UT-A&M nearing, maybe in a parking lot near you
WACO – Jackie Sherrill fired a warning shot across the bow of the Longhorns on Saturday night.
But it wasn’t the first time. Remember, the controversial, outspoken former Texas A&M head football coach early in his tenure with the Aggies in the early 1980s famously pointed out that their opponents “had better get their licks in now.” He said it with the clear message that Texas and the other Southwest Conference opponents might have the upper hand on A&M when Sherrill took over in 1982, but that wouldn’t last forever.
And it didn’t, as his Aggies took control and won three straight Southwest Conference titles and beat the Longhorns a record five straight years, a streak that extended to six in a row after he was forced out at College Station. Over his seven seasons, the Aggies went 52-28-1 and finished as high as sixth, 12th and ninth over a three-year span. Jimbo Fisher, he was not.
A&M got in its shots for sure, and the robust, 80-year-old Sherrill, fresh off hip surgery, rather fittingly is celebrating the return of one of college football’s best rivalries come November, after Texas joins the SEC in July and the two
sides renew a blood feud that began in 1894 and has been played 118 times.
“This game is deserving of the state of Texas and also deserving of college football and deserving to be a national television game,” Sherrill said. “I’m excited about it. But I’ve always said I’d play Texas in a parking lot if I had to.”
To which former Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy pointed out a couple of hours later at the banquet in remarks directed right at Sherrill, “I don’t think you want that right now.”
And just like that ... it’s on.
The Aggies and the McCoys: rivalries renewed
Nothing like a little war of words to stir the emotions and set the stage for the return of a rivalry that is long on animosity but short on equality. Texas has almost doubled up A&M in wins in their series at 7637-5 and only has to remind the Maroon of the Longhorn dominance by mentioning the name Justin Tucker.
And it wasn’t lost on McCoy that the Aggies are coming off a losing season at 5-7 and a tumultuous change in head coaches with the dismissal of the vastly overpaid Fisher at the same time the Longhorns are already considered a potent SEC contender after their first foray into the College Football Playoff and a 12-2 season.
McCoy concluded his career with a then-college football best 45 wins and very possibly national championships in 2008 and 2009, but for a loss to Texas Tech one year and his neck injury the next. He looks as fit as ever as he contemplates extending his 12-year NFL career.
Sherrill and McCoy were two of nine renowned Texans — or adopted Texans in the case of some — who were rightfully inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame before about 800 enthralled listeners at the annual banquet Saturday night. It was all in good fun with Sherrill even good-naturedly chiding the moderator at the afternoon press conference that he “noticed I’m (sitting) between two Longhorns here, and I think that was on purpose.”
In fact, he indeed was positioned on the dais between McCoy — arguably one of the four greatest Longhorns quarterbacks ever along with Bobby Layne, Vince Young and James Street — and fellow Longhorns inductee Bubba Thornton. The latter was honored as a highly successful Texas (and TCU) track and field coach as well as the head coach of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team.
Of course, with four Longhorns inductees, it’d have been impossible for Sherrill not to be sandwiched among so many in burnt orange.
It was a grand night for Hall of Fame Longhorns
Next to Thornton sat legendary Longhorns softball pitcher Christa Williams, who was the youngest member of the first-ever U.S. Olympic softball team, a two-time gold medalist and the anchor of Texas’ first Women’s College World Series team. At the other end was outstanding Longhorns running back and four-time Pro Bowler Jamaal Charles, who ran for both Thornton in the 100 meters and hurdles and for Mack Brown on the 2005 national championship football team. Longhorns, everywhere you look.
So Sherrill was outnumbered four to one by the Longhorns. But both his and the Longhorns’ credentials more than earned them their spots in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame alongside four deceased honorees.
Those were the quirky but wildly successful Air Raid innovator/Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach; Negro Leagues pitching great Andy Cooper of Waco; U.S. women’s Olympic track and field coach Barbara Jacket from Prairie View A&M; and Judge Roy Hofheinz, the cigar-smoking Houston Astros owner and genius behind baseball’s revolutionary Astrodome with its luxury boxes and Astroturf. The latter, in fact, is something his grandson, highly respected newspaper editor and MLB.com pioneer Dinn Mann, apologized for to all those whose knees were victimized by the radical innovation.
Sherrill, too, was deserving as a coach who had his handprint on all sorts of trend-setting ways. In fact, current Texas coach Steve Sarkisian should thank Sherrill in part for his new $10.3 million annual salary since it was Sherrill who christened the advent of highly paid coaches with his unheard of $280,000-a-year salary at A&M in 1982.
Sherrill made more than the school president. That looks like small potatoes these days.
It had to be worth the price for A&M because Sherrill, a former all-star player and coach for Bear Bryant at Alabama, gave the Aggies legitimacy and bragging rights over the Longhorns over a long span. Sherrill coached some of A&M’s greatest players ever, including Ray Childress, Johnny Holland, John Roper and Darren Lewis with a lot of help from his defensive coordinator and future Aggies head coach R.C. Slocum, who was on hand Saturday.
Sherrill was on the cutting edge of developmental ideas in many respects. Of course, instituting three-adays in the Texas heat wasn’t one of them.
As for the future of college football, he said he saw this landscape-altering format coming decades ago.
Sherrill said he can recall appearing on a television show in January 1989 when he predicted college football would be drawn up with four different conferences.
Seems inevitable.
Sherrill: There are no gimme wins in the SEC
But he is glad to see Texas and Texas A&M reunited soon in the same conference and poised to play each other every year although the SEC hasn’t yet decided to play one or more permanent rivalry games for the long term after the next two seasons.
However, if the SEC is going to boast about renewing rivalries like Texas-A&M and Texas-Arkansas as well as Oklahoma-Missouri, the league needs to stop pussyfooting around and go to a nine-league game format and ensure these games are played on an annual basis.
When I asked Sherrill how he thinks Texas will fare in the SEC, he was very blunt as usual.
“I think they’ll do well,” he said. “There’s too many athletes in the state of Texas. Do I feel they’ll go 10-0 (or 12-0)? No. It’ll take some time. They do have enough athletes, but the difference (in the SEC) is that in every week is someone who can beat you. There’s not a team that is a breather. It’ll be a different environment.”
But then he couldn’t resist and applied the needle. “But Texas is Texas,” Sherrill mused. “I tip my hat to them. I will say Texas should never lose a game in any sport.”
Someone stripe the parking lot.