Former Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman offered a few interesting comments on Aggies coach Kevin Sumlin and the state of the A&M athletic department on Wednesday.

Hyman met with Mac Engel of The Star-Telegram at a Starbucks in Fort Worth to discuss life at Texas A&M.

Notably, they spoke about Sumlin’s massive contract — a six-year, $30-million guaranteed deal signed in December of 2013.

And remarkably, Hyman said he had nothing to do with it when asked if the enormous contract was his decision.

“I have done this job a long time and I don’t blame Kevin Sumlin. If someone is going to give you $5 million a year for six years, it would have been stupid of him to turn it down,” Hyman told Engel. “But the contract was given to me, and it was ‘This is what we are going to do.’”

Engel said he was “stunned” when Hyman told him that.

“I had no say so over it. I’ve been doing this job for a long time. I had worked with Steve Spurrier for years, and he was paid a heck of a lot less than Coach Sumlin. And he won national championships after conference championships. And then you are making this commitment to a person, and again I don’t blame Kevin, that’s never won a conference championship.

“When the original contract was given to me, if Kevin were to leave the next day there was no buyout provision.”

Hyman noted that people at A&M — the higher-ups — “didn’t know what they were doing.” He said A&M “people” would do things that were “mind-boggling.”

The leadership of the university was involved in the day-to-day activities of athletics, Hyman said. He implied that he was sort of handcuffed in a way.

When asked if he enjoyed his time at A&M, Hyman continued, “Parts I enjoyed and parts that I did not. There were situations they did not let the athletic director do their job. People there wanted to run the athletic department and not let the athletic director do it.

“It was so political. Because of that it’s made it difficult to achieve of what you wanted to do.”

Hyman noted that the people who run the university “micro-manage.” Does that happen at other schools, or just in College Station?

“You have the presidents more wired than they used to be, because of the visibility and because of the money that is involved,” he said. “Some schools, probably so. It just varies. But the ones I’ve talked to, none are like Texas A&M.”