1. It may come as a surprise to you that an awful lot of us don’t want you to go. Think of this letter as a last ditch intervention, providing you what lawyers call a “last clear chance” to avoid the potential train wreck of joining the SEC.
2. Maybe y’all should pause for moment to reconsider just why you are leaving. Sure, I know what President Loftin and others have said publicly -- that joining the SEC will enhance the prestige of your already outstanding University, but look deep within and tell me that’s the real reason. You’re actually not so much joining the SEC as you are leaving UT. There, I’ve written it, and you know it’s the truth.
3. A critical mass of A&M Regents/alums apparently believes you are becoming progressively marginalized athletically (perhaps inarguable, in football at least, given no conference championships for 13 years). That same critical alumni mass also appears to have concluded that your University cannot compete academically with UT and to view the only solution to these secular trends is secession from UT/Big 12.
4. Although your fine History Department might quibble about the details, there is a compelling (and I would argue useful) analogy here to 1861. The states of the antebellum cotton-belt "South[east]" were slipping further and further behind the industrialized "North" every year. By virtually every economic measure, the South[east] saw itself being increasingly marginalized. Substitute football performance and academic prestige for economic and industrial development and the analogy between A&M circa 2011 and the South[east]ern states of the Civil War-era is complete.
5. Just as each seceding South[east]ern state sought to leave the Union by uniting in the Confederacy with other states similarly positioned, A&M today seeks to secede from the UT/Big 12 (“Union”) and join a SEC (“Confederacy”) composed largely of academically-undistinguished public universities in the old cotton-belt states (Florida and Vanderbilt, however, being clear exceptions). I’m sure a professor in your Military History Department could tell you just how few of the men who marched east with the Texas Brigade to join the Army of Northern Virginia made it back home at war’s end. Heading east to fight a culture war didn’t work out so well for Texans in 1861-65, and it likely won’t work any better 150 years later.
6. The antebellum South[east] convinced itself that what truly mattered was not economic development, but rather its superior culture (i.e., manners and chivalry). The modern SEC universities, like the antebellum South[east], take much of their identity from their “cultures” (which far too many of the students seem to define as football, fraternities and consumption of alcohol), not academics. In the conference realignment debate, many A&M Regents/alums are emphasizing what they believe to be an affinity between your University’s rural, small town and military institutional values and those of the SEC schools. You might want to consider, however, whether identifying with the cultural values of Starkville, Mississippi, Fayetteville, Arkansas and Auburn, Alabama is really the way you want to go.
7. That’s the real reason y’all are leaving, but what about other possible reasons like academic affiliation. By almost any conceivable metric, A&M’s academic standing exceeds that of any of the public universities in the SEC (except possibly Florida). So by joining the SEC, you’d actually be engaged in the academic equivalent of slumming. And although I recognize it’s possible through diligence to obtain a fine education at any of the SEC schools, an education is sadly not the primary goal of many (perhaps most) of their students. A&M’s choosing to affiliate with lesser academic lights is a profound shame, since A&M is actually a far better school academically than many of your Regents/alums/students apparently recognize or value.
8. I watched with great interest the video interview with President Loftin in which he said that athletic conference affiliation has nothing to do with academics (was he also candidly admitting that college athletics generally are unrelated to academics?). While Dr. Loftin is of course entitled to his learned opinion, you might want to consider that in evaluating their own conference realignment options, UT President Powers and OU President Boren have consistently stressed they were looking to enhance their schools’ academic affiliations as part of the process. (This is the reason why neither University appears have seriously considered the SEC, despite the fact it is undeniably the country’s best football conference and would be absolutely delighted to welcome either or both Universities). Even if your President and an apparent majority of Regents/alums/students are looking forward to joining a conference with academics by and large inferior to your own, I wonder how the A&M Faculty Senate feels about it.
9. A commonly cited, and superficially more plausible, reason advanced for your leaving is that A&M would gain a competitive edge in recruiting athletes. Again, you might want to think that one all the way through. Will you attract better recruits simply because they will be playing football in the SEC? Unlikely. Any four or five star recruit in the state of Texas who wants to play in the SEC now can simply pick up the phone and offers (and, it is alleged, envelopes of cash) will pour in. So unless the opportunity to play SEC ball specifically in Texas will produce the anticipated recruiting bonanza, your expectations may be unrealistic. I doubt very much that the opportunity to play 3 or 4 SEC home games per years at Kyle Field is enough to dictate the choice of any top recruit. Especially since that circumstance will do nothing to redress the profound recruiting disadvantage that many believe causes you consistently to lose top talent to UT and OU: many 4/5 star football recruits with NFL aspirations are simply not attracted to the small town, rural, and military cultural values that A&M advances as its self image. The chance to play 3 or 4 SEC home games per year in the Bryan/College Station Metroplex would not alter that reality.
10. What certainly would improve your football recruiting, of course, would be better on field performance. But since A&M’s winning percentage against SEC schools is something like 40%, why would you expect the move to improve your record? Y’all won the Big 12 South Division only twice in 15 years, most recently 13 years ago in 1998, the year you won your sole Big 12 Championship. A&M has been to BCS games just three times, none in the last decade.
11. There is an old saw that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The definition of true insanity might be doing the same thing over and over against tougher competition and expecting a better result. On the other hand, maybe being the SEC’s 13th member will actually prove lucky for A&M. I hope it happens.
12. Before y’all rush headlong into the arms of the SEC, though, you might want to consider Arkansas’ experience since joining the SEC West in 1992. In 19 seasons, the Hogs have won something like 55% of their games. (That’s total games, including the two or three annual tune-ups each year against non-conference programs.) Arkansas has finished first in the SEC West just twice in 19 years (now before you argue that it’s three times, remember that in 2002 Alabama actually finished first, but was ruled ineligible because of pesky NCAA rule violations, something you may find an altogether too regular occurrence in your new neighborhood), has never won the SEC championship and has been to a BCS bowl only once.
13. I would also presume to suggest that you might profit from additional consideration as to why the SEC would want you in the first place. Yeah, I know they say it’s because you are (obviously) a prestigious school. While most Longhorn fans would freely acknowledge that adding an outstanding university the caliber of A&M would increase the academic standing of the SEC, we know that academics is by and large not what the SEC is all about and we have President Loftin’s own word that academics have absolutely nothing to do with A&M’s conference affiliation.
14. With just one (contested) national championship (before World War II) in the three major collegiate sports of men’s basketball, baseball and football, it’s highly unlikely that the SEC is looking to you to enhance their major sports profile either. I know you believe that the SEC treasures your (very real) achievements in Olympic sports. However, if the SEC actually valued championships in horseback riding and women’s track, they’d likely be looking to add Sweet Briar as their 14th team.
15. SEC spokesmen also say that including you would enhance their access to Texas media markets. I’ll be the first to admit that I watch 2 or 3 SEC games per week (its great football). But would I or any other non-Aggie Texan be more likely to watch you lose to Alabama than say the Alabama vs. LSU game? Not really. Would I watch any more SEC games simply because A&M is in that conference? Again, not really. While I usually watch A&M when you are (too rarely, now) on television, would I or any other non-Ag Texan be more likely to watch you beat Vanderbilt than Baylor? Not really (actually, not at all). UT largely owns the Texas media markets and I don’t think that A&M’s membership in the SEC would make much of a dent (unless you somehow put together a string of conference championships).
16. Several of the SEC coaches have gleefully anticipated that adding y’all would enhance their recruiting in Texas. Not likely, however, and in their hearts they certainly know it. Any 4/5 star Texas recruit who wants to play in the SEC can do so now. Would a Texas recruit be more likely to go to an SEC East school like Georgia or Florida simply because their friends and families could see them play every second or third year by driving to College Station? Again, not likely.
17. That leaves the real reason the SEC wants you. All successful conferences have three tiers of teams: (1) teams which are contenders virtually every year; (2) teams which can challenge the leaders occasionally; and (3) teams which the leaders can count on stomping year in and year out. Come on, which one do you honestly think the SEC expects A&M would be? One of the perennial championship contenders, elbowing aside Florida, Alabama, LSU, Auburn and Georgia? Not a chance. If the very capable Athletic Directors at those schools actually thought that, you wouldn’t be getting an invitation in the first place. How about one of the occasionally good squads like Tennessee, South Carolina or Arkansas? Well, maybe. I certainly hope so, but your recent record frankly doesn’t support it. Or maybe your prospective SEC conference mates have cast A&M as one of the perennial cellar dwellers like Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State and Ole Miss? It’s gratuitous advice from a Longhorn, surely, but you might want to revisit this issue before you actually make the jump.
18. By the way, have y’all given any serious thought to finding a dance partner for a SEC West rivalry? Auburn’s already got Alabama. LSU has Arkansas. Ole Miss really isn’t good enough to be anyone’s hated rival. That leaves Mississippi State. Think about how much you have in common. You both wear maroon and white. You both are the second public universities in your states. You both enshrine small town, rural cultural values and have an animal husbandry major. Just think how much fun the Corps would have marching down the Starkville, Mississippi main street (they probably don’t even have traffic lights) before your annual rivalry game (“The Mississippi River Rivalry”?).
19. In sum, please step back from the edge of the abyss. You are a great University and have been a fine rival. Recognize that the State of Texas, the Big 12, Texas A&M, and, yes, UT, would all be diminished by your departure.
P.S.
Although you don’t really seem to care one way or the other, we’ll be okay if you leave. While our series was one of the great ones in college football for much of the 20th Century, our true rival for the last few decades has actually been OU. The silver lining of your defection would be that we would no longer be playing an annual, season-capping game against a rival to whom the game apparently means so very much more than it does to us. The Ags have always played over their heads against UT (witness the record in recent years). Your leaving the Big 12 will likely mean no more Thanksgiving Day games for us against a rival which can always salvage an otherwise dismal season by “sawing off varsity’s horns.” Y’all should know that even at the end of our demoralizing (yes, it was truly horrible) 2010 campaign, UT fans didn’t consider Thanksgiving Day a chance at redemption, just another game.
2. Maybe y’all should pause for moment to reconsider just why you are leaving. Sure, I know what President Loftin and others have said publicly -- that joining the SEC will enhance the prestige of your already outstanding University, but look deep within and tell me that’s the real reason. You’re actually not so much joining the SEC as you are leaving UT. There, I’ve written it, and you know it’s the truth.
3. A critical mass of A&M Regents/alums apparently believes you are becoming progressively marginalized athletically (perhaps inarguable, in football at least, given no conference championships for 13 years). That same critical alumni mass also appears to have concluded that your University cannot compete academically with UT and to view the only solution to these secular trends is secession from UT/Big 12.
4. Although your fine History Department might quibble about the details, there is a compelling (and I would argue useful) analogy here to 1861. The states of the antebellum cotton-belt "South[east]" were slipping further and further behind the industrialized "North" every year. By virtually every economic measure, the South[east] saw itself being increasingly marginalized. Substitute football performance and academic prestige for economic and industrial development and the analogy between A&M circa 2011 and the South[east]ern states of the Civil War-era is complete.
5. Just as each seceding South[east]ern state sought to leave the Union by uniting in the Confederacy with other states similarly positioned, A&M today seeks to secede from the UT/Big 12 (“Union”) and join a SEC (“Confederacy”) composed largely of academically-undistinguished public universities in the old cotton-belt states (Florida and Vanderbilt, however, being clear exceptions). I’m sure a professor in your Military History Department could tell you just how few of the men who marched east with the Texas Brigade to join the Army of Northern Virginia made it back home at war’s end. Heading east to fight a culture war didn’t work out so well for Texans in 1861-65, and it likely won’t work any better 150 years later.
6. The antebellum South[east] convinced itself that what truly mattered was not economic development, but rather its superior culture (i.e., manners and chivalry). The modern SEC universities, like the antebellum South[east], take much of their identity from their “cultures” (which far too many of the students seem to define as football, fraternities and consumption of alcohol), not academics. In the conference realignment debate, many A&M Regents/alums are emphasizing what they believe to be an affinity between your University’s rural, small town and military institutional values and those of the SEC schools. You might want to consider, however, whether identifying with the cultural values of Starkville, Mississippi, Fayetteville, Arkansas and Auburn, Alabama is really the way you want to go.
7. That’s the real reason y’all are leaving, but what about other possible reasons like academic affiliation. By almost any conceivable metric, A&M’s academic standing exceeds that of any of the public universities in the SEC (except possibly Florida). So by joining the SEC, you’d actually be engaged in the academic equivalent of slumming. And although I recognize it’s possible through diligence to obtain a fine education at any of the SEC schools, an education is sadly not the primary goal of many (perhaps most) of their students. A&M’s choosing to affiliate with lesser academic lights is a profound shame, since A&M is actually a far better school academically than many of your Regents/alums/students apparently recognize or value.
8. I watched with great interest the video interview with President Loftin in which he said that athletic conference affiliation has nothing to do with academics (was he also candidly admitting that college athletics generally are unrelated to academics?). While Dr. Loftin is of course entitled to his learned opinion, you might want to consider that in evaluating their own conference realignment options, UT President Powers and OU President Boren have consistently stressed they were looking to enhance their schools’ academic affiliations as part of the process. (This is the reason why neither University appears have seriously considered the SEC, despite the fact it is undeniably the country’s best football conference and would be absolutely delighted to welcome either or both Universities). Even if your President and an apparent majority of Regents/alums/students are looking forward to joining a conference with academics by and large inferior to your own, I wonder how the A&M Faculty Senate feels about it.
9. A commonly cited, and superficially more plausible, reason advanced for your leaving is that A&M would gain a competitive edge in recruiting athletes. Again, you might want to think that one all the way through. Will you attract better recruits simply because they will be playing football in the SEC? Unlikely. Any four or five star recruit in the state of Texas who wants to play in the SEC now can simply pick up the phone and offers (and, it is alleged, envelopes of cash) will pour in. So unless the opportunity to play SEC ball specifically in Texas will produce the anticipated recruiting bonanza, your expectations may be unrealistic. I doubt very much that the opportunity to play 3 or 4 SEC home games per years at Kyle Field is enough to dictate the choice of any top recruit. Especially since that circumstance will do nothing to redress the profound recruiting disadvantage that many believe causes you consistently to lose top talent to UT and OU: many 4/5 star football recruits with NFL aspirations are simply not attracted to the small town, rural, and military cultural values that A&M advances as its self image. The chance to play 3 or 4 SEC home games per year in the Bryan/College Station Metroplex would not alter that reality.
10. What certainly would improve your football recruiting, of course, would be better on field performance. But since A&M’s winning percentage against SEC schools is something like 40%, why would you expect the move to improve your record? Y’all won the Big 12 South Division only twice in 15 years, most recently 13 years ago in 1998, the year you won your sole Big 12 Championship. A&M has been to BCS games just three times, none in the last decade.
11. There is an old saw that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The definition of true insanity might be doing the same thing over and over against tougher competition and expecting a better result. On the other hand, maybe being the SEC’s 13th member will actually prove lucky for A&M. I hope it happens.
12. Before y’all rush headlong into the arms of the SEC, though, you might want to consider Arkansas’ experience since joining the SEC West in 1992. In 19 seasons, the Hogs have won something like 55% of their games. (That’s total games, including the two or three annual tune-ups each year against non-conference programs.) Arkansas has finished first in the SEC West just twice in 19 years (now before you argue that it’s three times, remember that in 2002 Alabama actually finished first, but was ruled ineligible because of pesky NCAA rule violations, something you may find an altogether too regular occurrence in your new neighborhood), has never won the SEC championship and has been to a BCS bowl only once.
13. I would also presume to suggest that you might profit from additional consideration as to why the SEC would want you in the first place. Yeah, I know they say it’s because you are (obviously) a prestigious school. While most Longhorn fans would freely acknowledge that adding an outstanding university the caliber of A&M would increase the academic standing of the SEC, we know that academics is by and large not what the SEC is all about and we have President Loftin’s own word that academics have absolutely nothing to do with A&M’s conference affiliation.
14. With just one (contested) national championship (before World War II) in the three major collegiate sports of men’s basketball, baseball and football, it’s highly unlikely that the SEC is looking to you to enhance their major sports profile either. I know you believe that the SEC treasures your (very real) achievements in Olympic sports. However, if the SEC actually valued championships in horseback riding and women’s track, they’d likely be looking to add Sweet Briar as their 14th team.
15. SEC spokesmen also say that including you would enhance their access to Texas media markets. I’ll be the first to admit that I watch 2 or 3 SEC games per week (its great football). But would I or any other non-Aggie Texan be more likely to watch you lose to Alabama than say the Alabama vs. LSU game? Not really. Would I watch any more SEC games simply because A&M is in that conference? Again, not really. While I usually watch A&M when you are (too rarely, now) on television, would I or any other non-Ag Texan be more likely to watch you beat Vanderbilt than Baylor? Not really (actually, not at all). UT largely owns the Texas media markets and I don’t think that A&M’s membership in the SEC would make much of a dent (unless you somehow put together a string of conference championships).
16. Several of the SEC coaches have gleefully anticipated that adding y’all would enhance their recruiting in Texas. Not likely, however, and in their hearts they certainly know it. Any 4/5 star Texas recruit who wants to play in the SEC can do so now. Would a Texas recruit be more likely to go to an SEC East school like Georgia or Florida simply because their friends and families could see them play every second or third year by driving to College Station? Again, not likely.
17. That leaves the real reason the SEC wants you. All successful conferences have three tiers of teams: (1) teams which are contenders virtually every year; (2) teams which can challenge the leaders occasionally; and (3) teams which the leaders can count on stomping year in and year out. Come on, which one do you honestly think the SEC expects A&M would be? One of the perennial championship contenders, elbowing aside Florida, Alabama, LSU, Auburn and Georgia? Not a chance. If the very capable Athletic Directors at those schools actually thought that, you wouldn’t be getting an invitation in the first place. How about one of the occasionally good squads like Tennessee, South Carolina or Arkansas? Well, maybe. I certainly hope so, but your recent record frankly doesn’t support it. Or maybe your prospective SEC conference mates have cast A&M as one of the perennial cellar dwellers like Vanderbilt, Kentucky, Mississippi State and Ole Miss? It’s gratuitous advice from a Longhorn, surely, but you might want to revisit this issue before you actually make the jump.
18. By the way, have y’all given any serious thought to finding a dance partner for a SEC West rivalry? Auburn’s already got Alabama. LSU has Arkansas. Ole Miss really isn’t good enough to be anyone’s hated rival. That leaves Mississippi State. Think about how much you have in common. You both wear maroon and white. You both are the second public universities in your states. You both enshrine small town, rural cultural values and have an animal husbandry major. Just think how much fun the Corps would have marching down the Starkville, Mississippi main street (they probably don’t even have traffic lights) before your annual rivalry game (“The Mississippi River Rivalry”?).
19. In sum, please step back from the edge of the abyss. You are a great University and have been a fine rival. Recognize that the State of Texas, the Big 12, Texas A&M, and, yes, UT, would all be diminished by your departure.
P.S.
Although you don’t really seem to care one way or the other, we’ll be okay if you leave. While our series was one of the great ones in college football for much of the 20th Century, our true rival for the last few decades has actually been OU. The silver lining of your defection would be that we would no longer be playing an annual, season-capping game against a rival to whom the game apparently means so very much more than it does to us. The Ags have always played over their heads against UT (witness the record in recent years). Your leaving the Big 12 will likely mean no more Thanksgiving Day games for us against a rival which can always salvage an otherwise dismal season by “sawing off varsity’s horns.” Y’all should know that even at the end of our demoralizing (yes, it was truly horrible) 2010 campaign, UT fans didn’t consider Thanksgiving Day a chance at redemption, just another game.
