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Q&A with Mike Hankwitz | Slocum in the 1980s

25 Years in Aggieland: R.C. Slocum in the 1980s

By Homer Jacobs

R.C. Slocum and Bob Davie can joke about it now. They are, after all, the head coaches at Texas A&M and Notre Dame, respectively.

But while they can laugh about it today, it wasn't really funny at the time.

Indeed, the bus ride to Austin for the 1988 Texas game was more than just a two-hour pilgrimage for the big game. It was an odyssey for two coaches who were left remembering what they had built at A&M over the last decade, but knowing it could all come tumbling down.

"I'll never forget on the way to Austin, Bob Davie and I sat on the front seat of the defensive bus like we always did and we talked the whole way over there," said Slocum, recalling the final surreal days of the Jackie Sherrill era. "And he was quizzing me, 'What do you think?' I said I didn't know. We didn't have any idea. We didn't know if Jackie was going to be back or not be back. Or if he wasn't back, who was going to get the job? We just didn't know."

Seven years earlier, Slocum did know one thing: When Sherrill first called him to see if the former A&M defensive coordinator would be interested in returning to College Station from Southern California, he didn't have to think about the move long.

Slocum had been the defensive coordinator at USC with John Robinson during the 1981 season, and he was enjoying the coaching aspect of his job. But the LA lifestyle didn't really suit Slocum, and Sherrill's offer seemed to good to pass up.

And it wasn't as if Sherrill and Slocum were longtime friends. In fact, they had met each other only once before their union in College Station.

"He actually called me before he took the job on a Saturday night," Slocum said. "He started asking me about the A&M job, what kind of potential it had, what kind of school it was. And he wanted to know if I'd be interested, if he took the job, in coming back.

"I had sold my house in College Station, so I had no intentions of coming back. Some people say, well, he just left and knew he was going to come back. If I had done that, I wouldn't have sold the house here and bought a house out there. It was not a good financial deal for me either way."

Once Sherrill and Slocum arrived in College Station in January of 1982, the program that Slocum had helped build during the Emory Bellard era was back to ground zero.

Talent was scarce. Confidence was shaken. Former students were anxious.

The Aggies had gone 21-19 under Tom Wilson from the middle of 1978 until the end of '81. Quarterback Gary Kubiak and defensive lineman Ray Childress remained for Sherrill's first years, but the bulk of the quality players the Aggies would need to rely on were still in high school at the time.

"It was tough," Slocum said. "We didn't have very good players when we got here. I felt we'd get it done, but we had a lot of work to get done. I always felt you could recruit to A&M. We had good coaches, a bunch of guys who had been around. We just had to go out and get some players and get them some experience. And it took us a while to do that."

Just like in 1972 when Slocum first stepped foot on the campus as a young assistant on Bellard's staff, recruiting was the first priority.

And like when Bellard signed the class of Ed Simonini and Bubba Bean in '72 that would translate into a national title run in '75, Sherrill would land such players as Domingo Bryant and Jimmie Hawkins in 1982 and Johnny Holland and Kevin Murray in 1983. Those type of players would lay the foundation for A&M's glorious seasons of the mid-1980s that thrust the Aggies into the national spotlight.

But before 1985, Sherrill's program was hardly rolling along. His first three seasons finished with records of 5-6, 5-5-1 and 6-5.

And in 1984, when A&M fans were expecting some fruits of Sherrill's labors, Slocum recalls vividly a point in the season when he began to doubt the direction of the program. The ship, he says, almost sunk.

On a hellish afternoon in the Ozarks, the Aggies floundered and fumbled their way to a 28-0 shellacking at the hands of the Arkansas Razorbacks. A&M fell to 4-5, with top 20-ranked TCU and Texas still left on the schedule.

"The Arkansas game might have been one of the absolute low points," Slocum said. "It was a cold, miserable day, and we turned the ball over eight or nine times. We got embarrassed in that game. It was just awful. So that was a discouraging moment where you say, 'God, I don't know. We've still got a long way to go on this thing.'

"There were some people out there really second-guessing everything. I had people call me during those years because I had been here, people knew me and felt like they could talk. I had people call me who were really substantial supporters who said, 'I want to know the truth. What's going on?' "

And while Sherrill was receiving serious criticism from the A&M faction, his coaching staff was beginning to divide. There were those who seemed ready to flee the scene.

Slocum, however, didn't wander from Sherrill's side. And the loyalty didn't go unnoticed by the then A&M head coach.

"I think with Jackie, one thing he always appreciated was, during that time, I was always loyal in that situation where I was saying we haven't had good players, we're young , we're getting better and we're going to be OK," Slocum added. "I don't know that everybody (on the staff) at that time was loyal. I was one of the guys there deflecting criticisms that were coming. I stayed positive, and I think he knew that.

"And that's why it worked. There were enough of us who stayed in there and knew that that things we were doing from a football standpoint were good and that we've got good, young players. It was just a matter of time to where we could get enough experience to be good, and we were."

Against TCU and Texas in 1984, the Aggies were great. Behind a Childress-riled defense, the Aggies upset the Cotton Bowl-hungry Horned Frogs, 35-21. And a week later, A&M stunned the Memorial Stadium crowd at Texas with a monumental 37-12 victory.

Suddenly, Texas A&M football was stirring. The doubts began to dissipate.

"TCU, all of a sudden, showed some light at the end of the tunnel," Slocum said. "And then the Texas game was a big win for us. So you ended up on a positive note, and it gave you something to recruit off of. And you knew you had those players coming back. That was a real significant event, I think."

Indeed, the Kevin Murrays, Roger Vicks, Rod Bernstines and Johnny Hollands were back in 1985.

Even a 23-10 loss to open the season at Alabama didn't mask the improvement the Aggies were about to show. Slocum's defenses were beginning to plant the seed of Wrecking Crews to come, and the Aggie offense was exhibiting balance that no A&M team has shown since.

And both units came together, and the planets aligned, so that in November of '85, the Texas Aggie football program basked in 30 days of unprecedented glory.

Three games against quality teams. At night. On ESPN.

Aggieland had it all.

And for a defensive coordinator like Slocum, who had been on the roller coaster at A&M since 1972, this was one memorable ride. Against SMU in a 19-17 victory, his defense kept the high-octane SMU running game out of the end zone after four straight tries inside the 10-yard line.

Against Arkansas, safety Kip Corrington slammed a Razorback ball carrier to the ground on fourth-and-one to secure a 10-6 victory.

And against the Longhorns, the Aggies swarmed upon quarterback Bret Stafford, who refused to snap the ball during one sequence because of the pandemonium that was Kyle Field that night.

When he did, Stafford was snowed under by an Aggie avalanche for one of the most memorable sacks in the program's history. The Aggies beat the Horns, 42-10, to earn their first trip to the Cotton Bowl since the 1967 season, and there was no good adjective to describe the season except one - special.

"Oh, it really was," Slocum said. "Those kids were so much fun. Those games were big games, night games on ESPN, with everybody seeing them. And we were going out and really playing with a lot of enthusiasm. Those were fun times.

"It's one of those things in life, in coaching, all those different moments that, in a lot of cases, you can never recapture them as they were at that time. You work so hard, and then getting to the point where you are the champion and you are in the Cotton Bowl...."

And, yet, it would get better for the Aggies and Slocum. A&M would meet Auburn and Heisman Trophy winner Bo Jackson in the Cotton Bowl.

With the Aggies clinging to a five-point lead, the Tigers moved inside the A&M 10-yard line in the pivotal third quarter. Four times the Tigers handed off to Jackson, and four times he was stopped.

As Slocum turned toward the giant photograph of the fourth-down stop that hangs in his office, the pride oozed from his voice.

"That's as fine a moment as you can ask for as a defensive coach," he said. "You've got the Heisman Trophy winner, and they give it to him four straight times inside the 5-yard line. And you stop him four straight downs. That's about as good as it gets right there."

In the 1980s, Slocum was right. For as the latter years of the decade unfolded, the A&M program began to unravel.

Sure, A&M won nine games in 1986 and 10 in 1987. But an NCAA investigation had begun to hang over the program, coming to a conclusion with a one-year probation in 1988.

The Aggies suffered a 7-5 season in '88 after beginning the season 0-3. A&M even had to postpone the September-scheduled Alabama game for a hurricane that never came.

"I know we had several years there where it was a constant thing hanging over your head," Slocum said. "Even though you were having success and having fun with the games, it still took some of the fun out of it because you had that hanging over you. It didn't go away, and you knew it wasn't going away. It really took some of the luster off what we had done."

And when newspapers began to report that an alleged "hush fund" had been established for former player George Smith, who was flown into recant his story at a circus-like press conference on the A&M campus, well, it was the worst of times for the A&M football program.

Sherrill was under such fire that he retreated to his Lake Conroe home for the game with TCU, leaving Slocum to coach the game on an interim basis.

The paranoia was everywhere. Would Sherrill resign? Would he be fired? Would he stay?

With mini-cams camped out at every campus post looking for sightings of Sherrill, the scene was like that out of a bad movie.

"Like cops and robbers," Slocum uttered.

It was a moment in the program's history that Slocum says no one would like to go through again. Yet, ironically, it was Sherrill's departure that paved the way for the longtime defensive coordinator and loyal assistant coach to step into his dream job - head coach at Texas A&M.

Even though Slocum obviously coveted the position and was a natural candidate for the job, he was walking an awkward tightrope at an uncomfortable time.

To not look as if he was posturing for the position, he went so far as to purposely ignore his friend and colleague in A&M president William H. Mobley at a wedding reception during the chaotic days following Sherrill's ouster.

"I didn't go into a campaign of lobbying for the job," Slocum said. "I didn't do anything. I just said I've been here for a long time. People know me, and whatever I've done up until this point, I'm not going to go out in a week's time and change a bunch of opinions. I'll either get it or I won't."

Of course, Slocum did get the head coaching job on Dec. 12, 1988. And as the decade of the 1980s came to a close, Slocum had seen several highs and countless lows during his second stint with the Aggies. He had endured the soul-searching bus ride to Austin with Bob Davie.

But, in his typical fashion, Slocum always stayed steady through the sunshine and the storms. And consequently, after two decades in Aggieland, the helm was his.

Next issue: R.C. Slocum as a head coach in the 1990s.

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