Time for a change?

So, that looked oddly familiar. That performance Saturday — a 30-9 humiliation in front of more than 83,000 Aggie fans — can simply be explained with one, single word: pathetic.

"We just came home," Head Coach Mike Sherman said, "and laid an egg."

With the way the season was shaping up, the Missouri game was the make-or-break game of 2010. And in one of the most uninspired, lackadaisical efforts put forth on the hallowed ground of Kyle Field in quite some time, Sherman's squad again showed just how far this program — under his tutelage — has fallen.

How far?

Get ready for it, Aggies. This program is a perennial doormat of the Big 12. This program is irrelevant. And under Sherman, this program has gone absolutely nowhere.

Don't throw out excuses. Do not talk about progress. Do not argue that Sherman is a good guy or that he "gets" A&M.

Because the only thing A&M "gets" is winning and right now, the man in charge has shown he is incapable of doing so.

In over two years, Sherman is 13-18 — the worst start to a coaching career since A&M began allowing women into the University. Sherman is now 3-15 against teams with winning records.

Those wins?

Texas Tech, Iowa State and Louisiana Tech. Sherman's biggest home win was over an eventual 7-6 Iowa State team on a forgettable Halloween afternoon. Sherman is 5-13 in conference play. Sherman's teams have lost 12 consecutive games on television.

And, with the rough part of the schedule still to come, Sherman is on the verge of his third consecutive losing season.

Fun fact: the last Aggie coach to have three consecutive losing seasons and keep his job was Jim Meyers in 1960.

The resources at Texas A&M's disposal are ubiquitous. This program has no excuse not to finish every season in the top 25.

A&M has some of the greatest, most loyal fans in the country. Its gameday atmosphere is second to none. The traditions speak for themselves. It is situated in between two of the biggest recruiting hotbeds in the entire country. It has facilities to match up with any college anywhere.

Yet, the last time the Aggies finished ranked was 1999.

In a season that was to be the apparent next step for Aggie football, the hinges have fallen off and the ship is sinking. Utter futility marred all aspects of the game Saturday. And there was seemingly no sense of urgency from a team that instead played with an air of misguided entitlement. It was an unacceptable performance from an unprepared team.

The time has come for Aggies everywhere to demand more from this University's hierarchy.

More than two years ago, Athletic Director Bill Byrne conducted a nationwide search for the next head coach. The search led him to interview one person and offer an unproven college-coaching commodity a seven-year guaranteed deal.

Looking back, it may go down as one of the worst contracts in the history of college football. Because in the college game, a coach either has it or he doesn't. That "it" factor so prevalent in the most successful college coaches: that charm, that want-to, that fire, that winning mentality, that sense of urgency.     Each game it becomes increasingly apparent that Sherman simply doesn't have it. Each game, that questionable hire looks more and more like a program-hampering mistake.

Sherman said, following the embarrassment, "We could have fired everybody today."

If this program is ever to take any step toward reclaiming prominence, it should take him up on that.