R.C. fired

[grbh]

Per the Ticket.

So who is their next coach?

[MFFL]

YES!

[Rhylan]

na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye!

whoooop!

don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya, RC. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

a good coach whose time had passed. no more shovel passes on 3rd and 14!!!

[LonestarROB]

Guess 13 great/good seasons and 1 so-so season is enough to get you fired. Bad move on A&M side imho. RC's a great person and a still great coach. I wish him luck. He WILL be heard from again.

Anyhoo, looks like Dennis Franchione(spl?) is the leading canidate. Which I'm all for. He's one of my favorite coaches out their. Along with RC.

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

[ocelot_ark]

I've always thought RC was kind of a joke...all of his wins came from beating up on teams like Rice, SMU, and baylor for all those years.

[Drbio]

I wouldn't mind seeing him coach again in Waco.

[Blonde Bomber]

HOOOORAYYYYYYY...

FINALLY!!!!!!

I have been waiting for this day for the last 3 years..

I suspect that Dennis Franchione will be our next head coach.
I'm so excited to see what new wrinkles well see out of the team next year.
The only thing that I cringe at is that A&M was projected to have one of the top recruiting classes in america this year, I hope this doesn't lose any of our top recruits. I hope they make a decision soon, and if it's Dennis (like a suspect) then he could get in touch with our possible recruits to get them to stick with TEXAS A&M.

Man this gets me pumped up...maybe now we can join the ranks of Oklahoma and Texas and be in some of these National Title hunts every year.

GIG'EM AGGIES!!!!

[Base Line Guy]

I think Dennis would be taking a step down to coach a$m. I think he'll stay at Bama.

BLG

[Drbio]

It'll take some serious dough to draw out Franchione....

[Rhylan]

There are enough rich idiots wearing Aggie rings that it's all good. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

Not to diss my school -- I just figured that I payed TAMU for services rendered, and our financial agreement is complete [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-wink.gif[/img] So I won't give 'em a dime more.

[MavKikiNYC]

Kubiak, please.

[MFFL]

The Aggies have received permission to talk to Franchione

[MavKikiNYC]

Good example of a sportswriter writing about something he (by his own admission)doesn't understand. Slocum deserves a lot of respect for the job he did at TAMU, but he had most likely taken the program as far as he was going to be able to, and was probably a couple of years into being fireable.

Being a coach in the Big 12 is a harsh, thankless existence, but it always has been. When a smaller school like Baylor isn't going to accept a losing program year after year, you can be sure that a school like TAMU isn't going to accept perennial mediocrity either.

Sincere regards to Slocum though, especially during the very tough year that he had, and for running as straight a program as he did for as long as he did. Best of luck to him in the years to come, be it at another school or in a well-deserved retirement.

A Coach Loses the Job but Keeps the Admirers
By HARVEY ARATON


ARLY on the road that would lead him to the trenches of high school football coaching, Chris Cunningham embraced the ritualistic near-religion of a Texas boy's life. "I loved the Longhorns," he said. "Couldn't stand the Aggies."

Not until he was several years into what is now an 18-year run on the scholastic level, and a folksy fellow named R. C. Slocum had scraped the taint off a moribund Texas A&M program, did Cunningham develop affection for the enemy within. It was mainly because of the new coach that he began rooting for Slocum's resurgent team, at least until late November, the time to tango with Texas.

Cunningham had to admit, though: a week ago today, as the Longhorns were putting a 50-20 hurting on the Aggies, as Slocum vainly tried to hold together a team racked with tragedy and turmoil, there could be no pleasure taken, no post-Thanksgiving toast.

The two coaches, proud lifers of the trade, were soon to mourn together the loss of something much greater than an intrastate grudge match. "Just keeping up with him through the years and dealing with him under the circumstances of last week, I can say he's a class act, all the way," Cunningham said of Slocum from his office at Colleyville Heritage High School, between Dallas and Fort Worth, a short drive from Euless, where Charles and Valerie Fails grieve for their son.

Brandon Fails, a freshman defensive lineman, sent by Cunningham to Slocum out of Colleyville Heritage, collapsed and died Nov. 25, four days before the Texas game, reportedly of a blood clot that spread to his lungs. The funeral was the day after the crushing Texas defeat. Slocum stood up at the First Baptist Church in Euless and tried to make sense of a death at 18. Then he returned with his staff and players to College Station to learn 48 hours later that the rumors had been true, and that he was fired.

Robert Gates, the A&M president new to the job, did not explain why. Fourteen years as head coach, never a losing season, a record of 123-47-2 for a winning percentage of .721 — this all earned the 58-year-old Slocum a news release late on a Monday afternoon.

What does a Northeasterner who had never had so much as a cup of coffee with R. C. Slocum know about such matters? Only what seemed startlingly obvious from the record and the reputation earned for having cleaned up the dirty program inherited from Jackie Sherrill, and having kept it that way. But from the belly of the pool of homegrown talent that feeds Texas' football beast, the reaction got right to what ails big-time college sports, an industry of conflicting interests and corrupted ideals.

"We all know in Texas how Slocum brought integrity back into their program, and shouldn't that count?" Cunningham said. "I can't speak for everyone, but I can tell you that the high school coaches I know really respect him. They appreciate how A&M is the only school that has let us onto their campus every summer for our statewide seven-on-seven tournament. He's been a winner, even if he's had a couple of years now that were down."

Down by the standard he set; not disastrous. The Texas defeat finished a 6-6 regular season for A&M that included an upset of Oklahoma, ranked No. 1 then. Slocum was 8-4 last year; 29-19 over the last four. He won without the general studies admissions to offer the more academically challenged recruits that his Big 12 rivals could. He won without a state-of-the art complex, which Texas and Oklahoma have, and which is now being built for $20 million at A&M, just as Slocum goes with three years left on his contract.

He held his program together when another player died in a car accident in 2000, when 12 people perished in a bonfire accident before the Texas game in 1999. The administration and alumni apparently forgot what real losing — and cheating — were like. Slocum had disgraced himself and the university by losing his last three to the Longhorns.
"If his job hinged on what happened in that Texas game after the week he had, that's really unfair," Cunningham said.

From the home of the grieving family came this response to Slocum's firing, carried out seemingly without pause or respect for what they all had been through: "Disappointed," Charles Fails said softly. "The reason we sent Brandon to A&M in the first place was Slocum. We knew of his reputation and he lived up to it."
The measure of the man has to be more than his won-lost mark, even when it is 123-47-2. It was Slocum who broke the news to the Failses at the hospital following their frantic three-hour drive. Since his son's death, Charles Fails said, Slocum calls daily, and usually more than once.

Meanwhile, Dennis Franchione left Alabama yesterday after two years to replace Slocum, who said he never could imagine quitting College Station.

"He loved the school and was loyal to it," Cunningham said. "At a lot of these places, not just A&M, it's about people who want someone to come in and win and they don't care how they do it. Slocum always talked about how important it was to do it the right way."

Chris Cunningham paused, then added: "I think they made a mistake and they'll find out over the next few years."

That's an educated observation, from a high school trench in Texas, as well as the distant view from here.