Texas Tabs Texas A&M’s Jim Schlossnagle As Next Head Coach
Image credit: Jim Schlossnagle (Photo by Eddie Kelly/ProLook Photos)
Texas tabbed Jim Schlossnagle as its next head coach on Tuesday. The Longhorns hired him away from archrival Texas A&M less than 24 hours after the Aggies lost to Tennessee in the College World Series finals.
It’s been a whirlwind 36 hours in Austin. On Monday morning, Athletic director Chris Del Conte fired coach David Pierce, who led the program for eight years and guided the Longhorns to three CWS appearances. By the end of the business day Tuesday, Schlossnagle had accepted the job.
The move will be the most expensive in college baseball history. It will cost Texas $2.7 million just to hire Schlossnagle, the largest buyout ever paid to hire a college baseball coach by more than double. His salary is also sure to be among the highest in the sport.
Rumors of such a move date back years, but accelerated this month to a much greater degree. Schlossnagle and Del Conte worked together for several years at TCU and that partnership helped the Horned Frogs reach the CWS four times. Del Conte left TCU in December 2016 to become AD at Texas. Schlossnagle then left TCU after the 2021 season, but for A&M, not Texas. Now they will be reunited in Austin with the goal of taking Texas back to the pinnacle of college baseball.
Schlossnagle, the 2016 Baseball America Coach of the Year, is 946-455 in 23 seasons coaching A&M, TCU and UNLV. He has led his teams to Omaha seven times, including two of the last three seasons at A&M. He coached the Aggies to a 53-15 record this season and a runner-up finish at the CWS, the best in program history.
Schlossnagle arrives in Austin at a key inflection point for the Longhorns. Texas will officially move to the SEC next week. While the program has still been a relatively regular Omaha participant over the last 15 years, it hasn’t won a national championship since 2005. Last year, LSU won its seventh CWS title to pass Texas for the second-most national championships in college baseball history.
Schlossnagle’s move adds spice to a rivalry about to be rekindled in earnest. Though Texas and A&M are athletic archrivals, their meetings on the diamond have been mostly limited to midweek games since A&M left the Big 12 for the SEC more than a decade ago. Now that they are conference mates again, they will resume annual weekend series. Next year’s showdown didn’t need anything extra, but Tuesday’s move poured gasoline on the rivalry’s fire.
