Schlossed Horizon

It has been quite a week in Aggieland. Sunday, we lost a game that could have brought us a baseball national championship after leading in the seventh inning. Monday, we lost the final College World Series game by a run to Tennessee. Tuesday, we lost our baseball coach after a mysterious rendezvous at the Snook cemetery. By Wednesday we had lost our minds.

The long struggle to the top since our last national championship in a “big three” sport in 1939 perhaps makes us less objective about weeks like this one. But it does not mean that the response of the Aggie fan base to being abandoned is irrational.

As I listened to Jim Schlossnagle’s postgame response to a TexAgs reporter about his being recruited by Texas, it seemed like a non-denial, even though he said he came here to “never leave.” But then he added the phrase, “That hasn’t changed in my mind.” I think for many who take people at their word, that clearly implied he was staying.

Dylan Widger-USA TODAY Sports

But he left. I assume that as this situation unravels, there will be additional revelations. Who knows if the accusations being thrown about regarding Schlossnagle’s dedication to A&M the last two months represent truth or conspiracy theories? There is little doubt that both the coach and Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte are being disingenuous about the level of contact they had regarding the position, except in the most technical sense of when an official offer was put forth.

I am also well aware that the news cycle will quickly move on, and both others’ sympathy for Aggie fans and the Schadenfreude celebrations of those who wish us ill will evaporate in the mist. As I retire officially this week, I have to say that I felt the pain that every Aggie fan felt each one of the last four days. Clearly, in my soul, I am an Aggie.

Those who have known me 40 years or longer will find that ironic, because I graduated from the University of Texas in 1977. My alma mater has a history of acting with impunity. I experienced it while I was in graduate school at Texas Tech in 1986, when they hired David McWilliams away from Texas Tech to return to Austin to replace Fred Akers as head football coach. McWilliams had only been at Tech for one year; he didn’t meet with his players, either, and showed up at the Austin press conference flashing the “Hook ‘em” sign. I was a different person then, but even then it felt, as the Addams Family might say, “altogether ookey.” But I spent the next 2½ years being abused by my friends in Lubbock over that event.

People in Lubbock thought David McWilliams was a terrible person, but I know that is not true, because my daughter later worked for him and testified to his kindness. People are saying the same about Jim Schlossnagle. I cannot say if that’s true. But I can say that the UT Board of Regents chair’s characterization of him as a man of “character and integrity” is inaccurate. If integrity means being what you purport to be, nothing could be further from the truth. The entire goal of the process was to mislead and to fly under the radar, right up to the bus ride home. Some will say that it is just circumstantial, that it is impossible to do things “right” with the portal the way it is and the free movement of players. I am sympathetic to that argument, but it is vacuous. Acting with integrity means being who you really are when it is most difficult, and when it might cost you something.

And the bonus for the Schadenfreude crowd is that not only do you get to quickly load up your roster with the players you want, but you get to decimate your rival’s roster at the same time. And you know that, no matter what comes to light, no action will be taken against those involved, because, after NIL and the recent NCAA court settlement, there are no rules anymore.

I was among those who thought the NCAA was a weak and erratic regulator. But regulators are there to restrain the actions of ethical egoists, of the purely self-interested. They are there to impose duties or responsibilities on those who do not want to assume them. Because unfettered ethical egoism is nastier than you think it is. And I say that as a markets guy, not a big government guy.

What we are seeing in college sports is unfettered ethical egoism, every man for himself, the same as in professional sports. That is exactly what we saw this week. Good luck maintaining traditions and values in that type of environment and still signing the best players. What you will see is cruder and nastier venues for sports, because all that matters is winning it all. And you will see fans mourning the fact that, increasingly, the players and coaches really do not care if you love them or not.

But as we look to the horizon, the sun will rise tomorrow, and there will be bubbles at Blue Bell Park in the spring as surely as there will be bluebonnets. A&M will hire a good coach and recoup or rebuild a team that was a near champion. The truth is that this is the world we have asked for, one where we are only measured by championships, and not by character. Our response will likely be to raise more money and to up the ante for revenge. And my guess is that we will succeed.

But there is a price to that success. Here’s hoping that we count the cost before pushing that button one more time. Because it obviously was not the championships that turned me into an Aggie. It was the character and soul of the place, reflected in its students and in its former students, that changed me. I have to admit that I don’t see that so much today in my alma mater. May we never lose sight of who we are in the chase to become great. We may be surprised to find out that we gave up what made us great after all.