This might be a moot point by the time of publication. There’s a chance that by Monday morning, following Sunday night’s 45-44 loss to UCLA, Kevin Sumlin will no longer be the head football coach at Texas A&M. Many believe he shouldn’t be. Sumlin no doubt earned a plethora of bandwagoners, if there was any room left, wishing for his immediate departure. How could anyone blame them?

Soon after the loss, a Texas A&M regent Tony Buzbee expressed his frustrations in a Facebook post, saying Sumlin was “out-coached tonight, which isn’t new. … Our coaches were dominated on national TV, yet again. I’m only one vote on the Board of Regents but when the time comes my vote will be that Kevin Sumlin needs to GO. In my view he should go now.”

Others shared his view.

It was an unfathomable collapse to a game that started out so right. How do you ease your freshmen quarterbacks into their first live action at the college level? Well, for starters you devise exceptional game plans both offensively and defensively.

If you are Aggies OC Noel Mazzone, you use a quick and mobile veteran offensive line to confuse and confound the opposition, opening space for exceptional running backs to gain big chunks of yardage, control the tempo and take the pressure off your raw signal-callers.

If you are Aggies DC John Chavis, you turn loose an aggressive front seven on relentless pursuit of Bruins’ QB Josh Rosen, and let your veteran secondary blanket his receiving corps.

That was not only the formula for a successful beginning to the 2017 season on the road in the Rose Bowl, but there could have been no better way to make redshirt freshman Nick Starkel and true freshman Kellen Mond as comfortable as possible in their first college football game at a hostile environment.

Neither was called upon to do too much. They didn’t need to. Not with a 38-10 halftime advantage. Trayveon Williams, the Aggies’ returning 1,000-yard rusher glided through the bewildered Bruins defense to the tune of 188 yards and two touchdowns in the first half alone, and running mate Keith Ford added 77 yards and three touchdowns by halftime as the Aggies churned out 287 yards on the ground in just the first two quarters.

It all worked out as planned, and then the second half started.

Either by design or afforded a four-touchdown cushion, Sumlin decided to turn his quarterbacks loose in the second half. Couple that with Chavis calling off the dogs over the final two quarters, and that’s when things fell apart.

Starkel got his first start, but following an early-third quarter sack, had to be helped off the field with an ankle injury and watched from the sidelines out of uniform on crutches. His 6-for-13 passing night were good for just 62 yards.

Mond wasn’t any better. When you’re running for more yards than you throw for, it’s not a good sign for anybody not named Johnny Manziel. The true freshman ran for 54 yards and threw for 27. He completed just 3 of 17 passes.

As a result, the Aggies fell victims to one of the biggest comebacks in NCAA history. It was surpassed only by Michigan State’s 35-point comeback against Northwestern in 2006.

Sumlin will not survive this, he can’t. When AD Scott Woodward said last summer that Sumlin had to win and win now, he couldn’t have meant building a 34-point lead and then flush it down the toilet with horrible second-half coaching.

This was the final nail, the last straw. The chance Sumlin makes it to the finish line this season, given the dismal quarterback situation, has to have dwindled down to single digits percentage wise after Sunday night’s embarrassment.