WACO – Jackie Sherrill fired a warning shot across the bow of the Longhorns on Saturday night.
But it wasn’t the first time.
Recall that the controversial and outspoken former Texas A&M football coach, early in his tenure with the Aggies in the early 1980s, famously observed that his opponents “better get their asses kicked now.” He said this with the clear message that Texas and the other Southwest Conference opponents might have had an advantage over A&M when Sherrill took over in 1982, but that wouldn’t last forever.
And that didn’t happen, as his Aggies took control and won three straight Southwest Conference titles and beat the Longhorns for a record five straight years, a streak that extended to six straight after he was forced out in College Station. . Over his seven seasons, the Aggies had a 52-28-1 record and finished sixth, 12th and ninth in a three-year span.
Jimbo Fisher, he wasn’t.
A&M got it right, and the burly 80-year-old Sherrill, fresh from hip surgery, is celebrating the return of one of college football’s best rivalries in November, after Texas joined the SEC in July and the The two sides renew a bloody rivalry that began in 1894 and has been contested 118 times.
“This game deserves the state of Texas and it deserves college football and it deserves to be a national television game,” Sherrill said. “I’m excited about it. But I always said I would play in Texas in a parking lot if I had to.”
To which former Longhorns quarterback Colt McCoy pointed out a few hours later at the banquet, in comments aimed directly at Sherrill: “I don’t think you want that right now.”
And just like that… it’s on.
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The Aggies and the McCoys: renewed rivalries
Nothing like a little war of words to stir up emotions and prepare the ground for the return of a rivalry that has a lot of animosity, but a lack of equality. Texas nearly doubled A&M in series wins at 76-37-5 and only needs to remind the Maroon of the Longhorn’s dominance by mentioning Justin Tucker’s name.
And it’s not lost on McCoy that the Aggies are coming off a 5-7 losing season and a tumultuous change in head coaches with the firing of high-paying Fisher, at the same time the Longhorns are already considered a powerhouse SEC contender after its first foray into the College Football Playoff and a 12-2 season.
McCoy concluded his career with 45 college football wins and, quite possibly, national championships in 2008 and 2009, but with a loss to Texas Tech one year and a neck injury the next. He looks fitter than 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 delighted 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, saying that he “noticed that I’m (sitting) between two Longhorns here, and I think that was on purpose.”
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In fact, he was actually positioned on the dais between McCoy — arguably one of the four greatest Longhorns quarterbacks of all time, along with Bobby Layne, Vince Young and James Street — and fellow Longhorns nominee 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 US Olympic team.
Of course, with four members of the Longhorns, it would have been impossible for Sherrill not to be sandwiched between so many in burnt orange.
It was a big night for the Hall of Fame Longhorns
Alongside Thornton was legendary Longhorns softball pitcher Christa Williams, who was the youngest member of the first U.S. Olympic softball team, a two-time gold medalist and anchor of Texas’ first Women’s College World Series women’s team. . On the other end was outstanding Longhorns running back and four-time Pro Bowler Jamaal Charles, who ran for both Thornton in the 100-meter hurdles and Mack Brown on the 2005 national championship football team. Longhorns, Everywhere You Look .
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Therefore, Sherrill was outnumbered four to one by the Longhorns. But his and the Longhorns’ credentials more than earned them their places in the Texas Sports Hall of Fame alongside four deceased honorees.
These were the quirky but wildly successful Air Raid innovator/Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach; Negro Leagues casting Waco great Andy Cooper; US women’s Olympic track and field coach Barbara Jacket of Prairie View A&M; and Judge Roy Hofheinz, owner of the Houston Astros, cigar smoker and genius behind baseball’s revolutionary Astrodome, with its luxury boxes and Astroturf. The latter, in fact, is something for which his grandson, highly respected newspaper publisher and MLB.com pioneer Dinn Mann, apologized for to all those whose knees fell victim to the radical innovation.
Sherrill also deserved to be a coach who had his mark on all kinds of trends. In fact, current Texas coach Steve Sarkisian should thank Sherrill in part for his new $10.3 million annual salary, as it was Sherrill who ushered in the advent of high-paid coaches with his unprecedented $10.3 million salary. 280,000 per year at A&M in 1982.
Sherrill earned more than the school president. That seems like small potatoes these days.
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Sherrill also created the initial 12th Man team made up entirely of visitors. It was much more than a publicity stunt because it drew 252 people, including two women, to the initial tryout and gave the Aggies a united spirit. “I just needed to find some crazy students who didn’t care about their bodies,” he said.
Yes, he eventually put the Aggies on two-year NCAA probation that included a bowl ban, but almost every SWC school except Rice was found guilty of NCAA rules violations at that time.
The price should be worth it for A&M because Sherrill, a former star player and Bear Bryant coach at Alabama, gave the Aggies legitimacy and bragging rights over the Longhorns for a long time. Sherrill coached some of A&M’s greatest players of all time, including Ray Childress, Johnny Holland, John Roper and Darren Lewis, with plenty of help from his defensive coordinator and future Aggies coach RC Slocum, who was in attendance Saturday.
Sherrill was at the forefront of development ideas in many ways. Of course, instituting three meals a day in the Texas heat wasn’t one of them.
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As for the future of college football, he said he predicted this landscape-altering format decades ago.
“College football is alone in the ocean, rising and falling,” Sherrill said. “It’s going to an NFL model with an East-West or North-South division.”
Sherrill said he remembers appearing on a television show in January 1989 when he predicted that college football would be organized with four different conferences.
With the dissolution of the Pac 12, with four teams leaving for the Big Ten, four more for the Big 12 and two for the ACC, “that’s basically where we’re going. We will have a commissioner and football will not be part of the NCAA.”
It seems inevitable.
Sherrill: There are no wins in the SEC
But he is happy to see Texas and Texas A&M soon reunited in the same conference and ready to face each other every year, even though the SEC has not yet decided to play one or more long-term permanent rivalry games beyond the next two seasons.
However, if the SEC wants to brag about renewing rivalries like Texas-A&M and Texas-Arkansas, as well as Oklahoma-Missouri, the league needs to stop being petty and adopt a nine-league game format and ensure those games are played. on annually.
When I asked Sherrill how he thinks Texas would do in the SEC, he was very direct, as always.
“I think they’re going to do well,” he said. “There are a lot of athletes in the state of Texas. Do I feel like they’re going to go 10-0 (or 12-0)? No. It will take some time. They have enough athletes, but the difference (in the SEC) is that every week there is someone who can beat you. There is no team that breathes. It will be a different environment.”
But then he couldn’t resist and applied the needle.
“But Texas is Texas,” Sherrill reflected. “I take my hat off to them. I will say Texas should never lose a game in any sport.”
Someone scratch the parking lot.
This article originally appeared in the Austin American-Statesman: A&M’s Sherrill and Horn McCoy on the same Hall of Fame dais, but worlds apart
