We Have A Coward For An Athletic Director
by Beergut on Aug 31, 2010 5:28 PM CDT
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PrintI just read Brent Zwerneman's latest blog entry, and quite frankly, I don't see how $Bill still has a job at A&M right now.
$Bill decided to address the realignment issue, and why we didn't move to the SEC. To quote the gutless wonder masquerading as a leader in our athletic department:
"I was concerned with changing conferences that we may not be ready for the level of competition if we decided to leave," Byrne told host Dave South on the weekly show that's part of the Aggie Radio Network. "I was very concerned about trying to take things slowly, and not rush."
Stop right here. If you are an athletic director, even if you are worried your programs may struggle in a new conference, you don't come out and say it. The correct thing to say is that you know this new league is incredibly competitive, it is going to be tough but fun competing with all of these new teams, and you're looking forward to the challenge. What does our "leader" say? It's too hard.
Byrne, who arrived at A&M in late 2002, cited the Aggies' conference shift in 1996 as reason for pause concerning the SEC in particular.
"If we looked at where we stacked up financially in the Pac 10 conference, we were about third," Byrne said of annual athletic budgets. "If we looked at where we stacked up in the Southeastern Conference, we were eighth out of 12. We didn't rank very well.
"My big concern was that when Texas A&M made the move from the Southwest Conference to the Big 12 conference (in '96), they were not ready for the level of competition that was out there."
We weren't ready to compete in the Big 12? We won two division titles and conference championship in football in our first three years in the Big 12. Please explain to me how that shows a lack of readiness to compete in this conference.If A&M was in such dire straights, why did you come here in 2002?
As for where we rank financially in the SEC, I think we'd easily be inside the top five. I think the only program in the SEC who might make a significant amount more than we do would be Florida. I think Alabama, Georgia, and LSU might be ahead of us, but it is by a few million, not tens of millions. If we joined the SEC, and had access to the television money they are receiving from ABC/CBS/ESPN, we'd be making over $100 million in revenue right now. If you add in the increase in donations from boosters happy we're in the SEC, increase in ticket sales for conference games, increase in television revenue from third-tier television rights, and we're talking about another $10-$20 million in revenue, which would put us among the top athletic departments in the nation in revenue. $Bill is taking a short-term view of A&M's current ranking in revenue, and ignoring the benefits that membership in the SEC would bring us, revenue-wise. Byrne is also ignoring the concept of overachieving, of producing more with less, a concept which seems to be foreign to him, because he truly believes that the team that spends the most wins, which is why he is as greedy as he is.
$Bill goes on:
Byrne continued to South, "(A&M) had not made the investment in facilities, staff or salaries - all the things you need to build a great program. And you saw the results of that. We had a good football team in 1998, then we had problems.
This is just patently false. The Championship Vision capital campaign was going on long before Byrne arrived here, and the ultimate goal of the campaign was to renovate or build new facilities for all of our athletic teams. Byrne's arrival coincided with some of the goals of the campaign being reached, and he was able to take credit for those new facilities. As for salaries, we paid salaries that were competitive nationally with any program. We didn't lose coaches to other schools because they were willing to pay a higher salary.
The only difficulty A&M has had in competing in the Big 12 in football has come under Byrne's watch. Since Byrne became our athletic director in December of 2002, we have had losing seasons in four of the last seven years. This is after we didn't have a losing season for over twenty years prior to his arrival.
After reading this blog entry (go and ready the whole thing, it is worth your time), I don't see how this man still has a job in our athletic department. This goes beyond his usual habit of saying exactly the wrong thing, and putting his foot in his mouth. Byrne has admitted he is a coward who is afraid of competition, and doesn't want to take a chance on competing when all of the odds (athletic budget) aren't stacked in his favor. Why the hell are we letting this man lead our athletic department? He isn't a leader, and he sure as hell doesn't represent Texas A&M. Fire him, and fire him now.
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What a freaking coward!
Why doesn’t he just come out and say, they didn’t let me have any input in this decision so now I am talking about of my butt like I know something? Earlier this week he was on the radio whining about how we have not sold out all of the games at Kyle. Hey $Bill, you you want sellouts, you should have suggested we go to the SEC. ALL of their fans travel well. Maybe he has missed it, but it is not like 6-7 in football is exactly tearing it up competitively. If there is anything he has proven during his tenure, it is that the schools with the largest budget DOES NOT always win. See our record vs. Tech for reference. This guy is such a moron that it is hard to find words.
SEC is still a good possibility
I still think that within 5 years A&M could be in the SEC. That door isn’t closed. It would be a win-win for both parties. A&M gets a nice stable conference and financial security, the SEC gets its footprint into Texas.
This is a big year for A&M football. The team they have this year gives the school it’s best chance at a winner in awhile and if A&M can position themselves as a football school again (before the next round of expansion) they will have more leverage.
I'd put the +/- at 2 years.
Until the TV deal is signed, all bets are off.
"Biggest mistake in DFW history?" - Bigger mistake in LSB history.
"Back in Irish's day you had to kill a man before you were taken seriously in polite society." - Aquaman56 06/25/10
I can imagine A&M firing Bill, hiring an AD who will surely take them to the SEC, and wallowing in further mediocrity for the next decade or two. But out from under big brother’s shadow.
by Displaced Longhorn on Sep 1, 2010 9:26 AM CDT reply actions
how we do in the SEC
will depend almost solely on who our head football coach is at that time
people who predict prolonged mediocrity for A&M in football seem to completely ignore the role coaching plays in the success of a program
I didn’t know Sherman was getting fired when you head to the SEC?
by Displaced Longhorn on Sep 1, 2010 11:20 AM CDT up reply actions
If Sherman can't start to win more than 6 games, he will be fired.
It doesn’t matter what conference he’s in; Sherman appears to be the wrong guy, again. Mediocre coaches will remain mediocre. If the record doesn’t change, we will get a new coach, and that coach, if he is good, can immediately compete in the SEC, Big XII or wherever.
A&Ms history at hiring inept coaches, and apparently AD, seems like it might have a tendency to repeat
by Displaced Longhorn on Sep 1, 2010 11:46 AM CDT up reply actions
3 out of a century, congrats. how’d Sherrill work out?
by Displaced Longhorn on Sep 1, 2010 1:26 PM CDT up reply actions
Bobby Bowden "technically" got "fired"
your point?
"Biggest mistake in DFW history?" - Bigger mistake in LSB history.
"Back in Irish's day you had to kill a man before you were taken seriously in polite society." - Aquaman56 06/25/10
lol, you just compared Bobby Bowden to RC Slocum…. they are incomparable.
by Displaced Longhorn on Sep 2, 2010 12:44 AM CDT up reply actions
Slocum is the 2nd winningest coach in A&M history
so to say firing him counts as a miss, as Hobbes did, is an insult.
"Biggest mistake in DFW history?" - Bigger mistake in LSB history.
"Back in Irish's day you had to kill a man before you were taken seriously in polite society." - Aquaman56 06/25/10
Slocum
I am not sure if the game of football had passed Slocum by, or if he was just a terrible judge of coaching talent. Dino Babers? Really? That hire alone may be the reason why Slocum was let go as HC.
actually
I believe he is the winningest, assuming you are talking about number of games won
I’m not sure where he ranks on winning percentage.
I remember Slocum passing Homer Norton, who was our winningest coach in our history.
I was going with win % with minimum games coached.
Dana Bible leads with a % of .765
"Biggest mistake in DFW history?" - Bigger mistake in LSB history.
"Back in Irish's day you had to kill a man before you were taken seriously in polite society." - Aquaman56 06/25/10
Royal was forced out at texas
similar to how we forced Slocum to resign
neither of them were a “miss” as a coaching hire, which is the point that completely went over your head
and Royal only won two national titles, if you lose your bowl game, you obviously aren’t the best team in the nation
So, by your rationale then....
Joe Paterno doesn’t sniff Royal’s shoes b/c he only has 2 national championships.
Nor is Jimmy Johnson, Tom Osbourne, Lou Holtz, Pete Carroll, or Urban Meyer…..
Hell, Royal isn’t even in the top ten in wins.
"Biggest mistake in DFW history?" - Bigger mistake in LSB history.
"Back in Irish's day you had to kill a man before you were taken seriously in polite society." - Aquaman56 06/25/10
actually
Sherman is perfect for the SEC
all you have to do is base your offense on running Power 30+ times a game (Sherman would love that, as an old OL coach), and have a decent enough offense to stop the opposing team’s running game (as bad as our defense was last year, we were able to do this in the bowl game until special teams caused the bottom to fall out on the game), and you’ll win
Winning games is easier to do........
in a 10 team Big 12, than a 12 team SEC. The man’s job depends on winning games, in particular football games. He understands that A&M has one of the top athletic budgets in the Big 12 and struggles to break .500. Do you think he wants to take his sub .500 football teams that have finished 6th and 5th in the Big 12 South to the SEC?
Sure he’s done a good job with the women’s sports that no one cares about. You can literally buy wins and championships in those sports. A&M has the money to hand out full scholarships to crap sports that no one cares about and can beat up on all the other programs that are stuck with handing out partial scholarships or book discounts.
A&M has excelled at these things because they throw more money at them than the rest of their competition. It’s not exactly like that with football in the SEC.
If you were the AD of A&M you would do and say the exact same thing, or risk losing your job after going 4-8(because your “traditions” would schedule Texas as an OOC game, and you would get Vanderbilt occasionally) every year. As a fan it’s easy to sit back and claim how you want the SEC and you can compete in the SEC because you’re not going to lose your job when you’re wrong.
Giving the way the NCAA is cracking down on violators, A&M wouldn’t be able to compete in the SEC the same way they were able to compete in the SWC and Big 12 in the 90’s under Jackie Sherrill.
When was the last time A&M beat an SEC team on the football field? What makes Aggies believe they can be competitive in the toughest conference in college football?
Jackie Sherrill's right hand man....
“Jackie Sherrill had not coached at A&M in many years by the time the Big XII began.”
True, but his right hand man Slocum was. Sherill was the ring leader, but Slocum, Davie and others were the ones actually handing keys and cash to the recruits. I guess you could try and make the argument that Slocum cleaned up the program post Sherrill and was competitive without cheating but then you have the 94’ incident. A&M’s only success in the last 25 years is under a man tied directly to one of the biggest cheating scandals in college football history. The Reggie Bush/USC violations pails in comparison to what A&M was doing in the late 80’s-90’s under Sherrill/Slocum/Davie.
Point remaining, A&M has had a very difficult time remaining remotely competitive in the Big 12 /SWC without cheating, but every Aggie fan believes they can be competitive in the SEC in a time period in college football history that even USC got a multi-year ban from post-season. If the NCAA is willing to give USC a post season ban, imagine what they would do to a Texas A&M team that “found a way” to be competitive in the SEC.
We are the
18th winningest program of all time, yet every one of those wins came from cheating. Glad you cleared that up.
So when we won 11 games in ’98, that was from cheating?
We made a piss poor hire in Fran and it set our program back 5 years. We are now recovering. Such is life. A Tech fan giving lectures about cheating is laughable considering Tech used the “we were too dumb to know the rules” excuse with the NCAA. Please expound on your claims about Sherrill, Slocum, and Davie since you know so much.
if you can explain how the '94 "incident" gave us a recruiting or competitive advantage
I’d love to hear it
If you think what happened at A&M under Sherrill is “one of the biggest cheating scandals in college football history”, you are either sorely lacking in perspective, or just plain ignorant of college football history. Tech having every single athletic team in their department put on probation was a bigger scandal than A&M paying players (and during the ‘80s, Tech and texas and everyone else in the SWC (save Rice) were paying their players, too, but people who want to claim A&M’s success is tied to cheating never want to admit that). Baylor having one of their basketball players kill a teammate while their coach tried to cover up illegal payments is probably the biggest scandal of the last 10 years.
Okay I'll admit that everyone was cheating back then
It still doesn’t change the fact that the most success aggy has had in the modern age is the result of cheating. Sure you won the Big 12 in 1998, but that was one year. When I talk to aggy grads, they always talk about how awesome they were in the 80’s and early 90s. And us t-sips should just wait until they are that good again.
Which is sad to me because the way I see it, the most success you have had in the modern era has been the result of a massive cheating scandal, and you didnt get a national title out of it?
here is the problem I have with the "you only won because you cheated" argument
that I always here from ’sips
When literally every other SWC school (save Rice) was also paying players to come to their schools in the ‘80s, doing so at A&M wasn’t a competitive advantage
When everyone is buying players, buying players is not an advantage. A&M won in the ‘80s because we had better coaching than the other schools we faced, talent alone (bought or not) isn’t enough. If it was simply a case of “cheat and win”, texas wouldn’t have fired Akers and McWilliams.
As for the success we had in the ‘90s, we did it without cheating. Yes, we were on probation in ’94, but players being paid for hours they lied about working doesn’t give you a competitive advantage on the field.
t-sips always pull out the cheating card because they don’t want to admit that A&M was simply better than their program for a decade there, while they made several poor coaching hires.
No, you wrong yet again
It doesn’t matter if everyone was cheating in the SWC. Your period of greatest success in the modern era STILL is the result of cheating. Your rationale is everyone was doing it so aggy should not have the cheating card pulled on them?
I’ll admit yalls program was better back then, but that’s for one decade when cheating was running rampant. For ONE decade. Ouch.
by Hobbes881 on Sep 2, 2010 5:41 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
It's all in here...
“Tech having every single athletic team in their department put on probation was a bigger scandal than A&M paying players "
Yes, because paying for legal aid, bail bonds, and phone cards to current players is much worse than handing over keys to a brand new car as long as you sign with Texas A&M. What a joke, Tech’s penalties were just stupidity and gave little if any advantage to the program.
There was rampant cheating going on at multiple programs back then, the difference is A&M’s cheating led to one of the greatest periods in their programs history. While Tech got little to no benefit in the win column for providing football players with phone cards.
what part of "every single team in your athletic department was on probation"
do you not understand?
You’re talking about comparing one football program on probation in the 1980s to a whole godd*mn athletic department, every single freaking team, being put on probation in the ’90s
Do you not see the difference there?
If you don’t understand the difference, then we shouldn’t be continuing this conversation, because higher reasoning is impossible in that case.
I should be shocked that you're taking this stance......
but unfortunately I’ve come to expect this type of reasoning.
The Texas Tech track team getting phone cards and legal aid, doesn’t benefit an athletic program nearly as much as buying D-1 football recruits and winning big on the football field with them. There is literally no one that is going to agree with your argument here.
Texas A&M was cheating and that led directly to winning and one of the best periods in the programs history. Tech got little to no advantage with their cheating, and the win column at the time proved that.
Football is king, and buying blue-chip recruits for your football team is much bigger than letting your track team use the coaches telephone to make a long distance call. If you can’t understand the difference, then I actually agree we shouldn’t be continuing this conversation.
we're not talking about the track team
I don’t think you even know your own school’s cheating history
every program in your athletic department doesn’t go on probation b/c of phone cards and legal aid
we’re talking about your school playing academically ineligible athletes, which DID provide a competitive advantage
we’re talking about your athletic department telling the NCAA, “we’re sorry, we’re stupid, we didn’t know”
we’re talking about an athletic department so inept, they didn’t have a compliance department to speak of
You’re out of your f*cking element, Donny.
There were only 2 players out of 8 (mainly non-revenue) sports that were in violation all 4 years
The sports involved were mainly non-revenue sports, and the benefits were in the form of legal aid, bail bonds, and excessive financial aid. Mainly stupid sh*t that didn’t give the overall athletic program that great of a competitive advantage. It’s not like Tech was buying cars for blue chip football recruits, and using those blue chip recruits to bring the program to one of it’s highest points in their history.
A&M was close to being handed the death penalty, but they paid off a sports writer to not reveal his evidence. Tech was no where close to anything like that, Tech’s was more ignorance of the rules than it was cheating for competitive advantage.
Your football players were playing while they were not eligible. How is that not a competitive advantage? Basically you are whining b/c while y’all cheated, your results weren’t as good as A&M’s.
I’ll play, what was the name of the writer and what info did he withold?
by miketag on Sep 2, 2010 2:42 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions
the violations were IN EVERY SPORT
not just non-revenue sports
and the improper legal aid (which is a nice way of saying boosters were paying off lawyers for players) was going to football players
"I’ll play, what was the name of the writer and what info did he withold?"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE3D81331F931A35757C0A96F948260
It was actually a former player George Smith, he was allegedly paid $30000 to recant his Dallas Morning News story where he stated Sherrill gave him thousands of dollars in hush money.
It’s all in the multiple links I have provided in this thread.
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