A&M move flies in face of reason
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Sports // Jerome Solomon
Jerome Solomon, Copyright 2011 Houston Chronicle
Aug. 26, 2011 Updated: Aug. 27, 2011 1:03 a.m.
A&M school president R. Bowen Loftin is all smiles here, but his school's potential move to the SEC doesn't make sense or cents, columnist Jerome Solomon writes.
After Texas A&M took the bribe, er, accepted the generous "incentive" from Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri (divorce settlement funds from Colorado and Nebraska) to remain in the Big 12, school president R. Bowen Loftin said what an educator should say about why his Aggies did not jump to the Southeastern Conference.
In a letter to Aggies, the first major factor Loftin listed against the move was concern about "the demands placed on our student-athletes, in terms of academics, time away from the classroom."
Unless Tuesday's earthquake along the Eastern Seaboard shifted Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia a few hundred miles west, academics don't mean as much in Aggieland as they did a few months ago.
Then again, are a few missed classes by some athlete-students really worth depriving Alabamans, Mississippians and Georgians of the Aggies mystique that people in Texas have taken for granted for so long?
Of course not. Oh, I know that the word "athletics" isn't anywhere in the school's official mission statement, but come on, so much of its identity is wrapped up in how its athletic teams fare.
One way to improve image is to hang around a better class of people. Those scoundrels in the SEC are the class of the college football world.
Perhaps they will be nicer to the Aggies than the burnt-orange crowd in Austin, where DeLoss Dodds sometimes sounds like a certain boxing promoter. "That's America," he told the Chronicle's David Barron about Texas' $15-million-a-year Longhorn Network.
As Loftin pointed out in a statement Thursday: "Ultimately, we are seeking to generate greater visibility nationwide for Texas A&M and our championship-caliber student-athletes."
Aside from accidentally putting student before athlete, he is on point. Visibility trumps tradition, right?
The last time Loftin used "ultimately" it was about the above-the-table "incentive."
"Ultimately, by remaining a member of the Big 12, we were able to more than double our financial return to the levels being offered by other conferences," he wrote.
He brought up money again in Thursday's statement.
"As a public university, Texas A&M owes it to the state's taxpayers to maximize our assets and generate additional revenues both now and well into the future," he said.
That's America
Amen. Athletic departments are supposed to be profitable. Well, ultimately, they aren't. But school presidents aren't required to tell you that. That's America.
Anyway, the $20 million a year the Big 12 guaranteed A&M in TV revenues is more than the SEC gives each of its teams.
And what about the departure tax that will be part of A&M's divorce settlement with the Big 12?
It could be as much as $30 million, but maybe A&M can do as good a job negotiating this year's payout as it did with last year's payoff.
I would love to talk to A&M athletic director Bill Byrne about this, but he is more difficult to get these days than the Longhorn Network.
I pay a couple of grand a year to receive nearly every television channel known to man, but those riveting UT volleyball games this weekend aren't on any of my screens.
Byrne's silence probably has something to do with his post on the school's website a year ago about A&M having made the right move (for a long list of reasons) by staying in the 10-team Big 12 instead of going to the SEC or then-Pac-10:
"We are receiving the same financial dollars (we) would have received by going east or west. Plus, our operating costs are reduced. Our estimates said it would cost us an extra million dollars a year in travel to go east or west. … And, we won't have to pay as many exorbitant fees to get non-conference teams to come play us in Aggieland."
According to the school's president and athletic director, a move to the SEC could hurt athlete-students' academic performances and might be worse for it financially.
Overreacting a tad?
Is the Longhorn Network that much of a game changer? Why not just crank up the Aggie Network?
"When we built the 12th Man Productions facilities, our plan was all along to eventually put together an Aggie Network," Byrne wrote a year ago. "We are better positioned than any other conference school to do it."
Oops. When Dodds read that, his hair must have stood up on his head like Don King.
So Texas beat the Aggies to the punch with an ESPN partnership and the Aggies' feelings are so hurt they will make a move that could be a worse financial deal and will be a more difficult academic situation for athletes?
Need I even get into it being much tougher for them to win conference and national championships in the SEC?
Only in America.
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Jerome grew up in downtown Acres Homes, Texas. He is a proud graduate of Mabel B. Wesley Elementary and was a basketball team captain at Waltrip High School, where he helped the Mighty Rams to a near-.500 record.
A math genius and engineering major in college, he's still working on this writing thing. He says that the three years he spent as an F.M. Black Panther probably played a more significant a role in the man he would become than the time he spent in college.