Kevin Sumlin rumors: linked to Arizona State job

Texas A&M Aggies head coach Kevin Sumlin has been on the hot seat all year. He is the favorite to be the next head coach of the Arizona State Sun Devils.

The college football coaching carousel is about to get real interesting. Several coaches have been fired in the last several days, including Arizona State Sun Devils former head coach Todd Graham. Arizona State had become largely irrelevant in recent years under Graham.

However, Arizona State University might be making a huge splash hire of their own this holiday season. Their target: Texas A&M Aggies head coach Kevin Sumlin. Billy Liucci of TexAgs.com reported the news of Sumlin likely being the next head coach in Tempe for the Sun Devils.

Sumlin might have gone only 7-5 in 2017 for the Aggies, but he is a coaching candidate that could get an interview with many high-profile Power 5 jobs. He is a phenomenal recruiter and has had success with developing quarterbacks, albeit not lately.

Texas A&M is probably parting ways with Sumlin anyway. He had been on the hot seat all season long. Sumlin has not had a 10-win season in College Station since his first year on campus back in 2012. Having Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel and that road upset of No. 1 Alabama absolutely helped.

So why would Sumlin leave the SEC for the Pac-12? It’s a better entry point for him and an opportunity to reset his coaching clock. Arizona State is nowhere near as high stress of a job as Texas A&M. At Arizona State, Sumlin would have reason expectations as a head coach. Texas A&M views itself as a championship-caliber program, for which it is not.

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Should Sumlin put pen to paper and becoming the next Arizona State head coach, look for the Sun Devils to be a top-25 program in no time. Sumlin will dominate recruiting and Arizona State could challenge USC and UCLA in the Pac-12 South for years to come.