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Bogeyman: The Longhorns have trapped Texas A&M in its own worst nightmare

by:RT Young•about 14 hours
Jim Schlossnagle
Jim Schlossnagle (Sara Diggins/American-Statesman / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images)

I wrote the below article last June immediately following the Jim Schlossnagle introductory press conference in Austin. I wrote that by hiring Schloss, the Aggies worst nightmare is now complete and who they’ve always claimed Texas is, has now been laid bare for all to see. But, after the last 10 months, it’s even more clear that our neighbors in College Station are straight up living in their own awful labyrinth of worst fears.

Let’s first look at what has befallen our brethren to the East of Austin since I wrote this last year.

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-Texas stole the Aggies baseball coach after they lost the national championship in Omaha. Schlossnagle left College Station partly due the athletic department fallout from their bungling of the Jimbo Fisher contract.

-Texas joined their precious conference, the SEC, on July 1st 2024.

-Texas beat them in the rivalry renewal in football, the biggest game in Kyle Field’s history. There were no offensive touchdowns by the Aggies in their 17-7 loss to the Longhorns.

-Texas made the CFP semifinals for the second straight year. The Aggies got another 8-4 magnet for their fridge.

-Texas beat the Aggies two out of three times in basketball when Texas A&M had a better coached team. (Said coach Buzz Williams bolted College Station too).

-Texas swept A&M in baseball and is number one in the country after the Aggies faceplanted with a preseason #1 ranking.

It is hell for Texas A&M right now.

So, I thought I’d recycle the below article just to bathe in a bit of schadenfreude for a while longer.

Texas A&M has long sounded like the scream queen from the sequel to a slasher flick, attempting to convince anyone who will listen that the bogeyman is real. Many of their claims about Texas—that Texas only looked out for themselves, was a conference killer, the big bad wolf, etc, seemed to perpetuate the notion of the paranoid Aggie. Their sobbing pleas always fell on deaf ears. When you looked over at Texas and saw smiling, glad-handing politicians like DeLoss Dodds and Mack Brown in positions of power in the athletic department, and career academics uninterested in sports running the university, what was there to fear?

The truth is, for years, Texas refused to fully embrace being the villain or leaning into the role of the evil empire, the boogeyman, the big bad wolf, whatever descriptor you want to use. Texas wanted to look out for its own interests, but it also wanted to be liked by everyone too. Take the Longhorn Network, for example: Texas agreed to it, but never weaponized it fully, either because of a lack of creativity or something resembling survivor’s guilt. The university stayed in a conference that put a ceiling over its aspirations and lost sight of building a fully functional Death Star. What Texas seemed to never understand was that they couldn’t have their cake and eat it too; they were never going to be simultaneously feared and liked. But, then came Chris Del Conte, Kevin Eltife, and Jay Hartzell, and as they all rowed in a united direction, then came the slow turning of the Longhorns’ heel.

The past few years have seen Texas quit pretending and finally embrace the fact that they are the villain; they are either going to be loved or hated, and that’s okay. The Longhorn symbol, like the Yankees’ logo or the Cowboys’ star, inspires something in whoever sees it. Under Del Conte, Texas has built an ethos that no sport in the athletic department should be ignored; every single one should be competing for national championships, even if that means bulldozing rivals along the way. The list of villainous acts are numerous: stealing Chris Beard from Texas Tech stabbing their former SWC and Big 12 mates in the heart, and leaving for the SEC with Oklahoma when doing so made A&M’s worst fears come to fruition. Now, Texas is days away from joining the Southeastern Conference, and they’ve completed their most diabolical act yet in hiring Jim Schlossnagle away from the Aggies; the heel turn is complete.

Texas’ most historic program had grown stagnant under David Pierce, who seemed to be coaching in an era that preceded NIL and the transfer portal and Texas Baseball was being lapped by Texas A&M in that department. I’ve long wondered why it took so long for the Aggies to embrace baseball being their sport; it seemed to be the game that lines up the best with their propensity for superstitions and weird traditions. But the past didn’t matter over the weekend; the Aggies were seven outs away from winning their first major national championship in 85 years, then they weren’t. Then, intentional or not, it doesn’t matter to me, the report on David Pierce was released Monday morning with the deciding Game 3 against Tennessee that night. Now, in just a 24-hour period, the Aggies’ hearts are not only broken, but their entrails are scattered on the floor in a bloody mess, with Texas smiling over their carcass, holding the bloody knife.

Chris Del Conte convincing his long-time friend from TCU in Schloss, to leave an already built and playing for national championships program to come to Austin is either the ultimate act of big brothering by Texas or a referendum on A&M for the Jimbo Fisher fallout and its cult-like nature, maybe some of both.

Either way, it’s all cold-blooded, and I’ll admit, part of it makes me a little queasy, the devilish nature of it all.

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But this is who Texas is now, and to the Aggies’ credit, it’s who they’ve been screaming we’ve always been.

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