Bogeyman

With the Longhorns' hiring of Schloss from the Aggies, their nightmare is complete.

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 Tech¹, 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 (and his whole coaching staff), 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&M² for the Jimbo Fisher fallout and its cult-like nature, maybe some of both.³ 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. But this is who Texas is now, and to the Aggies' credit, it’s who they’ve been screaming we’ve always been.

1. Hopefully, this works out better than that did.

2. Schloss - the ultimate 2% Aggie!

3. The Aggies will lament the postgame press conference, but that’s just how these things go. Schloss apologized in his PC for lashing out and seemed to be alluding to a lack of alignment at A&M, which maybe happens when you have to pay a $75 million dollar buyout to your football coach.