The "Building Champions" slogan rings more true tonight than ever before with 3 NC's this month!

Consideing softball lost in the NC finals in 2008 and soccer was 10 min away in a 90 min game to being in the College Cup in 2008, the Ags are knocking on the NC doors these days.

BB is showing that when you make the investment in good coaches and great facilities, recruiting picks up greatly, and championships follow!!

I've always wondered if after we started to win championships if we would change the slogan

Nah. Don't need to change the slogan. You have to build them every year to keep winning them.

What many fail to realize around here is that when you make that investment in coaches and facilities, you have to give them time to build...

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What many fail to realize around here is that when you make that investment in coaches and facilities, you have to give them time to build...

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I refuse to believe this

I agree, time to build is needed! Especially if the coach is building a program, not just a one shot team that has one good year. For the most part, our Aggie teams are competing at high levels and are now doing it fairly consistently.
Yes, we have a few programs that need to get more competitive.

so, just a general comment/question.

you don't just hire someone, go away for five years and come back to see what you have.

this is henry's fifth year, what was the progression (xth in the country in year 5, year 4, ... nc) in the five years?

captain obvious, you could not say the same for fran's five years.

yes, it takes time to build a program, but need to be pointed in the right direction year after year i would think unless pat henry's first three years he never moved from the bottom.

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it takes time to build a program, but need to be pointed in the right direction year after year

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It should be going in the right direction, but you've got to look a little bit beyond a results sheet to judge that.

3 national champs in one season and just partially vindicated?

Football is it's own animal and has the most institutional memory of any sport by far. Sometimes programs just tread water for a few years and then just snap into place. It's much tougher to tell if the aberrations are the wins or the losses when rebuilding in that sport.

I give Bill an A+ across the board with an incomplete in football, no worse.

[This message has been edited by TennAg (edited 6/18/2009 7:02p).]

Football is the engine that drives everything else. We don't make a dime extra for the athletic department because of golf and track.

Prexy, I am fairly certain track finished in the green this year...

Well Prexy, at least that proves that Bill isn't all about money!

Seriously, it's a crapshoot trying to pick a good football HC. They are all so hot and cold, even the best ones.

I think his strategy is to go for the stable, long-term program builder type, not necessarily the hot shot x & o prodigy. We'll see.

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We don't make a dime extra for the athletic department because of golf and track

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The hell we don't. If you don't think these NCs are going to help bring additional $ to the athletic programs, then you just don't know....

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Football is the engine that drives everything else. We don't make a dime extra for the athletic department because of golf and track.

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I would have to respectfully disagree. In a normal year without NCs in those sports you would be correct with respect to REVENUE. But I can promise you that these three NCs will bring in more donation money to the Athletic Department as a whole.

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If you don't think these NCs are going to help bring additional $ to the athletic programs, then you just don't know....

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Of course they will bring money in - every positive thing that happens has a chance of inspiring more donations, and these national championships in golf and track certainly will.

That said, ONE national championship in football...hell not even that - just one BCS bowl game...brings in more revenue than 30 national championships in track. I am a huge fan of the non revenue-generating sports. Even so, I have worked in college athletics and seen budgets, so I DO know. Without football (and basketball) all other sports would be reduced to near club level.

There is a reason why head football coaches make $2 mil per year (and contrary to what we have seen it is not to eat Lil Debbies and ruin programs) - it is because of the money that great football teams bring in.

LSU would never lose a football, baseball, or basketball coach to Texas A&M over money. Look at what he accomplished at LSU and they were still willing to let him go when the price got too high. Kudos to $Bill for going out and getting him...but the reason he was able to get him is because it just wasn't worth it to LSU to pay him whatever it is he's making here (what is the # - does anyone know?)

I do know that $150k is a GREAT college tennis head coach salary. For $200k we could probably get any coach in the country...and that's, what? Less than half of what our football coordinators make? What our basketball assistants make? Win a NC in tennis and yeah, we would get some good publicity and donations, but there's a reason $Bill isn't going to fork over an extra $100k (chump change in the grand scheme of things) to get a Brian Boland or a Roland Thornquist to come to Aggieland and that's because EVEN IF those guys won national championships in 5 years, they probably wouldn't even merit the million he spent on them over Denton and Kleinecke over that time.

Congrats to all and a job well done - I am very proud of our national champions and I do wish that Byrne would have taken then money wasted on Fran and Sherman, hired Sumlin for half the price, and spent the remainder on bringing in top-notch coaches in tennis, vball, etc...but lets be realistic - all of these sports we love so much would be doing carwashes for donations and traveling in school busses if not for football.

Harry Dunne, I don't doubt you've got extensive experience with college athletic departments.

But, one would figure you'd realize plenty of athletic programs get by just fine without a football program at all.


Edit- Shoot, there are athletic programs that can build very successful "other programs" even if they don't have football and their basketball team ain't so hot, either.


You're extremenly overplaying the importance of football to how an AD can build programs.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 6/20/2009 1:46a).]

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But, one would figure you'd realize plenty of athletic programs get by just fine without a football program at all.

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Maybe a few, but even those have a revenue-generating sport like basketball or baseball. Name a dozen athletic programs that don't have a big-time baseball, basketball, or football that still manage to field top-notch teams in non revenue-generating sports.


[This message has been edited by Harry Dunne (edited 6/20/2009 1:23p).]

Harry- I doubt there is more than 1 person in 100 or maybe 1 in 1000 that reads these sports forums and doesnt understand that football is the big money generator.

A lot of wasted electronic ink there......

Analogy, I bet it's more like .00001 in 1000.

Harry Dunne, first off, show me where I said those schools don't play baseball or basketball?



"Revenue generating" is very, very relative. The ability to profit from sports is the issue in this thread. Once again, I think you're severely overplaying football and it's importance to a vast majority of athletic departments...




To expand on that...

Football is only profitable at the FBS level. And not every FBS school makes money from football. In fact many FBS schools lose money on football. Yet alone have the base level of PROFITS from football to really make a real dent across the rest of the athletic board. Yet alone someone thinks basketball and/or baseball can provide enough profits to push the other sports? That's a ludicrous idea.


Then add in the fact that FBS football doesn't cover near half of Division One.



The numver of schools that are making enough off of football to "power" their way to success in other sports is small. Those schools, which include A&M, are not representative of how a vast majority of athletic departments operate.

Of course those who don't fall in that "A&M group" aren't going to be able to field the magnitude of successful programs and I'm absolutely not arguing that. All I said was they can still build some successful programs...and surely you don't need someone to name 12 schools that aren't in the "A&M group" that still have built some excellent programs and overall pretty respectable athletic departments.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 6/21/2009 1:26a).]

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surely you don't need someone to name 12 schools that aren't in the "A&M group" that still have built some excellent programs and overall pretty respectable athletic departments.

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Obviously I agree with what you just said. Originally you said "very successful", not "pretty respectable" and what I thought you were saying is that you could name a dozen schools that don't have big-time football or basketball that still make the tournament most every year in most of their sports.

You can definitely have a "boutique" school (Fullerton baseball, Pepperdine and Irvine in a couple of sports, Santa Clara & Portland soccer, etc) with a couple of very successful programs, no doubt. I thought you were trying to argue that a school like that could compete for the Directors/Sears/Learfield/whatever they're going to call it this year Cup and that's just not going to happen.

...and while, again, I misunderstood your intent and I agree that we could probably have a great track program even without the revenue from football, what we all want is champions across the board.

We're not going to have great sports across the board without the money from football...and the more money football makes (or the less we overspend on underperforming football coaches), the more money we're going to have to throw at the Pat Henrys in other sports. If we had the money to do it right now, we would be going after the best in all sports. Clearly we don't.


[This message has been edited by Harry Dunne (edited 6/21/2009 11:07a).]

Well, you just kept using the word "all."


To shift gears a little bit, I think you're still underestimating the all-around ability to compete without a profitable football program. It can still be done if you do it right.


Princeton doesn't make money off of football, even without athletic scholarships. They have a very, very competative all-around athletic program.

Boise State is pretty competative all around, and they make very, very little money off their extraordinary football exploits. Tulsa is similar, as well.

Other schools like Cornell are pretty competative all-around.

Even some of those boutique schools, like UC Irvine, still field all-around competativeness and routinely finish above a number of BCS schools in the Director's Cup.


New Mexico has an excellent athletic program, and they lose money off of football.


There are good ways to fund your program with stuff like NCAA revenue, student fees, alumni, etc...




Yeah, I'm not arguing they're going to challenge for the Cup itself..., but I do have a little more "all-around competativeness" in mind than saying you can still be a "boutique school."



All-in-all, though, I think our opinions are not too far off.

[This message has been edited by TXAggie2011 (edited 6/21/2009 3:52p).]