Mike Sherman joined KBME in Houston with Matt and Adam to talk about the decision to stay in the Big 12 and how much they contemplated making the move to the SEC.

On how he felt over the past couple of weeks not knowing what conference his football was going to be a part of:

“I thought our Athletic Director and our President did a great job of analyzing all our options.  When the information came down that Nebraska was leaving the Big 12, they immediately went to work looking at different avenues for us to follow possibly.  That went all the way up until the announcement yesterday.  There were a lot of different scenarios on the table for a number of different teams, but fortunately I think we ended up with what we had to do at the present time and that’s keep the Big 12 minus Colorado and minus Nebraska.  We have a lot of healthy rivalries in this state, a lot of tradition playing different teams, and I think that weighed heavily in the decision to keep the Big 12 as it is today.”

On how much say he had in the decision:

“These types of decisions, contrary to what people may or may not believe, are left up to our AD, our President, and our regents.  They did a lot of research and development of putting information together and talking to different parties.  My opinion was asked on what I thought.  We talked about different scenarios and what was best for Texas A & M, but I just kinda kept working on football stuff.  They kept me abreast of where we were and what we were thinking, but I think the general theme that President Lofton has maintained and was true was that he wanted to keep the Big 12 together and they did minus two teams.  It kinda went the way I think a lot of people hoped it would.  I was proud of our President and our AD for looking at every situation and being prepared.  In case something had to happen, we were ready and A & M was able to move in the direction that best benefited A & M.”

On what would’ve been the benefit of joining the SEC:

“The SEC is a great conference and there’s no argument there.  The conversations that Texas A & M had with them were very insightful and I think went very well.  I thought there was strong overtures, A & M listened intently to everything they said, but just yesterday afternoon we ended up staying put and doing what we’re doing today.”

On how much it may help for everyone to play the same schedule:

“I think so.  I think the fact to get a champion out of a conference, a true champion, to play all parties involved then you do have that opportunity. Obviously in that situation, tiebreakers as you see in the Big Ten, year in year out, your tiebreaker system has to be in play.  I do think by playing everybody, it’s a truer test of who ends up being the champion.”

Listen to Mike Sherman on KBME in Houston here

Billy Gillispie has always been a tremendous college basketball coach but right now he is off the sidelines for something that is completely unrelated to basketball.  I think his resume on the sidelines speaks for itself.  He turned little-known UTEP into an NCAA tournament team in his second year with the program and then took Texas A & M and led the Aggies to multiple NCAA Tournament appearances.  However, after leaving A & M Gillispie was named the Head Coach at Kentucky and was supposed to be the man that turned the program around and led them back into prominence.  That wasn’t necessarily the case as he was fired after just two seasons.  While his resume is littered with success, Gillispie may be most known for his actions off the court. 

He has had multiple DUI arrests and the most recent one came in August of last year.  While he has stated a number of times that he doesn’t have a problem with alcohol and rather has made some poor decisions, he has some work to do to gain back his credibility.  If he wants to return to the sidelines once again a College Basketball program will have to put their trust in a guy with a checkered past.

Billy Gillispie joined ESPN in Dallas with Galloway and Company to talk about the recent article that was written about him, whether or not he has a drinking problem, what went wrong at Kentucky, and how he plans to gain back people’s trust and return to the sidelines.

On why he wanted the article written by Mike Jones of the Star-Telegram about him:

“Unfortunately Randy (Galloway) you know this, I’ve been down the road a little bit especially in the last year or so.  There’s been some things that have happened to me and they needed to be written about.  I think any time anything is written I think as long as it’s fair, honest and all those things I don’t have a problem with it.  I wish I wouldn’t have put anyone in a position to have to explore any of those things, but I did that to myself.  I think Mike’s always been great, he’s been fair and he’s been one of the best guys in this area in a long, long time.”

On the last DUI arrest he had and whether that had anything to do with his firing at Kentucky:

“Yeah, that happened in August actually. I was up in Kentucky and unfortunately we were going through some mediation on a civil suit, the University and myself, and that’s what I was up there for at that particular time. I really appreciate you saying that fire word, boy that sounds harsh Randy, but it is what it is. It does sound bad when you say it but believe me that was March 27th. March 27th to August 26th, that’s a pretty good amount of time in there.”

On the perception that he has a drinking problem:

“I could try to defend that or whatever but there’s no defense for that Randy.  I don’t care what position you’re in, just in your ordinary citizens, you can’t continue to make the same mistakes.  Nobody made that decision to do that but me.  Regardless of how the outcome comes, that makes no difference especially after you’ve been through it twice.  It makes no difference what the outcome as far as the legal system goes or anything like that.  I made a deal with myself that there was gonna be a no tolerance deal.  That was just stupid to ever put myself in a position to do that.  I can’t use any nicer word.  That’s no disrespect to stupidity.  You just can’t make a more stupid act than I did that night.  It was a mistake.  It’s done immeasurable damage to my career I’m sure but I haven’t sat around my house doing nothing all year long feeling sorry for myself.  I’ve been really proud of the action that I took immediately and the action that I did take was that I went down with John Lucas who had a history with athletes and the general public and dealing with alcohol counseling and alcohol abuse and drug abuse and all those kinds of things.  Because of my relationship with John a little bit before I went over there and I said ‘John I don’t have a drinking problem in my opinion.’  Alcohol has definitely caused problems for me in my life and I can’t do this again.  I said when it’s all over I want you to speak honestly about where I was and where I am.  However harsh it may be or however great it may be, but this can’t ever happen to me again.  I said ‘hey whatever you gotta put me through, put me through it and I’ll do whatever you ask me to do and I will have the best attitude in the world because I do think I’m a good person, I do know I’m a good person and I do think we have done really well professionally and I want to get some credibility back.’  But it’s very difficult to get credibility back in either of these areas.”

On whether he regrets taking the job at Kentucky:

“No.  Not at all.  Life’s too short for regrets.  You just have to keep moving forward and that’s no disrespect to A & M.  I have the highest regard for the fans, the program, the athletic director and every single person.  What a great place it is and a great program coach Turgeon has built and continued to escalate.  I don’t have any regrets at all.  The reason that I made a decision to leave at that time is because during that time I thought you may have a greater chance on a yearly basis to play for all the marbles and I was willing to sacrifice maybe a safer haven and sometimes when you do that you get fired two years later.  Would there be things that I would do differently?  Yeah, hindsight is always 20/20.  I made a lot of mistakes, but I made a lot of mistakes at A & M, I made a lot of mistakes at UTEP and I made a lot mistakes as an assistant coach.  I’ll continue to make mistakes.  It makes no difference where you are.  If you’re doing something, you’re probably gonna be making some mistakes.  I had an unbelievable time up there and I think we were heading in the right direction, but we just weren’t getting there quite quick enough.”

On whether he wants to get back into coaching:

“Randy we hope so, but I really do wanna coach again.  I have a real passionate for it.  I’ve been proud of myself in one respect.  I’ve taken on a lot of different things since that time.  First of all, I volunteered to go down there with John.  It’s made me better.  I’ve been doing a lot of stuff.  I’ve been exercising, I’ve lost a lot of weight, I’ve had to take blood pressure medicine for the first time in my life so who knows it can be a great thing for us.  As far as moving forward, I really wanna do that again but I want to do that as long as somebody is totally committed and I’m not being cocky at all.  I wanna get back to that NCAA Tournament and I want to lead a program where it can become relevant or it can get back to relevancy and those kinds of things.  It’s gonna be difficult.  I’m gonna haveto sit in front of some people, look them in the eye and tell them the exact honest truth.  Hopefully they’re gonna believe me and they’re gonna be willing to take a little bit of a risk.  I don’t think it’ll be great risk after a short period of time, but it’ll be a risk.  They’ll have to take a little bit of a hit on my behalf I think when you look at the totality of it.  As good as we have done at basketball, we’ve done better academically and one of the things that you’re most proud of as a coach in that article is when you see Acie Law saying he wouldn’t be the man that he is if it wasn’t for your guidance and all those things.  That’s what you miss the most as a coach is developing those relationships.  I’m excited.  I’m really excited but I do understand that there is going to have to be somebody that really trusts ya and believes in ya to make it happen again.”

Listen to Billy Gillispie on ESPN Radio in Dallas with Galloway and Company here

Meanwhile, Gillespie’s replacement at Texas A&M, Mark Turgeon, may be a better coach.  He played on Larry Brown’s championship team with Danny and the Miracles at Kansas and learned from the master.  When he was coaching at Wichita State, he took the Shockers to the Sweet 16 before losing to George Mason. 

The Aggies almost beat UCLA last year in the second round (they lost by two) and once again play the a number one seed in the second round, this year it’s UCONN which only won by 56 points on Thursday.

Mark Turgeon joined Tirico and Van Pelt on ESPN Radio after the Aggies victory over BYU.

On playing BYU in the first round for the second straight year:

“It’s crazy.  BYU’s name came up, I was like I know we’re not playing them. And then our name came up.”

“We’re a lot different than last year’s team.  We were really big and somewhat slow last year, but we were a good basketball team.  This year we’re running a lot more, playing faster, running more motions   They probably had to make more adjustments than we did going into the game.”

Listen to Mark Turgeon on ESPN Radio with Tirico and Van Pelt (24:30 into podcast)