Perhaps John Thornton’s resume will never be quite as complete as he had hoped. He humbly sees his career as one stroke of good luck after another, not letting on about an unsatisfied wish that he’d been a head college basketball coach – A&M’s head basketball coach – for more than just 12 games.

In fact, luck had far less to do with Thornton’s successful rise through the ranks of athletic administration than did pure professionalism and the results he brought to every job he’s landed. Today he ponders his upcoming 50th birthday with a measure of deserved satisfaction, and well he should.

John Thornton has done a lot at A&M, including working as a color analyst for Aggie basketball games.

As A&M’s Associate Athletic Director for Olympic Sports, only a call to be a head Athletic Director at a division one school could pry him away from the school he’s called home since 1973, from a town he’s called home since birth.

The winter of 1990 grew unusually cold – even colder inside the G. Rollie White gym than outside. The A&M basketball program was at yet another crossroads, destined to choose the wrong path. As resilient as he was handsome, young John Thornton never allowed time to age him as much as the events of that winter did.

Shelby Metcalf’s 28th year on the A&M bench had become a nightmare. After 19 games of the season, with 438 career wins, Metcalf was gone. He chose to air his personal feud with then Athletic Director John David Crow in the media.

He had waged war with the boss and lost. One Aggie legend vs. another, and it turned out that Crow won the battle. But there stood a loyal assistant to pick up the pieces of a basketball team in need. It was not the deepest adversity Thornton has conquered – just the most well-known.

Thornton, in his ninth year as Metcalf’s top aide, took the interim tag and the lead whistle and coached the team to a 5-7 record over the final 12 games of that season. He wanted the team as his own. Crow even considered it.

"As far as I was concerned, John was in line for possibly being our head basketball coach," Crow recalled. "With his not having had head coaching experience, we felt like we had to go another route."

Thornton recalled the situation as less than perfect. "At the end, when Shelby left, it was very uncomfortable. The circumstances of how it all went down in my last year of coaching were unfortunate. Things like that do happen, though.

"I think what I did to survive that time was to rationalize and ask myself ‘What could I do?’ I knew that all I could do was the best job I could for the players at that time, and try to put myself in a position where I might have some opportunities when it was all said and done, as far as coaching was concerned."

But Thornton knew his odds of being named the Aggie head coach for the 1991-92 season were remote.

"We weren’t winning and although I knew I was being considered, I knew it was a longshot. The chances of an interim coach being able to market the program and himself as a new beginning were not too good."

The end of Thornton’s coaching career marked the beginning of an administrative career that has served his school and hundreds of athletes well.

Thornton was a player and assistant coach under Shelby Metcalf during some of the glory years for A&M.

"I felt like John was just too much of a loyal employee, too much of an Aggie and too good of a person to let go somewhere else," Crow said. "So when we changed basketball coaches, we made a position for him and as you would expect from him, he took the responsibility that we gave him and ran with it."

He became assistant AD for student services, coordinating and monitoring financial aid for student athletes, and under another hat, became Life Skills Coordinator. Thornton then began advising athletes, mainly football players, on what to expect when dealing with professional sports agents and pro sports teams.

He became and still is coordinator of Aggie Athletes Involved, a service oriented group of A&M athletes who serve the community through fund-raising and other activities. His work ethic at those jobs led him to a promotion where today he is the principal administrator over track and field, cross country and swimming and diving.

Thonton was born in Bryan and was exposed early to high principals that weren’t always convenient.

"I had uncles who took tickets at A&M football games, but they were so honest, they wouldn’t even let us in free," he said. "My earliest memory of G. Rollie White Coliseum was when we would climb to the top of the bleachers and watch one end of the football game out the window. We could only watch the north end of the field – the east side stands blocked the other end. When they were playing at the south end and the crowd yelled, we knew something good must have happened. Then usually at halftime, they weren’t checking for tickets anymore and we’d sneak in."

Thornton learned his Aggie spirit from his father. Bill Thornton was a yell leader, class of 1950. He worked at the Air Force base in Bryan before being transferred to Kelly AFB in San Antonio when John was 5. Mom Lois provided the bonding force for the family, and kept that role until she lost her battle with Parkinson’s disease in 1994.

John made his mark as a basketball player as a 6-5 center at Holmes High School in San Antonio. He wasn’t highly recruited and played two years for San Antonio College. It was a convenient coaching connection that landed him on Shelby Metcalf’s team.

"Jim Cullpepper was Shelby’s assistant at A&M and his brother Ronnie was my coach at SAC," Thornton said. "They worked out a deal where I’d go there for two years and if I developed, I’d go to A&M."

History shows he developed fine. In 1974, Thornton was named Southwest Conference Newcomer of the Year and as a senior in 1975, he joined two other transfers, Sonny Parker and Barry Davis, to lead the Aggies to the SWC championship. It was A&M’s first team ever to win 20 games.

After graduation, his path back to A&M was a bumpy one – one made smoother by a rare determination from both John and Lanie Thornton, his wife of 24 years.

"Lanie and I got married after a left A&M, and I took her to live at the Spanish Trace Apartments in Athens, Texas," he said with a laugh. "That’s where the Thorntons first set up shop. Believe me, Lanie is quite a person."

He coached Athens High to a 23-7 record in 1978. That caught the attention of Rudy Davalos, who was about to start up the athletic department at the brand new arm of the UT system in San Antonio.

Thornton joined former Longhorn guard Harry Larabee as an assistant, but the start of the UTSA basketball program was delayed a year. In that time, he moved to Hill County Junior College where he was head coach two seasons.

"Again, I go back to the support I got from Lanie," John said. "I mean, she not only got to live at the Spanish Trace but then go to Hillsboro for two years where we lived in the dorm, were dorm parents and took our laundry to the gym to wash it."

After two years in Hillsboro, Thornton was asked to interview for the head coaching job at Lon Morris. He was offered the job on the spot.

"I told them to give me 24 hours, that I had to go home and make sure Lanie wouldn’t mind leaving the Hill County dorm. That night I called Coach Metcalf to ask him what he thought ,and he said I could either take the Lon Morris job or come back to A&M and be his assistant. His decision was quick and his pay was bad – but he was headed home to Aggieland.

"I thought at age 29, it was a great opportunity. It was the right path for me," Thornton said. "Sitting on the bench and trying to figure out how to beat Ricky Pearce of Rice, Joe Klein of Arkansas, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler of Houston – those were some pretty good players and it was big-time basketball."

Today John Thornton’s comfortable if not content with the notion that he likely won’t coach basketball again. Rather he prefers to compare his challenges now with those on the bench.

"I don’t know if coaching ever really gets out of your blood. But I’m challenged in what I’m doing right now, just like a coach is. Running an event like the Big 12 track meet or the NCAA swimming was in a way like preparing for game day. In both, you want to establish an outcome that you want everyone to buy into."

One thing for sure is that at nearly 50, Thornton is not ready to kick back and relax. On the contrary, John and Lanie are smack in the middle of what family and career is all about. Son Gabe is a junior finance major at A&M and just returned from a summer internship in the Dominican Republic. Daughter Leslie is a senior at A&M Consolidated. Lanie is a widely respected accounting professor and senior lecturer at the Lowry Mays College of Business at A&M.

"She’s also a CPA," John said. "That means I don’t have a check book."

With his Ph.D. earned in 1997, no doubt that John Thornton is an athletic director in the making. With college athletics facing vast new challenges every year, it would be served well with old Aggie forward No. 52 in the carpeted office.

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