Texas A&M introduces Eric Hyman as next athletic director

A&M President R. Bowen Loftin

* Howdy! It is indeed a great day in Aggieland. Tomorrow is July 1 and we will officially enter the SEC. This is now SEC Country. On Monday I will be able to be here for the raising of the SEC flag. Three great days in a row, starting today.

* Shortly after Bill Byrne announced his intent to retire from Texas A&M, we initiated a national search process to secure the best individual we could find in the world. I'm pleased to say today we have succeeded. We engaged a premier search firm and began officially on May 15. Our firm consulted the leadership of the conference as well as the NCAA and identified 25 exceptional candidates for this position. Most of them are sitting ADs in major conferences.

From those 25 we selected four and, through a process of examination, I became concerned with how to make that choice. But we found an individual ... and I'm extraordinarily pleased and proud to bring to you our new athletic director, Mr. Eric Hyman.

A&M Athletic Director Eric Hyman

* Howdy. I'd like you to know I'm delighted to be here. I'd like to take the time to thank Jim Wilson, Dr. Loftin, Jason Cook and Cliff Thomas. For them to give me this opportunity, I'm very excited about being back in Texas. We met about a week ago. It went 2.5 hours and I got out and talked to my wife. She asked how it went. I said these are my kind of people. It's like it only went on for 10 minutes. It's like we were having a normal conversation. I appreciate the opportunity to be the Texas A&M athletic director.

They did their due diligence, however. They cut to the chase and they were concerned about my Texas background. I said my mother is from San Antonio, born in Jasper, all the family is from SA. Is that good enough? Eh. I lived in San Marcos in the third grade. They said, 'You're getting closer.' I said, 'My sister is an Aggie.' Getting closer. 'Well, I tell you what, my son-in-law is an Aggie.' That was good enough.

* If I had stayed at South Carolina, we were going to have a family feud (when A&M-SC played). Thankfully we're all on the same team now.

* We're going to talk a lot about 'team.' That's the way I've been brought up and coached, it was all about team.

* I have a huge respect for the military. I was the AD at VMI for seven years and I copied Texas A&M and the 12th Man, getting a guy on the kickoff team. We took a bit of the history and tradition that happens here at Texas A&M. My father was a West Point graduate, my brother too, my grandpa was a colonel in the Marines and I had two other relatives in the military.

* It was really tough to leave. But I'm truly excited to be here. I'm looking forward to being able to help Texas A&M as we go forward in athletics. What excites me about this particular position is, when A&M approached me, I talked to four people I really respect in this business and I asked about A&M.

Everyone said the same thing: You have unlimited potential here. You have energy, you have enthusiasm, tradition, the 12th Man, the Corps, so many things here. Great facilities. So many things working for you. They gave me the highest recommendation of A&M. I look forward to the transition, helping more into the SEC. It's the best league at the country. Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina ... we were very successful there the last few years in baseball.

* What you're going to find out is that the SEC is really special. It's going to be, every time you compete, a 12-round, heavyweight boxing match. It's ferociously competitive. You're in the best league. There's no question about it. The good thing that you have, the really special thing, is that we're going to compete and compete hard. But when the competition's over with, we're the SEC. Something very indigenous to this conference is that when another SEC team is playing a non-con team, we root for them. We want them to win.

We're together. When SEC teams are competing, we want the SEC to win as a group. I think that's so because you have the best commissioner in the nation. Mike Slive is a visionary and he makes sure we work together. Sure, there's competition and we want to win, but when we're together, it's the SEC. I've gotten a ton of texts congratulating me on coming here. You wouldn't get that in other conferences. I'm excited about being able to continue to work with him.

* What's going to happen? We'll have a transition, that's just normal. What I'll do is, in the first three months, I'll try and understand A&M. After that, we'll do the necessary things to get us where we want to go. Wherever we want to go, it'll take us a while to get there. We have to manage expectations.

* You need great coaches and sincerity. You also need to realize that athletic success and academic success are not mutually exclusive. My responsibility in the period of time I'm here is to make it a better place. I want to be a difference-maker. A third thing is treating our student-athletes well. That's somebody's son, somebody's daughter. A responsibility of ours is the development of young people. There's life after sports. There's no problem with aspiring to play professional sports, but you better have a backup. And that's your education. That's very important to me. If that's not a component, why are we in this business?

We're all on the same team together. We work together. If we can do those things, we have a chance to reach our potential. Pauline and I are happy to be on the team. We're happy to be here. Thank you very much.

Loftin returns to the podium

* The search committee was not very large, but it was diligent. Jason Cook led it. Eric Hyman has the same core values that Texas A&M stands for. We looked for, what makes you do what you do? We were happy to hear him say the words we look for. This is an excellent joining between Eric, his wife Pauline, his whole family and our family.

Q: How would you compare the situation at A&M to taking over at South Carolina?

Hyman: One thing that jumps out is facilities. They're really good here. They're not where we want them to be, but when I got to South Carolina we didn't have a master plan. We didn't have the resources or the facilities and we really worked hard. A&M has those things. In three months I'll have a much better grasp of the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the athletic department.

Q: What tilted the decision in A&M's favor?

Hyman: There were so many positive things going on here, so many factors. Coming here, part of it was the potential. And the opportunity. There is a wealth of opportunity here. Huge potential. The support we have here. It's all huge. It's a lot of fun, it's a challenge, but fun to be able to get from here to where Texas A&M wants to go.

Hyman: Obviously it was an issue that was brought up. We talked about things going forward. This is one of the things I'm going to sink my teeth in. It's a huge opportunity for Texas A&M.

Q: When you were in TCU you were in three different conferences. What, from that experience, are the challenges with A&M going to the SEC?

Hyman: It's a lot easier for me now, because I've been totally immersed in the SEC for seven years already. I have a grasp of the entire conference. I like this side of the switch. Being in the SEC, being at a school like Texas A&M, those two things alone will make the transition much easier.

Q: How well do you know the coaches on staff here?

Hyman: Quite frankly, I don't know many of them that well. I had no idea I was going to be here two weeks ago. It happened so quickly that I didn't have time. But we will all be on the same team and working together. That's the way I want the department to be. That's really important. My job is to get the coaches the resources to get the job done, and then we'll be successful here. I know they've done their due diligence on me here.

Q: How about being close now to your children and perhaps your first grandchild?

Hyman: My children have made a lot of sacrifices through the years, because we moved around. A grandchild is a gift to you for not killing your kids along the way. It's two hours from my daughter's doorstep to the College Station Hilton, and it'll be great to be able to experience my family here.

Q: What was your reaction to A&M's move to the SEC initially?

Hyman: We had a discussion with all the athletic directors and Mike Slive broke the subject and we all talked about it. They all spoke so positively of A&M. We were excited to have them in the SEC. And everybody else is too. It'll be tough.

Q: Off the field, does anything about the transition stand out most to you?

Hyman: I don't know Texas A&M well enough to be able to respond to that yet. In the first three months I'll try to understand. Moving from TCU to South Carolina was like going from South Carolina to Texas A&M ... there are things I don't know. There were things South Carolina needed to do to compete, and we had to do them without sacrificing the values of the university.

We want to battle for championships. Our women's golf team finished sixth in the SEC this year. Sixth. And finished fifth in the country after the NCAA Tournament. That's the SEC. But I'll have to take time to understand all the issues. Doing that, I feel, is part of the reason we had success at South Carolina

Q: What will the alumni's responsibility to step up financially be?

Hyman: If you sit on your hands in the SEC, they'll fly by you. They didn't understand that at South Carolina at first. There had not been much fundraising. Some things need to go forward here as far as Kyle Field and other things that need to take place, and we need to reach out to our donors.

Hyman: I wasn't that involved in the SEC because my focus had obviously been on TCU and we didn't compete against many SEC schools. I didn't have a sense of it. But once I got there and I found out that you're going after the best ... the league is very compatible, we work together. But from top to bottom, it's pretty deep.

Q: When you were at TCU, did you consider this a dream job? And what's the length of your contract?

Hyman: I always just focused on where I was. I was totally committed to what I was doing. If something happens, it happens. Five-year contract.

Q: How important is it to continue what Bill Byrne started here, across the board?

Hyman: We have a foundation and we have to continue to build on it. That's the thing about this league, you have to keep growing. South Carolina wasn't competing at first, and hadn't addressed things they need to address. We had to get up to speed. The foundation is much better here, from a facilities standpoint, than what I took over at South Carolina.