Jim Schlossnagle explains decision to leave A&M for Texas: 'I yearn for a great leader'

Following the end of the College World Series, Texas A&M Aggies head coach Jim Schlossnagle made the decision to leave to become the head coach of the Texas Longhorns.

On Wednesday, Texas officially introduced Schlossnagle as the program’s next baseball coach. While at his introductory press conference, he explained why he chose to leave for Texas and why he chose to do so shortly after coming up just one game short of a national championship with Texas A&M.

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“I’m sure the question will come up, ‘Why this move and why now?’ I don’t take that lightly,” Jim Schlossnagle said. “On some hands, this was a very easy decision because of my relationship with Chris [Del Conte] and my past history and my belief in him and his wife, Robin, but it was obviously very hard.”

The timing of Schlossnagle moving to Texas has been something that has drawn criticism. In particular, the moving coming quickly after losing in Omaha was a point of frustration.

“There’s a lot of decisions in life that you don’t get to choose the timing. You don’t get to meet with your team as you would like. For that, I am sorry.”

One key point of emphasis that Schlossnagle highlighted in his decision-making process came down to being aligned with the athletic department and school he was joining.

“But college athletics, right now, Mr. Del Conte would probably agree, this is the most uncertain time of college athletics that it’s ever been in and no one knows what the future is. Never in the history of college athletics is alignment more important between administrator, president, chairmen of the board, board of trustees, board of regents, whatever. I yearn for a great leader. I need a great leader and I study leadership, and Chris is the best leader that I’ve ever known,” Schlossnagle said.

“We’ve done this before, and although it was super, super hard to make this decision because of my love for the players at Texas A&M, I simply could not pass up this opportunity.”

Jim Schlossnagle was the head baseball coach at TCU while Chris Del Conte was the athletic director there. That, undoubtedly, helped the two understand what it’s like to work together and helped with the connection that made the move to Texas possible. Notably, this is also coming shortly after Texas A&M had its own change at athletic director with Trev Alberts taking over in College Station.