When a magazine publisher - and Colorado resident - of a new Big 12 tabloid newspaper toured Texas A&M last spring as part of his research for his new undertaking, the visit had a major impact on him, to say the least.
Upon arriving home, he had to deliver the news to his young daughter: "I want you to go to Texas A&M," he said.
When two East Coast college football junkies made their stop in College Station for the 1993 Texas A&M-Texas football game to write a chapter for their book on the pageantry of college football, "Saturday Afternoon Madness," this place hit them as hard as their Boston accents hit us.
"You cannot experience what you get at Texas A&M at any other place," said Bob Waldstein, one half ofthe travelling duo and a UMass graduate.
And upon looking down the road to 1998 when Nebraska visits Aggieland, Waldstein called some of his Cornhusker friends and told them:
"Wait 'til you make your first trip to Texas A&M..."
Indeed, A&M on a football weekend, transforms itself from a world class university into a world class place to watch a football game.
Unfortunately, very few people outside the borders of Texas realize what Aggies have known for years.
That will change in 1996. The Big 12 means big exposure for A&M football and the university as a whole.
Big 12 fans will travel almost as well as their brethren in the football- crazy Southeastern Conference. The days are over when the University of Houston and SMU sent back 80 percent of their allotted visitors tickets.
Some Big 12 schools are already anticipating their trip to this place called Aggieland.
Colorado officials sent out a flyer describing Aggie traditions to their season ticket holders. They described the traditions in their own words and ways - mainly in good fun - but one notion became apparent: Colorado people have no idea what they're getting into when they make the trek south.
Who does when they come to an A&M football game for the first time?
The Buffaloes got a taste of A&M tradition at last year's game in Boulder. In fact, several Colorado athletic department personnel contacted A&M athletic director Wally Groff after the game just to comment on how they enjoyed the Aggie Band. They had seen the Band march on television, but could not believe the overwhelming presence it had as it stepped off on "Hullabaloo."
Hopefully, Aggie fans have not become ho-hum about Saturday afternoons in the fall or jaded about the fact that these game days really are celebrations of the Spirit. It's easy to do when the same teams from the Southwest Conference and LSU were fixtures at Kyle Field over the last 10 or 15 years.
Let's go watch the Aggies beat TCU, honey, for the 24th straight time. Warm up the Suburban, grab a burger at the Chicken Oil Company and wait for the inevitable.
But now, with teams that can beat the Aggies arriving in town, suddenly the atmosphere has changed. And for the better.
When Oklahoma played at Kyle Field in 1994, the stadium was as electric as I've seen it in 15 years, excluding a few games with the Texas Longhorns. There was some doubt in everyone's minds that A&M would beat the Sooners, although the Aggies rolled past a reeling OU program, 36-14.
The victory avenged the 44-14 pasting delivered by the Sooners a year earlier in Norman, and it also set the stage for two years down the road - this season - when big teams and games with big stakes will surface at Kyle Field.
When top-five candidate Colorado comes calling on Sept. 28, no game since perhaps the 1979 Penn State game when the new third decks opened will there be such anticipation and anxiety.
And therein lies the joy of Big 12 football. The Aggies are anxious; R.C. Slocum is anxious; You're anxious.
Can A&M beat Colorado? I don't know. Can the Aggies beat Kansas State and Texas Tech back-to-back in October? I'm not really sure.
What will it be like playing Oklahoma in November, 13 days before the shootout with Texas? Never been there or done that.
And how about pancakes for the tailgate party prior to the 10 a.m. kickoff in Austin Nov. 29? It's not quite burgers and barbecue, but such is life in the ever-evolving world of new superconferences in college football.
And just as traveling fans from other schools will have their eyes opened when they arrive in College Station, Aggie fans also will be in for a whole new experience when they travel to road games.
The "home" away games at Rice Stadium or the Cotton Bowl are history. A&M will receive 4,000 tickets, as allotted under Big 12 guidelines, for each conference road game, except when A&M and Texas play each other. The schools have an agreement to give each other 10,000 tickets because of the game's rivalry status.
Still, the days when A&M was given 17,000 tickets from UT have gone the way of the defunct SWC.
Thus, road games are now true road games for the Aggies. The venues, like Folsom Field in Boulder and Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Neb., are snakepits. Tickets will be at a premium, and crowd antics near pandemonium.
But road games to places unknown often make for some of the fondest memories you can muster. Alabama in 1985, LSU in 1986, Oklahoma in 1993 and Colorado in 1995.
They were big-time college football road trips, where you could learn about the parking woes of some stadiums and the harsh treatment of foes at others.
At the same time, you could watch a Buffalo stampede the stadium and a Boomer Schooner circle the field after every score.
Those four road games ended in losses for the Aggies, but they were still memorable. They made the victories over those teams on the return trips to Kyle Field that much sweeter.
So when Colorado returns for the Aggies'revenge game of 1996 and the opener for A&M in Big 12 play, the atmosphere at Kyle Field will be as heart-pounding as any in school history.
And when the 4,000 or so Colorado fans file into Kyle Field, they will be asking themselves this question:
"What did we get ourselves into?"
The Big 12, that's what.
When Texas A&M says it is building for the future, the claim is quite literal.
Perhaps no other time in school history has there been so much construction on campus devoted to upgrading A&M's athletic facilities.
In fact, by the year 2000, A&M's facilities could rival those of Tennessee and Florida, two schools considered to have some of the best athletic spreads in the country.
"I think by the year 1999, I wouldn't trade our physical plant with anyone in the country," A&M athletic director Wally Groff said.
The two most prominent projects are the construction of Reed Arena and the proposed north end zone expansion of Kyle Field. However, a state-of- the-art tennis facility, two grass practice fields for football, dressing rooms for softball, track and soccer and a soccer stadium are all in Groff's plans for the future.
The first step toward expanding Kyle Field to 80,000 seats was approved on July 25 when the Texas A&M Board of Regents unanimously voted to proceed with preliminary designs and budgeting.
Groff said the project will cost between $28 million and $30 million, and the cost of the expansion will be covered by 12th Man Foundation donations and revenue generated from the sales of tickets and suites.
"I think we have a legitimate plan to pay for this thing," Groff said. "This is my 30th year at Texas A&M, and we've had two expansions. Never before were they as expensive as this. And really never before were we required to pay for it. In this case, they're asking the athletic department and our fund raiser, the 12th Man Foundation, to pay for the expansion."
The expansion plans call for the destruction of the original Kyle Field horseshoe, which would eliminate 12,000 seats. The new, double-decked end zone seating, modeled after the University of Florida's Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, will add 22,000 new seats, including 20 suites and 1,800 club seats.
The end zone will move 45 feet closer to the field and sight angles are expected to improve dramatically. The end zone also will feature a stadium club and office space.
Although the architect in charge of the expansion told Groff the end zone seating could be completed between the 1997 and 1998 football seasons, Groff said a more realistic timetable is to have just the lower deck of the end zone in place by the start of the 1998 season.
"The thought is after the '97 season to begin construction," Groff said. "I don't think it would be feasible to expect the club and suites to be ready. In '79 when we put in the third decks, we were shooting to get it in between seasons, and we moved the first game to Houston and Rice Stadium. With each game, we had more of the upper deck. We were able to get through the season, but it was difficult.
"I, personally, will go in with the plan of replacing the lower deck and not the whole thing. Anything beyond that would be gravy."
One major drawback to having only partial seating in the end zone for the 1998 season is A&M would not be able to sell 80,000-plus seats for its much-anticipated home game with Nebraska.
"We'd like to have as many seats as we could sell," Groff said, already anticipating the Oct. 17, 1998 clash with the most dominant program of this decade." So that would be unfortunate if that happens, but I don't want to wait. I think we need to continue with our timetable and move this thing along as quickly as possible.
"We have built in 11 months of architectural design. This is going to be a major facility. It's really going to be a major addition to our stadium, so we need to make sure we do it right."
But A&M fans won't have to wait much longer for other improvements to Kyle Field. In fact, by the time the Aggies open their 1996 home schedule Sept. 21 against North Texas, Kyle Field will look markedly different than it did a year ago.
A Sony giant replay screen and scoreboard will replace the old scoreboard as Game Sports Programming chose A&M as one of four schools to receive the 20x26-foot scoreboard this fall. Brigham Young and Texas are among the other schools who will feature the giant Jumbotron.
The new scoreboard came at no cost to A&M as GSP will cover the cost by selling advertising for the scoreboard, while giving A&M a percentage of the revenue the ads generate.
Four other auxiliary scoreboards will be placed on each corner of the third decks and 40 televisions that will provide game footage and replays will be situated in concession areas.
With natural grass already in Kyle Field and a new artificial turf practice field adjacent to the stadium, the Aggies only lack grass practice fields. When the new tennis facility is completed on the west side of campus, it will allow the Omar Smith tennis courts to be replaced by two grass practice fields.
While the Kyle Field expansion is in its planning phase, the construction of A&M's new special events center, the Chester Reed Arena, is well under way. The 12,500-seat arena remains on schedule for completion in 1997, although not in May of '97 as originally planned.
Groff said he hopes Reed Arena will be completed in time for the start of the 1997-98 basketball season. When the A&M men's and women's basketball teams move over to Reed Arena full-time, G. Rollie White will become the exclusive home to the Lady Aggie volleyball program.
Groff has never hidden his beliefs that facilities are a major selling point for an athletic department. By the turn of the century, A&M will have an easy sell to any recruit in any sport.
"I feel like if I have anything that's of expertise it's with facilities and the financing part of it," Groff said. "I really enjoy that, and I've been fortunate to be here during all this growth.
"We've just been blessed that we've been successful with football and successful with what goes along with football, and that's the 12th Man Foundation."
Fate first shook hands with R.C. Slocum during the Christmas holidays of 1971.
Slocum, fresh off his second season as an assistant coach at Kansas State, was back in Texas watching the University of Houston prepare for its Bluebonnet Bowl matchup with Colorado. Houston assistant coach Ben Hurt, a former coach of Slocum's at Stark High School in Orange, Texas, pulled Slocum aside and told him that Emory Bellard was about to become the new Texas A&M head coach and was looking to fill out his coaching staff.
Slocum didn't hesitate or go through conventional methods of forwarding a resume to Bellard. Instead, he and Fate headed out of Orange at 4 a.m. without any notice, arriving at Bellard's office in G. Rollie White Coliseum at 8 a.m.
Determined to see Bellard face-to-face, Slocum waited eight hours to see the new Aggie coach. Finally, Bellard gave him 30 minutes of his time, and Slocum would soon take his spot on the A&M staff, and later, assume a prominent role in Aggie football history.
Yet, Fate wasn't through meddling in Slocum's life.
With the eagerness, and perhaps impatience of any young coach, Slocum left the A&M staff a few years later to join former Texas Tech coach Steve Sloan at Ole Miss.
For 24 hours.
Slocum arrived in Oxford, Miss., only to call Bellard - who was in the middle of giving a speech at a luncheon in West Texas - to ask for his old job back. Bellard replied, "I told you. You shouldn't have left in the first place."
Slocum took the first plane back to College Station. Back home.
Then after the 1981 season, a year in which Slocum spent coaching the defense at Southern California under John Robinson, Slocum returned to A&M. The man nicknamed "Boomerang" by his colleagues had tested the waters again.
But, as Slocum says, just throw him out in any direction and watch him come back to Aggieland.
"One of the saddest times for us as Aggies was when he left and went to California,"says Janet Morris, who has known Slocum since their high school days. "Even back then, we thought he'd be the head coach at A&M. We just always felt he would be the head coach.
"That's why I think it's such a good match. He has done other things, but it seems like he's destined to be there."
Fate hibernated for six more years until December of 1988, when Jackie Sherrill resigned under fire, and Slocum was handed the reins as the Aggies' head coach.
Seven seasons later, with 68 wins, six bowl games and the second-best winning percentage among active college football coaches to his credit, Slocum is about to embark on his biggest challenge ever as a head coach - leading A&M into the Big 12 and a whole new era for Aggie football.
"It's a new frontier, really, in terms of A&M football and the history of this university, its football program and the way we've done things in the past," said Slocum as he returned to his office after a week of visiting thousands of Aggies on his annual Coach's Night Tour. "To be a part of history in the making is really fun.
"I've seen and really been a part of some of the growth and movement. At one time, we didn't go to bowl games, and we weren't very good, comparatively speaking, with anybody. Some of the younger people don't realize how far we have come."
Just how far? Consider:
It took more than twice as long for the Aggies to win 68 games - 16 years to be exact from 1960-76 - than it took under Slocum. And as recently as 1984, the Aggies were 6-5 and spent the holidays dreaming, not scheming, for a bowl trip.
Visions of national exposure, preseason No. 1 rankings and top-10 finishes were distant, to say the least.
Sherrill helped bring the program to national prominence, but it has been Slocum who has kept it there.
The Aggies have finished in the Associated Press Top 10 three of the last four seasons, and of Slocum's 15 losses, only one - to Tulsa in 1991 - has been to an unranked team.
Yet, with all the success Slocum has brought to the program, there is more out there.
Big 12 title games. Nebraska. The national championship.
"I believe the direction is still toward the national championship," said A&M athletic director Wally Groff. "That's his ultimate goal, like it is in all our sports. You've got to position yourself to be at the doorstep, and then you've got to be lucky.
"I think he's got himself positioned right there, that one of these years, things are going to fall into place, and we're going to win that thing. He's capable of getting us there, even though it's going to be tougher with the Big 12 and that extra game."
In 1995, when unprecedented media hype and grand illusions of a national title danced around Aggieland, Slocum took some criticism from a vocal minority of Aggie fans who were disgruntled with an eight-win regular season.
And the normally even-keel Slocum admitted the season had more low points than he had expected. But they weren't low enough to make him reassess his coaching ability or the direction of the program.
"As a coach, you see those things differently," Slocum said. "We were leading Colorado in the fourth quarter on the road. Those, on one end, are more difficult to take because you're so close to winning them. But you don't panic about the program. We lost to three bowl teams that were very good. We had a chance to win every one of those games. Some years, you do that; some years, you don't."
Still, Slocum said the win over Michigan was huge for the program. The 22-20 win kept A&M among the nation's top teams at season's end, which seemed in doubt when the Aggies lost consecutive games to Colorado and Texas Tech and nearly stumbled against hapless SMU.
And so the "big picture" that Slocum refers to frequently was pleasing to the Aggie eye again.
"It's very easy as a fan to always look at yourself, but you don't look around the country. Who do you want to talk about? Ohio State? Michigan? Southern Cal? The last time they beat Notre Dame was when I was up there. So which program do you want to line up with?
"Nebraska, the last couple of years, has really had a great run, a really unusual run. But, they've also had some other things, too, that you may not want to be a part of. They've had a different set of rules academically, and they had a bunch of off-the-field things."
While last year's 9-3 season didn't live up to expectations, it still was a nine-win season, something unimaginable as recently as the early 1980s.
But to this day, no loss to Colorado or Texas could have the lasting effect on Slocum as when the NCAA slapped A&M with a five-year probation in 1994.
For a man whose integrity had never been questioned, there were doubters around the country who saw Slocum in charge of an "institutionally" out-of- control program. The Aggies, detractors claimed, were up to their old tricks again.
But, in reality, that was far from the case. Yes, there were mistakes made with a summer job program. And those mistakes have been corrected to the point where the Aggie athletic program has become a model, not an outlaw, program.
Slocum, no matter how clean his program is now, said he will never get over the pain of probation. Friends close to the coach agree.
"You have to understand," said Morris, "when you come from a small town, your word is everything. I think it will drive him crazy until his dying day."
The probation, as much as it hurt Slocum personally, also pinched the athletic department financially and the football program directly.
"The (NCAA sanctions) set us back because we lost some recruits in there," Slocum said. "There were players during that period of time and since then that we would have gotten if it hadn't been for that."
But A&M remained a national power in football despite the setback. The Aggies went 10-0-1 in 1994 in a season when television and bowls had been banned and have posted a 19-3-1 record since the bad news swept through College Station in January of '94.
It was a sign that A&M football, just as Slocum had promised during the news conference to announce the sanctions, would not be falling off any cliff.
"We still, in terms of what I wanted to accomplish, I think we're right on schedule," Slocum added. "There was a game or two in there that could have speeded things up a little bit. If we had beaten Florida State in a game we could have easily won... the 24-21 game against Notre Dame. That one would have helped.
"But I'm proud we've got a lot done. I'm pleased with where we are. I am pleased we've gotten to the point where we've demonstrated some consistency. We've won 10 games a year in the 1990s, and there's only three teams (in the nation) that have won more games."
And yet, with all of the 10-win seasons and bowl trips, Slocum has not beaten a top-five team or competed for a national title. Not many coaches have, but such milestones have stamped coaches like Florida State's Bobby Bowden, Penn State's Joe Paterno and Nebraska's Tom Osborne as legends.
They are the names quickly associated with college football when fans gather in Lincoln, Tuscaloosa, Knoxville and State College.
The 52-year-old Slocum seems comfortable to keep his legendary status within the confines of College Station.
"It doesn't bother me a bit," Slocum said of the lack of national recognition. "I think it's the same as the program itself at Texas A&M. We're in a growing stage.
"Bobby Bowden, at my age, wasn't even at Florida State yet. He was at West Virginia then. No one knew who Bobby Bowden was. Tom Osborne went seven straight years where he lost bowl games. Bobby is 68 and Joe (Paterno) is 69. If I keep doing what we've done here until I'm 69 years old, I won't have any trouble being recognized, if that's important."
The coaches, both in college and in the NFL, know all about R.C. Slocum. His collegiate colleagues call frequently just to chat. Others write poignant notes and letters.
Slocum, a self-admitted pack rat, keeps all the letters. Sifting through a folder in his office, he stumbles across a congratulatory note from Grant Teaff upon Slocum's hiring and a motivating note from Notre Dame coach Lou Holtz. The letter was dated February of 1993, just a few weeks after Holtz's Fighting Irish had pummeled the Aggies, 28-3, in the 1993 Mobil Cotton Bowl.
"You will win a national championship some day," wrote Holtz. "And when you do, remember I told you so."
The letters and, more importantly, the respect from his fellow coaches bring satisfaction to Slocum.
"Within my profession, people know me and respect me,"Slocum said. "They would recognize me as being a good coach. Those are the things that are important to me. There are guys all over this country who you can go and talk football with, and they know how hard it is to win and respect what we have done.
"In this business, that's what keeps you going. Every day, somebody is upset about this or that, and half the time, they are so far off of what really happened, there's no need to get upset about it. I think part of surviving is just let that stuff go and go on down the road."
But most of the time, if not 99 percent of the time, Slocum deals with people who feel indebted to him for what he has brought to Texas A&M: A top 10 football program finally clear of any dark clouds of suspicion.
And, make no mistake about it, Slocum understands the awesome role he plays as head football coach.
"You feel a responsibility, I do, to all those people," Slocum said. "That's why, after a game, I don't need someone to come up and pat me on the back or whatever. I just know in my heart that it makes me feel good that all those people are proud. That's where I get my satisfaction. That makes me feel good.
"There are thousands of those people who have their own little deal. They go to church on Sunday morning, and they're proud their Aggies won the day before. That's fun, and to me, that's satisfying."
It's also satisfying and gratifying to Slocum to have a career in which he can mold so many young adults, yet mingle with so many older ones.
A true "people" person, Slocum laps up game day like a deer at a salt lick. For it is on game day when Aggies return to College Station and the campus is colored Corps of Cadets-khaki and Old Army-maroon.
At the very least, Slocum knows there will be no gray area when the ball is kicked off at Kyle Field.
"Coaches seldom know the outcome," he said. "You go out there and say it's an all-or-nothing day. Tonight, when I go to bed, I'm going to be so excited or I'm going to be so miserable. There's no in-between. There's something fun about putting it all on the line."
And Slocum takes none of those special game weekends for granted.
"I feel very fortunate, really like a kid in some sense," he added. "The thrill of the game is still there. When I was in high school, with the pep rally on Friday and then the game that night and wearing the jersey to school that day... the whole thing, I still get to do that. I never dreamed as a kid that you'd get to do it at this level. To walk out there and you're playing on national television, and really, people all over the world are watching that game. To be there and be right in the middle of it, that's a thrill."
Because the thrill is still there for Slocum at A&M, he could coach the Aggies for another 15 years.
"I can't imagine he'd have any more fun than where he is now," Morris said. "I see him as very content where he is."
Then again, Slocum has never hidden his love of the pro game. And therefore the question changes from: Will Slocum retire at A&M to would he retire in College Station?
"I don't know," Slocum said. "I think it's too early to say because people change. There would be a part of me that would look at a Joe Paterno or a Bobby Bowden and say, 'Yeah, that looks fun.'
"In pro football, I'd be more like Jimmy (Johnson). There's a certain way I was going to do it, and I'd have to have an owner who would say you're the coach and you call it like you see it. I couldn't put up with some of the things other people put up with. You have to decide if that's what you really want to do.
"I'm having fun, and I feel like we're still building. I know it's getting better. Every year, you get more credibility, you get better connected. We're building the whole program."
The whole program. The big picture.
Indeed, Slocum speaks in all-encompassing terms. Somehow, when "Slokes," as he's called by his closest friends, retires at A&M or wherever, those terms will help define his legacy.
"I'd like to say that during my tenure, we had consistently good teams, and I was consistently a good influence on the young men that I coached," Slocum said. "To me, that will be the lasting thing. The influence with the players, how we do things, that will continue in their lives. In those players, they will remember and know for as long as they live they had a coach who tried to help them be better people and tried to give them some skills that made their lives more successful and more enjoyable.
"I'd like to have a legacy that our program was a good, solid program that was respected by the faculty, the former students, and we've turned that corner. In terms of credibility with the NCAA, I think we're taking big steps now to the point where the NCAA and other people around the country say they run an honest program at Texas A&M. They're good, but they do it the right way."
Question: Is the upcoming season in the Big 12 the biggest challenge of your head coaching career?
Slocum: The competition is obviously going to be great, but it's going to be great for everyone else, too. It's not just that A&M will have tough games to play. Everybody plays eight conference games, so it will be competitive for everyone. We will meet the challenge as well as other people meet it.
Q: What will the exposure in the Big 12 mean to this program?
Slocum: I think it speeds up the process of what we've been going through. I think what we have accomplished, the Southwest Conference was a liability and kept us from getting more (recognition). Everything was always qualified, 'Well, they're in the Southwest Conference.' This allows us to break out of that. From a conference standpoint, you jump from one that was considerably down the line in terms of national perception, to now one that may be at the very front. All of sudden, we jumped to the top in terms of league association. If we have success within the league, there will be some credibility there.
Q: What have been the highs and lows of your career?
Slocum: Coaching is really strange in that the highs never stick out much. You don't remember the highs much. But you remember the lows. It's not just me. I've talked to other coaches, and it's the same thing. If you were asked to recall details and games that stood out in your mind, you could recall a lot more details and be a lot more graphic about disappointing games than the wins.
Certainly the problem we had with the summer job thing. Going 12-0 and about to hit the corner and feeling like you're just right on schedule. I had been to New York to speak at the Heisman Awards dinner. That was one of the highs. For a guy growing up with the game of football as a player and as a coach. For me to be in New York and speaking at the Heisman Awards dinner in front of 2,500 people and whole lot of Heisman Award winners. That was a fun thing.
Q: Any game stick out as a high?
Slocum: Probably the Holiday Bowl. Going out to San Diego and playing against the Heisman Trophy winner. It was just one of those nights when everything clicked. Both sides of the ball played extremely well that night. That was probably a highlight in terms of the way we played. That was a fun game.
In terms of losses, the Florida State game would have been one (low). The first Notre Dame game, they were a better team than we were. And Tulsa. That was a disappointing day. That was a low point.
I try and not to get too high with the highs and too low with the lows and to just keep plugging along. I try and see the big picture of things. I don't get all down in the dumps when something bad happens and don't carried away. I think good teams are the same way.