Texas steals A&M baseball coach after Aggies' best season

AUSTIN, TX — As if this week wasn’t bad enough for Texas A&M fans after watching their Aggies let the national baseball title slip away Monday, it got a lot worse Tuesday.

That’s how long it took — less than 24 hours after A&M’s best season in program history ended — for the University of Texas to swoop in and steal head coach Jim Schlossnagle away from the Aggies.

Talk about a slap in the face.

Losing the coach who just led your program to its first national final would have hurt on its own. But having him leave for your biggest rival reinforces the perception that A&M is still just the little brother that the Longhorns love to pick on.

A&M was the No. 3-ranked team in the country this season. The Aggies even knocked out unranked Texas on their way to the College World Series.

If ever there was a time that A&M should have been able to truly enjoy one-upping their in-state rivals, this was it.

Instead, despite all of that, Schlossnagle still saw greener pastures down the road in Austin, and it didn’t take much time to convince him.

Texas even rubbed it in a little more when university president Jay Hartzell announced the news Tuesday.

“What a home run hire,” he said. “We are the premier baseball program in the country with legendary coaches, our six national championships and record 38 College World Series appearances, so it’s certainly fitting that we hired a coach of his caliber to lead us.”

Schlossnagle seemed to dismiss speculation about his interest in the Texas job after the Aggies’ season-ending loss Monday, but any hope that gave Aggies fans was quickly extinguished.

“I took the job at Texas A&M to never take another job again, and that hasn’t changed in my mind,” Schlossnagle said at the time.

Schlossnagle was 135-62 in three seasons with A&M, which included two trips to the World Series, so Aggies fans shouldn’t harbor too much resentment toward him.

They can save all that anger for the Longhorns — not that Aggie fans need any more reasons to hate UT — who will be joining A&M next season as a conference rival in the SEC.