After impassioned answer last night, Texas A&M coach Jim Schlossnagle leaving for Austin. How did this happen?
I’ve had some articles age poorly, but this may be the one that did it the most quickly! Apparently, even after some vehement and angry proclamations to the contrary during last night’s presser, former Aggie head coach Jim Schlossnagle is headed to Austin to head up their baseball program.
Ironically, I still stand by a lot of things I wrote in that article; it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for it to have all gone down this way. The upgrade he asked for was granted. The roster at A&M is far more built up. Leaking the news on the day of the final game of the College World Series was still a strange move, no matter which way you slice it.
The only possible answer is that this has to have been done for quite some time. In that case, though, would have a national championship have changed things? Did the Ags come literally one run away from changing this turn of events?
I wouldn’t be so sure. Given how quickly this all happened, I don’t think the events of last night’s game had any impact on what went down. Let’s consider the implications of that situation: if whether the man stayed or went was based on the results of last night’s game, then that has some concerning implications for how the game was actually coached. You certainly can’t say that he was impartial on the matter if the only thing that could have potentially kept him around was a national championship.—how would that have affected decisions before and during the game?
No, this seems to have been in the works and well under wraps for quite some time—which is consummately unfair to the group of players who gave everything they had to this team and this university this season. You can’t tell me that they didn’t hear any of the chatter—how did that affect them?
There’s more to come. The man is, rightfully, being absolutely roasted alive by Aggies and national media right now. There are a lot of tendrils to unpack here. But there’s no two ways about it—this one is monumental.
I have no doubt that the Aggies will have just as monumental of a replacement.