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Dreaming big: Texas A&M’s Sweet 16 the start of two-sport dominance?
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Texas A&M’s basketball season ended Thursday night at the Sweet Sixteen, but that’s not bad for a football school.
It could be a sign of the Aggies becoming the SEC’s most successful team in the conference’s two biggest sports.
In recent years, the SEC’s best basketball and football schools have failed to find shared success on both the hardwood and the gridiron. John Calipari has rebuilt Kentucky’s men’s basketball team into a perennial powerhouse, but the football Wildcats haven’t so much as been to a bowl game since 2010.
Alabama is hands down the conference’s most dominant football program of the last eight years, but the Crimson Tide’s men’s basketball team has only taken part in March Madness once in that time period (2012).
Texas A&M can be the team to change that.
By no small miracle, Texas A&M basketball made it to the Sweet Sixteen, needing a 14-2 run in the final 30 seconds to force overtime Sunday against Northern Iowa. For some TAMU fans, the basketball team’s thrilling, improbable victory might have been the most exciting Aggies sports moment since Johnny Manziel improvised his way to a touchdown against Alabama in 2012.
Texas A&M surely would relish the opportunity to become the SEC’s first two-sport titan since the Florida teams of the previous decade.
Under the guidance of Billy Donovan (1996-2015) and Urban Meyer (2005-2010), from 2005-2008, the Gators raised the bar high for two-sport dominance with an incredible run of four national championships, two in each sport. Donovan and Meyer were best known for being young, enthusiastic ace recruiters with brilliant systems, but they also knew how to build excellent coaching staffs.
While assistants often are thought of as proteges and young up-and-comers, Meyer and Donovan both benefited from hiring at least one experienced, proven coach as an assistant to teach fundamentals and Xs and Os.
In 2004, Donovan brought on Larry Shyatt, who had 30 years of coaching experience, including the previous six seasons as a head coach at Wyoming and Clemson. Texas A&M basketball coach Billy Kennedy appeared to have found his own Shyatt, hiring former Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury (1998-2012) in 2014. But reports have Stansbury becoming Western Kentucky’s next head coach.
One of Meyer’s most important assistants proved to be Greg Mattison, a 29-year coaching veteran when he joined the Gators staff in 2005 to serve as co-defensive coordinator. Kevin Sumlin seems to be trying to do the same, but on both sides of the ball. Last year’s addition of John Chavis, who brought 35 years of defensive coaching experience upon his arrival in College Station, and the recent hiring of new offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone, who has been coaching offense for 34 years, are evidence of the head coach placing a priority on expertise and experience – over, say, recruiting – for the top assistant positions.
If Chavis and Mazzone prove to be as valuable to Sumlin as Stansbury has been to Kennedy, the Aggies could be on track to becoming the new two-sport titan of the SEC.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
