R.C. Slocum joins TexAgs Live ahead of statue reveal

Key notes from R.C. Slocum interview

• It's kind of interesting how I found out I was getting a statue. I've been dead on AI two or three times. Then, they had some deal where they were doing a statue or something. My wife said, "That's all AI stuff." So I didn't pay much attention to it. Later on, she called one of my friends, and he said, "Well, I didn't know it was out." By accident, we got the impression that there may be something going on. And then, as time went on, I found out a couple of people who were involved in it. Another interesting thing is that the sculpture is in Carmel. I went out there years ago. This little studio was in downtown Carmel. I was out there with John David Crow playing golf, and he said, "I’ve got to run by this place here. This guy's working on a statue of me, and I’ve got to go. He wants me to come look at it." I went with him. First of all, I told the guy, "See, you got to get his hand over the ballboard. That's not the proper way to be holding the ball." Steve Whyte is a renowned sculptor. He'd been working on it for a year and a half. They told me last night they actually put the statue up sometime last night. He was at the dinner I was at, and he was going straight over there. I haven't been by there yet. I'll see it when it's unveiled today.
   
• This isn't the first time I'm seeing it. I saw part of it out there, and they didn't have my arms on. I sat down at one time last summer. He had gotten like 200 pictures from A&M, and he was using a lot of that, but he wanted me to come in person. The statue is 10 feet tall. Most guys, as they get older, they get smaller. I'm getting bigger, man.
   
• My prototypical pose: I've got something like this, where I feel like something's going on. I'm thankful they didn't have me with my cap off contesting a bad call, and I'm saying "Dog doggit!” I'm just kind of looking out, seeing what's going on. It's really a great thing.
   
• This is a team award, of course. Anybody who has a statue has had a whole lot of help from a lot of people. We had great players here. I had great assistant coaches. About six or seven of them went on to become NFL head coaches and college head coaches. You know, Bob Davie was the head coach at Notre Dame, Bob Toledo was at UCLA, David Culley went to Houston, Texas, Dan Campbell is at Detroit and Aaron Glenn is with the Jets. Dennis Allen was the head coach of the Raiders and the Saints. He's a defensive coordinator at Chicago right now. Bill Johnson's at Chicago as the D-line coach. Gary Kubiak was in Houston. There were multiple Super Bowls in the mix with Pete Hoener. I could just go on and on. 20 or 30 of those guys coached in that field. Mike Sherman was the head coach at A&M and the Green Bay Packers, and Mike Clark, my strength coach, was the strength coach in the NFL a year ago. We had so many great coaches. I always tried to hire on every staff. Like my first staff, I hired John Pearce from Willow Ridge. I wanted that. I wanted to get most of our product from Texas high schools, so I hired Pearce, who knew all the high school coaches. He got the head job at Stephen F. Austin. I always had a representative from the Texas High School coaches on my staff. I think that served us well.
   
• I had great players, I had great coaches, and I was at a great school. Other coaches over the years would tell me, "Man, I hated going there because we could hear the 12th Man. I don't need that student section." We couldn't even talk to each other on the sideline. They were so loud. We were having a hard time communicating. I was at an event here a week or so ago, Legends and Leaders, and it's the student body leaders this year at A&M with former leaders or legends like myself. Brooke Rollins, the Secretary of Agriculture, was there. She was a student body president here, the first female student body president in '94. Her husband was a yell leader. During the presentation last week, he said, "By the way, Coach, I want to thank you. We never lost a home game the whole time I had Kyle Field in my four years." And I said, "Man, that's pretty cool."
   
• The McKinney brothers, Seth and Steve, were great players. They were great people. They had a great family. I was with their mother and dad last night, Mike and Lou Ann. That's just what you want. Guys who came in and were good students, good character people and great players. Both of them went on to play in the NFL, and it was just great to have guys like that. But to me, I had great coaches.
   
• What did I do? I was a little kid. I was throwing newspapers, shining shoes and doing stuff in seventh grade. I never played football, and my P.E. teacher, who was also the coach, put his arm around me. He's like, "You ought to come out. I think you could play it." He changed my life. Frank Motz was his name. I came out and played, and the next year I had a guy named Bob Woodruff, who I just loved. Then, all the way through, my head coach in high school, I never heard him say a curse word. I got Ted Jeffries, who won the state championship at Wichita Falls on December 6, 1941. The next day was Pearl Harbor. The next day, he and all his seniors went out and signed up for the draft. He coached Stephen Foster, Bum Phillips and Spike Dykes at Stephen F. Austin. He retired and came out of retirement. He was my coach. We went to the state semifinals in the 1962 season. I went to college, and I had great men. I never had anybody grabbing me and shaking me or cursing me or anything like that.
   
• If I could play that same role in some other young man's life, that'd be a great way to give back. I just loved coaches, and I loved coaching. That's how we coached. I promised Lou Anne when it came out, "It won't be anybody cursing your sons or shaking them around or anything like that. We'll try to make better men out of them." That's hard. They were pretty good men when they got here, right? I can't take credit for them. But we had some guys who came from a background that never had a man in their life. They never had a father there to say, "Son, I'm not going to let you do that. That's not good for you," or put a hand on their shoulder and say, "Son, I love you, man. I'm so proud of you." They never had that their whole life. I was blessed to be able to be that guy and just sit down, man to man, and talk to them. So now I get rewards. A dad called me yesterday and talked to me for a long time. Ray Mickens came about two days ago and spent two hours with me at the house. The guy just said, "Man, Coach, I love you." Greg Hill calls me all the time. His dad tells me he loves me. He said, "I love you, I'll be there." And that's the real meaning. I'm in the College Football Hall of Fame, and all that stuff's good, but the real meaning to me is seeing those guys, how they've developed and hearing from them.
   
• If I had taken the LSU job, I wouldn't have brought back players from the NFL or tried anywhere. I chose to stay at Texas A&M despite other offers because, well, I came here as a young guy from the other side of town in Orange, from the affluent side of town. I saw something amazing and said, "Slow down, my boy, I'm going to take you up to see the Aggies." I went to a yell practice and went to the game. They lost the game, but it didn't matter to me. I always said that if a kid grew up in this state, it was like this one way or the other. It was either he really liked A&M and Texas was okay, or he might have really liked Texas. But in 1950, I never saw it. I’d go in a home and I could tell.
   
• When I was dismissed at A&M, the next morning at 7:30, I had Mark White, former governor of Texas, call me. He said, "Man, we'll pay you more than A&M's pay if you'll come to Baylor." And then I got a call before noon. I got a call from the A.D. at the University of Houston about coming to Houston. I just couldn't do it. At this point, I've got all these kids. I think there are three of my grandkids out here right now, and I've got sons, daughters, daughters-in-law, all of them. We got a big with everybody. As a young coach, when I looked around, I saw Vince Dooley. If you think of Vince Dooley, what do you think of? You think of all those guys who coached at other places, but they found a good place and said, "That's where I'm going to make my name and hang my hat. I was a young coach, and I said, "You know, that's pretty cool." So now, if you had somebody around the country and asked about R.C. Slocum... “Oh yeah, he was the guy at A&M.” That means a lot to me.
   
• I think Mike Elko is smart. I think we're on a good track with him. I think he's a good coach. I think he's demanding, and I think we're adapting. I've told people that you can discuss all the different rules. Over the years, we had rules where they did away with the freshman team. We went from this many scholarships to this many scholarships. We went from having this many walk-ons to you couldn't have that many. All those different rules change, and you have to adapt. Whatever it is, we didn't make that rule, but we said, "Okay, that's what the rule is." And so now, with NIL, we didn't do that. You can discuss with us, right? I think there has to be some consistency in how the rules are administered. But in terms of whether we're going to participate, we have no choice. If we want to be competitive and be good. I'm not going to name any teams, but there are a couple of teams around the country that said, "Oh, now we're not going to do that.” You can see it. They were up there, and now they're back in the pack because they didn't believe in the rule.
   
• Two little things. No. 1, try to treat other people like you'd like to be treated. No. 2, if you're a leader, you have every right to be demanding. And you should be demanding, but never demeaning. Never demeaning to another human being. Those were kind of fundamentals for me, whether it's that guy bagging the groceries and you say, "Wait, wait, wait, I don't want it quite like that." But you have an obligation to treat that person with respect. I always try to do that. I love those players, and I'm proud that they love me.