Texas, Texas A&M baseball soap opera is SEC’s underrated contribution to sports nirvana

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An indelible moment from the night Tennessee won its first baseball national championship on June 24 in Omaha, Neb. — maybe the indelible moment, if you’re adding up the ensuing discourse — was when the coach of the team that just missed on its first baseball national championship addressed job rumors.

“I think it’s pretty selfish of you to ask that question, to be honest with you,” Texas A&M coach Jim Schlossnagle began his response, and at that second in that room, eyes widened, eyebrows and antennae raised, laptops rustled in laps and prepared to clatter at full speed.

Few duties in this profession are embraced as enthusiastically as buzzing fastballs under the chins of coaches seeking stealthy situation upgrades, considering how many in that profession whine about athletes doing the same.

“I took the job at Texas A&M to never take another job again,” Schlossnagle said that night.

He took the job at hated rival Texas the next day.

He has been harassed so intensely by some Aggies fans that he has had to get police involved.

His assistant coach, who initially left with him to be part of his Texas staff, doubled back and replaced him.

Schlossnagle’s Longhorns are ranked No. 1.

Former assistant Michael Earley’s Aggies are unranked after starting the season ranked No. 1.

They play this weekend in Austin.

Thank you, SEC expansion.

(You knew we couldn’t go too much longer without celebrating the SEC again, right? Here we are again, reveling in the centerpiece series of a league that has 10 teams ranked, with eight of the top 12 in this week’s top 25, having won the past five national championships and 10 of the past 15. What a finish to a school year that has included the greatest single-season performance by a league in men’s college basketball history, along with the most impressive collection of hypothetical football victories on record.)

In a jam-packed sports weekend featuring the NFL Draft and opening-round smorgasbords of the NBA and Stanley Cup playoffs, this little college baseball gathering deserves at least a side eye.

That’s in part because the Aggies (24-16, 8-10), despite a nightmare start to the season and their absence in the rankings, are starting to look like they could be a factor in May and June when the sport earns the most eyeballs. Series wins at Tennessee (No. 1 at the time) and Arkansas (No. 2 at the time), as well as a sweep at home over South Carolina, have revived them in advance of facing the Longhorns (34-5, 16-2).

For those wondering. pic.twitter.com/BGS9XCDVR9

— Tom Hart (@tom_hart) April 24, 2025

Mostly, it’s because of the drama. This rivalry was hateful enough without it, and Texas joining the SEC — after Texas A&M struck out with a power move to emerge from the Longhorns’ shadow in 2012 — was galling enough in College Station. But Schlossnagle bailing? For Texas?

The coach who was lured away from TCU after reaching five College World Series with the Frogs, the guy who took the Aggies to Omaha in two of his first three seasons, who beat Texas in Omaha in 2022 and then again last year in the Bryan-College Station Regional, the guy who was pressuring hard for an $80 million facility renovation to confirm this program’s commitment to sustained excellence?

Texas doing that to Texas A&M was, in the words of The Athletic’s Sam Khan, something akin to Deebo punching out Red and taking his bike in “Friday.”

“I get it,” Schlossnagle told The Athletic this week, months after the hard feelings from the move peaked, bracing for some sort of reprise starting Friday in a series that will see all three games on national TV. “I mean, people are emotional about their team, and The 12th Man is amazing. It’s awesome.

“It’s very, very real and we came within a couple of outs of winning a national championship, and then all this went down. I understand how that can make someone feel. But I didn’t intend to hurt anyone. This was just a career choice.”

A choice that had a lot to do with the fact that Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte was Schlossnagle’s boss and close friend for eight years at TCU. Also, a choice that was preceded by finger-wagging at a reporter who asked a necessary question with rumors flying — Schlossnagle did later apologize to Richard Zane of TexAgs.com — and by a “never take another job again” comment that might have provided false relief to some Aggies fans.

He had a right to make the move, just as college athletes have a right to better their situations. Texas A&M fans had a right to be upset, even if Schlossnagle’s short tenure left the place better than he found it. Texas A&M had a right to lean in on those feelings with some parting shots at Schlossnagle, such as Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the school’s president, proclaiming on the day Earley was hired: “The future of Aggie baseball, none of it is about someone who left — it’s about someone who fought to stay!”

The folks who went too far on this don’t have that right, as they found out when Schlossnagle got law enforcement involved. He said he and his family encountered some “threatening things” via calls, texts and emails, requiring some “cease and desist type stuff” in response.

“I think every fan base has its percentage of fandom that is over the top,” Schlossnagle said. “That percentage was very aggressive and very vocal, in every way you can imagine. But we got through it. It resurges from time to time, but that’s just the ugliness of social media.”

Also, Schlossnagle said, he’s had plenty of positive, supportive comments from Texas A&M boosters and families of kids he coached in College Station. He said a couple of the Aggies he coached, whose eligibility had expired, visited him in Austin and went to a football game. He said he has strong feelings for the ones left behind.

One of them, Texas A&M first baseman Blake Binderup, told student paper The Battalion this week: “I’m sure there’s a little bit of thoughts creeping in to people’s minds about where we’re going, who we’re playing, who our former coach used to be, but at the end of the day, it’s just baseball.”

But everyone on both sides of this knows it won’t be “just baseball” when these teams fill their respective dugouts and face each other for the first time as SEC rivals, with fresh personal history looming. And that both of these teams have the goods to reach Omaha — despite the Aggies’ early hole and the Longhorns’ growing injury list, which now includes ace Jared Spencer and his ailing shoulder. And that years of this lie ahead.

“You know what?” Schlossnagle said. “It’s really, really good for college baseball.”

That’s an accurate assessment. Some might even call it selfless.

(Photo of Jim Schlossnagle: Sara Diggins / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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