Many college coaches have the experience of replacing a successful football coach, but few modern coaches have replaced the founder of their school’s football program.
That’s exactly what Brad Sherrod did when he became the head football coach at Texas Wesleyan.
He says he’s ready for the challenge of taking over a successful but relatively new program.
“Expectations from the fans and alumni are that we continue to win, that’s my expectation. We got a good team, a good group of players, but we got to put it all together. We can’t think about the end result of championships,” said Sherrod, “We got to think about how we play every week and it really starts about how we practice, how we prepare, how we prepare for practice, and then how we play and I believe it has to work in that manner.”
Sherrod comes to TWU after three years of coaching linebackers at UT-San Antonio and after almost 30 years of coaching experience.
At Wesleyan, he replaced Joe Prud’homme who restarted the program in 2016 after 76 years of dormancy . Prud’homme resigned in March.
Sherrod understands what Prud’homme built and wants to continue to build up the TWU football program, which opens the season on Thursday against Lindsey Wilson at 6 p.m. at Crowley ISD Multi-Purpose Stadium.
“Well, Joe did a great job of laying the foundation,” said Sherrod, “I appreciate everything Joe did here. he did a great job of recruiting these young men that on this team now and I’ve been left with a really good program, a really good situation that we need to continue to keep growing this program in a lot of ways. Financially, player-wise, and facility-wise, we need to continue to keep growing and doing the things that are going to help us be one of the top programs in NAIA. I believe we can get there. I believe we could be one of the top programs.”
Sherrod said he hopes TWU football becomes a draw in Fort Worth similar to the TCU Horned Frogs.
“We could be one of the teams, along with TCU in this city, that people want to come to see play,” said Sherrod.
One of the next steps according to Sherrod is an on-campus stadium which the school is in the process of creating, and TWU expects the field house for its stadium to open in July. In the meantime, he praised Crowley ISD’ for allowing TWU to play games at that facility.
The Rams are coming off a season where they narrowly missed the playoffs and returned key starters on offense including quarterback Carson Rodgers and last year’s No. 1 receiver AJ Bob.
Defensively Sherrod was impressed with junior defensive back Deylon Rodgers , defensive lineman Daniel Aigbogun and linebacker Sir Hill.
Sherrod said he wants fans to see a physical, smash-mouth team that plays with enthusiasm and plays for each other. Off the field he wants his players to be involved in the community.
“I want our kids being responsible, going to class and being good servants. I want our football team to support other teams on this campus,” said Sherrod, “Because we ask them to come out and support us. So I want to make sure we’re good servants of the community as well, and giving back and not just always take, take, take.”
A big focus for Sherrod, as he begins his tenure, is not just coaching players who can win but making well-rounded men who achieve success on and off the field and can find passions outside of the game of football.
Sherrod said he was far from perfect and knows he’ll make mistakes but he hopes people will see his love and loyalty to his players and TWU.
“I’m loyal to this place, I’m loyal to my kids and that can be, one of my greatest strengths and probably one of my weakest [traits] too.,” said Sherrod, “You can’t have one without the other but I want to be loyal to those folks, to my players, and this university.”
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