TEPPER: Fired by A&M, Kevin Sumlin failed to meet the lofty expectations

Finding the defining moment of the Kevin Sumlin era at Texas A&M — which ended Sunday after six seasons when athletic director Scott Woodward announced his dismissal — is a bit tricky. If you’re looking for the peak, it’s probably the 29-24 win over No. 1 Alabama in Tuscaloosa back in November of 2012. If you’re looking for the valley, maybe it’s the 45-44 loss at UCLA to open the 2017 season, in which the Aggies squandered a 34-point second-half lead. But if you’re looking for the moment that defined the Sumlin era in its totality? Perhaps it’s the first big decision he ever made. Think back. In the wake of a disappointing end to Mike Sherman’s tenure in College Station, in came Sumlin, who’d brought Houston to the brink of national contention. He was immediately faced with a rather enormous decision: who should take the reins at quarterback for the now-departed Ryan Tannehill? The smart money was on the incumbent backup, Jameill Showers. If not him, then maybe turn to the other sophomore, Matt Joeckel. Instead, Sumlin chose the redshirt freshman Johnny Manziel in August 2012. The message, intentional or not, was clear: things are going to be different. You know what happened next. Manziel lit the college football world on fire, winning the Heisman Trophy and guiding the Aggies to an unforgettable 11-2 season. Combine the magical 2012 season with a noticeable step forward in recruiting, and there had arguably never been a better time to be an Aggie. But the problem with winning big is that it breeds expectations for more big wins, especially in a place like College Station, whose rabid fan base is notoriously demanding. Kevin Sumlin raised the bar for A&M football, which finished ranked in the AP Top 5 in 2012 for the first time since 1956. Now, he had to clear that bar. There would be flashes of that 2012 magic — resounding road wins over Top 10 South Carolina and Auburn teams in 2014; fleeting Top 10 rankings in each of the next four seasons — but the end result was always the same: stasis, or worse. There’s plenty of blame to go around, to be sure: coordinators departing (like Kliff Kingsbury) or failing to meet admittedly lofty expectations (like John Chavis); a brutal divisional draw, where A&M went just 3-12 at home against SEC West teams at Kyle Field; and a variety of recruiting misses, from transfers to development failures to just flat-out underachieving. Kevin Sumlin departs A&M as the program’s fifth-winningest coach, boasting a 51-26 record. But in many respects, the reason that Kevin Sumlin is out of work is because he gave long-suffering Aggies permission to dream, to raise their expectations. He told the A&M faithful that things were going to be different; what he delivered wasn’t different enough.