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The Aggies to the SEC? September 5, 2011

Posted by intellectualgridiron in Sports.
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After much speculation and rumor, it is official.  Texas A&M is about to leave the Big XII (minus 2) for the SEC.  My overall assessment is the A&M is getting used, and seems to be alright with such an arrangement.  Indeed, the overall reason for the Aggies’ seemingly hasty move to the Southeastern Conference is one that remains a mystery, including the fairly humorous and insightful sports columnist Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle.  Perhaps the haste in arranging this new affiliation can be attributed in large part to the Aggies’ pique at the perception that rival UT got a sweetheart deal by being allowed to establish their own television sports network.   In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, the new, exclusive channel in question is the Longhorn Network .

To me, the SEC has more to gain from this arrangement than A&M has to gain in return.  The Southeastern Conference is acting as though Texas A&M is the most wonderful of additions, and from their standpoint, why not?  This move benefits the incumbent schools in the conference in that it gives those programs a much wider in-road to recruit Texas, the greatest football state in the country (indeed, on so many levels, it is the greatest state, period).  On that plane of thinking, this move makes a lot of sense.  Why shouldn’t one of the flagship schools of the greatest football state in the land be a part of the greatest college football conference?  Furthermore, by bringing in A&M to the SEC, the conference has the golden opportunity to open up new media markets, particularly the oh-so-juicy Dallas and Houston markets.  The Atlanta market is all well and good, but beyond that, the Jacksonville, Tampa-St. Pete, Birmingham and Nashville markets will only take you so far.  With Dallas and Houston,  the number of eyeballs you can attract to watch the games on TV — not to mention your potential advertising revenue — has been taken to a whole new level.  Oh, and did I mention that more SEC teams can now recruit Texas more heavily?

All these previously noted things are great for the conference itself, but what about the newcomer?  The sad state of things is that Texas A&M might very well be getting the short end of the stick.  Sure, the SEC acts like they love A&M like the Aggies have never been loved before, and are being welcomed into said conference with open arms.  But once the Aggies become a full-fledged member, they shall instantly take a back seat to the majority of teams.  As things currently stand, A&M has the potential to compete in the upper echelon of the Big XII (again, minus two) with Texas, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State.  They might even win one of those games, maybe more.  But once in the SEC, their level of talent will be below that of Arkansas, and Mississippi State is no gimme, not anymore, at least (not with Dan Mullen doing such a great job in strengthening the program).  From there, the rest of the competition only gets more intense.  In so many words, for the foreseeable future, A&M shall be relegated to the lower half of their new conference home.

Then there’s recruiting.  Already A&M has been losing out on the most prestigious recruits to the Longhorns and the Sooners.  Now they must compete for recruits with half of the SEC, possibly more.  Fighting Oklahoma State, Texas, and Oklahoma for recruits is difficult enough, but this latest move has opened the floodgates for Alabama, LSU, Georgia, and a host of others to come knocking at those same recruits’ doors.  Congrats, A&M:  you have just made recruiting your in-state talent all the more difficult.

Given that the SEC will gain more than A&M from this arrangement when all is said and done, it looks as though the Aggies are letting themselves be used.  But given how hastily A&M rushed into this conference switcheroo, it seems as though they were only too willing to allow for that.  Hence the confusion on the part of many in the media.

About the Author July 18, 2011

Posted by intellectualgridiron in About the Author.
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My name is Patrick Murray, though many of my friends from college know me as “Sarge”.*   This website that I maintain is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and insight, specializing in the virtues of limited government, as well as of scientific, historical, and pop cultural insights, plus the occasional sports commentary for fun.

I was born in Louisville, Ky., on March 2, 1980.  I graduated from high school in Madison, Ind., where I lettered for three seasons in football and track.  My undergraduate years were spent at Purdue University, where I majored in Mass Communications with a minor in History (honestly, I felt more like a science and history student masquerading as a comm student!).  On the side, I took some courses in German, Latin, Entomology, Oceanography and Paleontology — in other words, fun stuff!

Outside of the classroom at Purdue, I served for three seasons as a student manager on the Purdue football team.  That job allowed for me to see almost every stadium in the Big Ten (except for Iowa and Illinois), to say nothing of making some special life-long friends.  I have a number of friends who play in the NFL — including Drew Brees, with whom I celebrated my 19th, 20th, and 21st birthday — and I remain an avid football fan to this day.  As a manager, I worked directly under Coach Joe Tiller, and during the games, I helped out then-O-line Coach Danny Hope, who later became the current head coach from 2009 thought 2012.  I also worked with Coach Kevin Sumlin, who was then the receivers coach (he played at linebacker for Purdue), before going on to give the Houston Cougars program a shot in the arm and then leading the Texas A&M Aggies to become the hot program it is today.

My services with the team also allowed for me to travel to special away games, including a season opener in Los Angeles Coliseum against USC (before the Pete Carroll era, to be sure!) in 1998, and in the Citrus Bowl against Central Florida in 1999.  The three bowl games I was a small part of were the 1998 Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, the 2000 Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla., and of course, the 2001 Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.  Those were memorable times.

After I graduated from Purdue, I went straight into business graduate school at the University of Louisville, where I earned my MBA.  The next few years found me knocking around in the customer service sector until I just happened to find a teaching opportunity as an adjunct faculty member at the Louisville campus of National College.  Finally I was able to find a job more commensurate with my education and talents.  At that school, I have taught a number of different business courses, including Intro to Business, Principles of Management, Small Business Management, Operations Management, Purchasing & Materials Management, and, my favorite, Strategic Management.  In addition to all of those, I have taught a number of general education courses, such as Public Speaking, Georgraphy, American History (both 1896-1945 and 1945-2000), Political Science, and American Government (needless to say, another one of my favorites to teach!).  Starting in the late Spring of 2013, I have also taught computer skills courses (Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.).

In more recent years, I have elected to fulfill a very latent goal of mine, and that is to become a mechanical draftsman (sometimes known as a CAD operator), if not an outright engineer.  I have a design internship under my belt at a materials handling system manufacturer in Jeffersonville, Ind., and worked as a design engineer for a conveyor systems manufacturer on the southern edge of Louisville.  In April of 2014, I accepted a position as an on-site project manager for a conveyor systems integrator, and have helped build sorter systems at FedEx Ground facilities in Fort Wayne, Ind., Indianapolis, New Castle, Del., Philadelphia, and Santa Fe Springs, Calif.  This job has allowed for me to travel extensively and to engage in extensive learning in so doing.

Assuming that I have failed to establish my renaissance man credentials yet, it is also worth noting that I have given a couple of education seminars on insects to the docents at the Louisville Zoo — an occasion that allowed for me to show my rather extensive exotic insect collection.  I also am an avid photographer (I use a Canon 7D), where I specialize in macro nature (particularly insects), aquarium fish, classic cars, and some sports.  In addition, I have been a guest on a friend’s radio show on multiple occasions, discussing the Constitution and our Founding Fathers.

* The “Sarge” cognomen started back in June of 1997 — right before my senior year of high school — and was attending football camp at Purdue.  The era of Coach Tiller was about to begin, and this camp gave me the opportunity to get to know all the coaches.  Part of the camp’s curriculum was for the campers to coalesce into passing league teams, where we had such games for three consecutive nights, four games a night.  My team’s coach was Coach Gary Emanuel, Purdue’s once and again current D-line coach.  He did not know my name, but noticed I took a rather militaristic approach towards addressing my superiors (e.g., “yessir,” “no, sir.”).  Such is the way I was raised.  Noticing this, Coach Emanuel started calling me “Sarge,” and the name stuck.  When I got on with the team as a manager, all the coaches remembered me, and soon the players too, started calling me by the same cognomen.  It was only a matter of time before the cognomen in question spilled out beyond the gridiron to the greater campus.