COLLEGE STATION - Eric Hyman was both the luckiest and worst athletic director at Texas A&M in recent memory.

Hyman, with years of Southeastern Conference experience as South Carolina's AD, was brought onboard in the summer of 2012 to lead A&M into the SEC from the Big 12. That also happened to be the same season quarterback Johnny Manziel won the Heisman Trophy and the Aggies finished 11-2 under first-year coach Kevin Sumlin.

That's the lucky part, one Hyman had zero to do with, other than enjoy the ride. The "worst" list is much longer. This all comes up because Hyman, who lives in Fort Worth, this week visited with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about his 31/2-year A&M tenure that ended in January 2016.

"There are some things that I felt because of my ethical standards I was not a good fit," Hyman told the paper in advance of A&M playing Arkansas on Saturday in Arlington's AT&T Stadium. "I felt if I had to do it again, I would probably do a lot better job of researching it."

Hyman claimed he wasn't really allowed to do his job at A&M and that the university's leadership was involved "in the day-to-day activities of athletics" and "they've got people there that want to be the athletic director. They micromanage."

The university had presented Hyman's departure as a resignation, but chancellor John Sharp told the Chronicle on Thursday that wasn't the case.

"People say all kinds of junk when they're shown the door," Sharp said. "Eric never understood the 'Aggie Spirit.' He was a bad fit from day one."

Day one is etched in plenty of Aggies' memories, and back to that "worst" list that led to his exit. On the day A&M officially joined the SEC, from a podium Hyman poked fun at Aggies fans who apparently couldn't keep up with his "SEC! SEC!" chant crisply enough. It was an awkward, uncomfortable moment, one of many to come over the next few years.

In 2014, he told the Chronicle it was his job to "manage expectations that define reality" - not exactly what A&M fans hungry for national titles in the major sports wanted to hear. In fact "managing expectations" became a battle cry for fans who wanted Hyman out for his condescending, detached ways in College Station.

His biggest misgiving at A&M occurred in 2015, when he made a more impassioned case on TexAgs Radio for TCU earning one of eight national seeds in the NCAA baseball tournament than A&M, the school then writing him checks adding up to $800,000 annually.

Still a soft spot for TCU

Hyman, who had been athletic director at TCU earlier in his career, was one of 10 members on the NCAA baseball selection committee at the time. TCU snagged a national seed, the Horned Frogs held the home-field advantage over evenly matched A&M for a super regional, and TCU won in extra innings in the deciding third game in Fort Worth.

"He just argued against A&M making it … that's unreal," one TexAgs poster vented following Hyman's radio interview once the bracket had been announced. "You can't say you made an argument for us when you're sitting there highlighting our weaknesses and smoothing over the issues TCU had."

Longtime national college baseball columnist Kendall Rogers posted on Twitter on Thursday concerning the Star-Telegram article, "(Hyman) might be the most out of touch committee member I've seen."

It was evident Hyman had a soft spot for TCU based on the Horned Frogs' success during his tenure there from 1997 to 2005, and he had even said one of the reasons he accepted the A&M job from South Carolina was to be closer to his grandchildren in Fort Worth.

Contractual albatross

I've covered A&M athletic directors from Wally Groff to Bill Byrne to Hyman to Scott Woodward, and none was more absent or seemingly more disconnected from their duties. "Driftwood," as one A&M athletics official called him on Thursday.

It was evident Hyman, now 66, was treating the A&M gig as a nice cushion heading into retirement. That included not ruffling any feathers around a lagging football program. On the heels of Manziel's Heisman season, Southern Cal reached out to Sumlin about its opening at the time in the fall of 2013, and the coach used that interest - along with interest from the NFL - to receive a pay boost from $3.1 million to $5 million annually at A&M.

"This is a very sincere, long-term commitment for an individual who's done a marvelous job," Hyman said at the time.

I recall quizzing Hyman on why A&M believed it needed to give Sumlin such a dramatic pay bump and with a multi-year extension, and he responded angrily. This week he told the Star-Telegram he had nothing to do with what has become an albatross of a contract considering the Aggies' lack of success since.

That day in November 2013, when Hyman was making such a strong case for Sumlin's contract, the size of Hyman's paycheck for doing practically nothing must have outweighed all that righteousness he revealed this week.