candidates can lead to consideration for future gigs but you mean to tell me that excellent coaches like Tyrone Nix at South Carolina and Ron English at Michigan need to go through a faux interview process at Texas A&M to be considered for future head coaching jobs? If Athletic Directors don’t already have them in mind to fill their coaching vacancies, then they probably won’t have their jobs for very much longer.

At the end of the day, interviewing for college football head coaching jobs should be the same as an interview process for any job. If the guy you want most for your vacancy comes into your office and knocks you dead, are you going to go out and interview four more guys because people who don’t work in your organization think that’s right for you to do? I mean, let’s be adults for a minute. At the end of the day, an athletic director wants to get a guy he feels comfortable with as quickly as possible and Mike Sherman was at the top of their list and he wanted the job, they should have hired him as quickly as they did.

Watching College Gameday Live on ESPN yesterday, talking head Mark May was incensed that universities like Texas A&M were making “safe hires” like Sherman and that they were taking the easy way out instead of taking a chance on a fresh face. Let’s hold on a minute. Mike Sherman is no slouch. The guy was the head coach of one of the most famous franchise in the history of popular sports, he has ties to the universities and he’s available. I would have been thrilled to death if IU would have snatched Mike Sherman instead of giving Bill Lynch his four-year-extension.

And while, I’m taking shots at May (who makes a living taking shots at a nearly brain dead Lou Holtz every week), he made a comment that I find utterly ridiculous yesterday when naming African American candidates who should have been brought in to interview at Texas A&M (including Nix and English). He brought up current University of Buffalo head coach Turner Gill. May said that the only head coaching job that Gill is currently being considered for is the one at his alma mater, Nebraska. Then he said that because Gill has won five games at Buffalo, he should be on the short list for every vacancy in the country. So let me get this straight? Winning five wins at Buffalo, which has been an atrociously bad program since joining Div. I-A, gets you an interview at Michigan or Georgia Tech or Arkansas? Let’s not get carried away. If you can only muster five wins in the MAC, regardless of where you’re coaching, you don’t deserve a shot at the elite jobs in college football, regardless of your race. Bill Doba won five games at Washington State and got canned. Seven wins wasn’t enough for Chan Gailey to keep his job at Georgia Tech. So for winning five games at UB, you want to give Turner Gill a promotion? I don’t get it.

Either way you cut it, Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville is about to get paid handsomely.

Rumor has it, Tuberville is one of the leading candidates for the Texas A&M job, which will soon be vacated after the Aggies buyout the contract of current head coach Dennis Franchione.

First things first, the reason that Franchione is being ousted at A&M has very little to do with the scandal over his newsletter, where boosters paid thousands of dollars to receive inside information about the team, including injury reports and the like. It has everything in the world to do with the team’s dismal record against rivals Texas and Oklahoma on his watch.

Being mentioned as a candidate, let alone the leading candidate, for a job like this is a perfect scenario for Tuberville. Either way, he’s getting paid. If Texas A&M comes in with an offer that ole Tubby can’t refuse, he’s off to coach the Aggies in the weaker Big 12 where the only games he will be pressured to win are the games against Texas and Oklahoma. He may also be able to leverage an offer from Texas A&M against Auburn to get more money to stay as the head coach of the Tigers. It’s worked in the past, just ask Steve Spurrier, who got a fat new deal when his name was even mentioned in connection to the Alabama job.

While the A&M job is nowhere near as presitigious as his current gig, Tuberville has a much higher chance of BCS success in College Station. No longer will he find himself fighting with Nick Saban for recruits in Alabama, fighting with Phil Fulmer for recruits in Tennessee or fighting the entire nation for the best of the best in the state of Florida. He will be recruiting in Texas, one of the nation’s richest recruiting pipelines and coaching in the Big 12, a conference that, aside from the monoliths that are Texas and Oklahoma, has been far from the schedule of landmines Auburn has been playing annually in the SEC.

If the money is right, I’d suggest Tuberville hit the road and gig ‘em.

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Tony Barnhart of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said he thinks that if Texas A&M comes calling, Tuberville will listen.