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Posts posted by DFW Horn
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If these 5 WAC-10 rivalries are so meaningful and historic, why aren't the networks willing to pay for them? He asked knowingly
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58 minutes ago, Uncle Nate said:
Yeah for all we know it could be something involving Deion running off a scholarship player or something.
Would the BoR be involved in that type of problem? Most AD's have an NCAA compliance person on staff, right?
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21 hours ago, kopp0e said:
Yeah I think even if Oklahoma & Texas along with 4 best buds had left for PAC in 2010, Sooners & Longhorns would still be in SEC by 2025.??
The same outcome at that point would lay in path of USC & UCLA to B1G, I surmise all 4 would see the higher $ of "super 2 recently & bolt...
On a side note I do think that there is a chance by 2030 where SEC/ B1G absorb top brands of ACC/ PAC while XII absorbs top brands left...
SEC in four pods of 6 members each:
pod #1 Alabama/ Auburn/ Florida/ Florida State/ Georgia/ South Carolina
pod #2 Kentucky/ Virginia/ North Carolina/ NC State/ Tennessee/ Vanderbilt
pod #3 Ole Miss/ Mississippi State/ LSU/ Arkansas/ Missouri/ Kansas
pod #4 Texas/ Texas A&M/ Oklahoma/ Colorado/ Arizona/ Arizona State
B1G in four pods of 6 members each:
pod #1 Penn State/ Rutgers/ Maryland/ Duke/ Georgia Tech/ Miami
pod #2 Michigan/ Michigan State/ Ohio State/ Notre Dame/ Purdue/ Indiana
pod #3 Illinois/ Northwestern/ Wisconsin/ Minnesota/ Iowa/ Nebraska
pod #4 Utah/ California/ USC/ UCLA/ Oregon/ Washington
XXIV in four pods of 6 members each:
pod #1 Boston College/ Syracuse/ Pittsburgh/ West Virgina/ Cincinatti/ Virginia Tech/ Wake Forest
pod #2 Clemson / UCF/ Memphis/ Louisville/ Iowa State
pod #3 Kansas State/ Oklahoma State/ Baylor/ TCU/ Houston / Texas Tech
pod #4 BYU/ UNLV/ San Diego State/ Fresno State/ Oregon State/ Washington State-
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4 hours ago, UncleSonny said:
Should be negged for the oversized sweatshirt hiding Lily's 2 most redeeming attributes.
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29 minutes ago, closetohumping said:
If ESPN didn't stop it, we'd be together in the PAC 16
But, I'm glad they did even though LHN was too ambitious. It was a nice bribe for UT to keep Texas athletics with ESPN.
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2 hours ago, BurntOrange&White said:
And the big 12 fired it's commissioner for being stagnant dog shit commissioner and the new one is actively expanding and trying to grow the conference. Who knows what the BIG will want to do as soon as they get a new commissioner as well. But staying stagnant in this ever evolving college football landscape is the worst decision they could make.
I think the new, 16-team SEC is fine as is unless the networks wanna pay for FSU, Clemson, etc. Personally, I don't want more teams bc I like the idea of playing errbody twice every 4 years. Bigger than 16 is a clusterfuck.
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12 minutes ago, Dennis Taylor said:
Wheel of Fortune was on a TV at this gym I'm at, and its college week. Some doofus Gomer was on there, and even with no sound I could tell he went through the scripted elevator pitch complete with a whoop! at the end for his introduction. I walked by the TV again at the end of the show, and the Gomer was not the winner...it was a young lady from...Alabama A&M. I'm sure his aggy brethren are thrilled with that L
Wait...I thought Au-barn was Alabama aggy. That state done doubled up on aggy!
S! E! C! Whoop!
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9 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:
The PAC 12, it just means less.
* 10
No, 8.....no, 6.....whatever
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43 minutes ago, camel at sea said:
Big 12 interest in SDSU is interesting. CU, Zona, ASU, and SDSU would be a nice group of four if Utah wants to go down with the PAC ship. Keeping the PAC out of southern California would be a strong move by Yormark and it would probably mollify the Cali alums at UA and ASU.
SDSU compares favorably to UH and Cincinnati. Why not?
Did Yormark negotiate a pro rata increase for any new members over the term of the Big 12's media deal? If so, the Aztecs are a good backup plan if one of the 4 Corners balks.
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1 hour ago, BurntOrange&White said:
Wilkins has been pumping SDSU and PAC ever since they made the final 4 and just a bit before, it's like his last remaining talking point because everything else has not gone well for him.
Wilkins is full of shit.
I almost feel sorry for Kliavkoff bc you know it's probably Cal and Stanford fucking up everything at this point. But, he probably sold his "connections" to media partners when interviewing for the job. He's over-promised and under-delivered.
But, fuck the PAC. I'm just glad UT isn't associated with those clowns.
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1 hour ago, BurntOrange&White said:
Bro is acting like SDSU does anything.
Adding SDSU and SMU further divides the PAC's disappointing media pie. All these markets do is expand their footprint into good recruiting grounds. Otherwise, invitations would've been sent yesterday.
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26 minutes ago, SHOOTER12 said:Interesting note, although not surprising...
Ruth J. Simmons is still trying to unpack her last days as president of Prairie View A&M University. And now, more than a month after her departure, she's explaining in the greatest detail yet why she left the job early.
In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Simmons said she moved up her planned departure date after a member of Chancellor John Sharp’s staff insisted she could not make high-level appointments as the HBCU awaited its next leader. After a 50-year career in higher education – during which she led Smith College and served as the first Black president at any Ivy League school – Simmons felt something was awry.
HIGHER ED: Ruth J. Simmons to leave Prairie View A&M early, not wanting to be president 'in name only'
She fears that the Texas A&M University System, which Sharp has led since 2011, has long neglected its second-oldest institution, shortchanging the vital role of the campus located on a former plantation 40 miles northwest of Houston. It enrolled 7,565 full-time undergraduate and graduate students in fall 2022, and about 84 percent of them are Black.
“The opportunity that they had to make use of my experience and judgment was completely missed by a proclivity to constantly downgrade Prairie View,” she said.
Simmons, 77, added that she won’t be working with the system’s current administrators, as some former presidents do.
She has kept busy, writing a book about her childhood as a poor student in Houston and her path to higher education. In April, she begins a position as Rice University’s President’s Distinguished Fellow. In June, she'll also begin serving as senior adviser to the president of Harvard University on Harvard's HBCU partnerships.
In her sit-down with the Chronicle, which took place at Rice, Simmons recounted her six years at Prairie View – and what ended them – choosing her words carefully.
Ruth Simmons, former president of Prairie View A&M University, speaks to a reporter for the Houston Chronicle at Rice University on Tuesday March 21, 2023, in Houston.
Ruth Simmons, former president of Prairie View A&M University, speaks to a reporter for the Houston Chronicle at Rice University on Tuesday March 21, 2023, in Houston.
Raquel Natalicchio/Staff photographer
Simmons said serving as president at Prairie View was one of the most rewarding experiences of her life. She worked with majority low-income students who reminded her of herself as a young adult, and she advocated to create equity between HBCUs and the state’s better-funded Predominately White Institutions. By the time she left, she significantly boosted research spending and financial contributions at the university in Waller County.
She struggled to see the A&M system share her passion. “I don't believe that the Board of Regents of the system is at all capable of managing the affairs of Prairie View,” she said. “The simple reason for that is because they don't know Prairie View, and they have no interest in learning.
“That's why I didn't think that the system was competent to make the call about whether or not I shouldn't make appointments," Simmons continued. "They simply don't know the reality well enough. They don't care to know the reality."
A&M system denies claims
When Simmons announced that she would leave in February, instead of May, Chancellor Sharp clarified that no outgoing president in the system is allowed to make high-level appointments, and he cited several examples where he required the same of other system presidents.
Texas A&M System officials said in a statement on Tuesday that Sharp has remained a champion for the university, long before Simmons came to Prairie View. "When he applied to be chancellor almost 12 years ago, he had two immediate goals: Acquire a law school and enhance Prairie View A&M," Vice President for Marketing and Communications Laylan Copelin said of Sharp. "He has delivered on both promises."
HBCUs: Texas Southern asks Legislature for $1 billion to bolster new programs and correct decades of underfunding
The system also provided examples, including $341 million in construction projects at Prairie View over the past 11 years and $36 million in research funding allocated from the chancellor's research fund. Prairie View's allocation from A&M's permanent endowment has also increased by nearly 150 percent, from $12.1 million in 2011 to $29.9 million this year, Sharp said. And funding per student more than doubled to $3,306 per student, up from $1,384.
"Truth is, the first time President Simmons was told 'no' over almost six years, she quit and abandoned Prairie View A&M’s students, faculty and staff," Copelin added. "Despite her public criticism of The Texas A&M University System, Chancellor Sharp allowed her to speak at commencement after her resignation and authorized her signature to be attached to December’s diplomas. We wish her well in her new endeavors."
Ruth Simmons, former president of Prairie View A&M University, walks the campus at Rice University on Tuesday March 21, 2023, in Houston.
Ruth Simmons, former president of Prairie View A&M University, walks the campus at Rice University on Tuesday March 21, 2023, in Houston.
Raquel Natalicchio/Staff photographer
Simmons has remained guarded about what positions she was trying to fill, but she said she had been using her discretion on what was appropriate to handle immediately and what could wait for the incoming president, Tomikia LeGrande. (Most recently vice president for strategic enrollment and student success at Virginia Commonwealth University, LeGrande takes the helm June 1.)
The system's response to her departure was "rubbish," Simmons said, given her experience and proven record of keeping the university’s best interest in mind. She wouldn't have become president if that wasn't the case: Guilt and a sense of duty drew her to Prairie View in the first place.
Sharp recruited Simmons to come to Prairie View years into her retirement from Brown University. Still active in higher education, she expected he was seeking a consultation, but Sharp got off a private plane from College Station to Houston and shocked her with an immediate ask to serve as Prairie View’s interim president.
In her early 70s and having already served as a president twice, she planned to feign interest but politely decline, she said. A visit to Prairie View changed that.
UNDERFUNDED: A history of funding failures at HBCUs
“I just folded,” she said. “Seeing these young people walking across the campus and knowing that this was what I was like at their age … I thought, after everything that has happened to me in Texas, all the people who went out of their way to help me, how could I do less than to help these young people?”
Few in American higher education have such informative experience as Simmons. Born in 1945 in East Texas as the youngest of 12 siblings, her family moved to Houston as agriculture technology began replacing sharecroppers’ work, she wrote in a 1998 essay published in the Texas Journal of Ideas, History and Culture. At Wheatley High School, her teachers instilled in her the importance of Black educators and gave her the lifelong mission of bettering opportunities for Black students, she said.
Simmons has always considered herself a bit of a disruptor. She earned a Ph.D. in romance languages and literature at Harvard University, in part because white educators had long withheld the humanities as a field of study for Black people. She said she became a problem everywhere she went – a pain for her bosses in the early years and too unconventional for donors in later years – holding appointments in New Orleans and California before moving into administrative roles at Princeton University and the historically Black Spelman College.
Breaking the color barrier
Her time as president of Smith College and Brown were history-making. She broke the “color barrier” at both institutions; created Smith’s engineering program, the first at a women’s college; and ignited a racial reckoning in higher education when she re-examined Brown’s history with the slave trade.
"I would say she’s probably the most respected university president of this generation, for sure," Rice University President Reginald DesRoches said.
Back in 2017, Simmons' brother, a Prairie View alumnus, appealed to her conscience. She had never been president of any HBCUs, which have been historically undermined through with less state funding and the tendency of some white people to view them still as lesser places of education, even decades after reintegration.
More from Samantha Ketterer: Interim president named at Prairie View A&M after Ruth Simmons' early departure
She took the job, planning to be interim president for a few months. Simmons eventually asked to stay, serving in the role for six years but leaving with the knowledge that HBCUs are still “pretty far off” from being considered equal.
“They were created to be less than. Now they are in an era when Blacks have been given access, full access to education, and yet people don’t let go of that idea," she said. "Overcoming that is a monumental task, and you can’t do it by pretending it never happened.”
Simmons endeared herself to Prairie View students in quick time. A celebrity in the higher education world, she was also revered on campus, earning a name emblazoned on T-shirts: “Ruth the Truth.”
The former president said she feels her kinship with the community must have come from their knowledge that she didn’t have to be at Prairie View, but she wanted to.
“She just left a mark on all the students, just by her presence, just by being well-known nationwide,” freshman Briana Baker said. “Transferring all her success and her experience to Prairie View, she’s done a lot.”
FILE: Ruth Simmons, center, president of Prairie View A&M University, poses with students during a campus festival, at Prairie View A&M University, on Thursday, April 12, 2018, in Prairie View.
FILE: Ruth Simmons, center, president of Prairie View A&M University, poses with students during a campus festival, at Prairie View A&M University, on Thursday, April 12, 2018, in Prairie View.
Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Houston Chronicle
Many faculty share that admiration. Under Simmons, Prairie View’s aggregate research spending went way up, coinciding with the university’s elevation to a “Research 2” Carnegie Classification. Fundraising also hit new highs, with Simmons bringing in money left and right by her name alone.
Corporate partnerships abounded, and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott in 2020 gave $50 million to be used at Simmons’ discretion. While some people questioned Simmons' decision to lead a HBCU, they were disproven when she brought Prairie View to the national stage, said Melanye Price, special assistant to the president and director of the Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice.
“I think lots of people saw that as a step down, but she never treated it that way,” Price said. “There was a way in which having her as our president, everybody walked a little bit taller.”
HIGHER ED: After early exit from Prairie View, Ruth J. Simmons named presidential fellow at Rice University
Simmons said she never kept secret how she felt the A&M System’s relationship with Prairie View needed to improve, especially in her desire for more collaboration between the system institutions. At a Houston-area HBCU panel in August, she shocked the audience to laughter, joking to the president of the independently-run Texas Southern University that they could have Prairie View’s place in the system if they wanted it.
Still, Simmons said she maintained a good relationship with A&M’s chancellor until she heard from his office earlier this year.
The departure
Simmons’ chief financial officer gave her the news – via communication from one of Sharp’s subordinates – that the system didn’t want her to fill any more positions, she said. Months away from leaving, she sent a letter to the chancellor letting him know that if she couldn’t be president in full, she couldn’t stay.
“The pretense of being a president in name … in reality, that was a step too far for me,” she said. “I've never endured anything like that, and I never will. So I didn't want to tell a lie to my students. I didn't want to tell a lie to alumni. And I was not prepared to lie, to make it a pleasant story for the system.”
Instead of hearing back from the president, Simmons said she got a “cryptic” text from one of Sharp’s “underlings” telling her to consult with public relations before sending out a resignation.
Texas A&M System officials say that Sharp did respond to Simmons, even though she said she never received it. A copy of an email dated Jan. 30 reads that the directive to not make appointments has been in place for “ALL” of the universities in the system for over ten years. The letter, which the system provided the Houston Chronicle, adds that if the incoming president was fine with a certain appointment, Simmons could proceed.
“I regret that my staff didn’t discuss this with you the day you announced your resignation but I can only assume that they were sure you know about it,” Sharp said.
RESEARCH: Prairie View A&M selected to lead national transportation center, first for an HBCU
In mid-February, Simmons released a personal letter to the Prairie View community including her reasons for leaving. Within hours, it was national news – she was taking a personal stand, but the attention it garnered meant she was taking a public stand, too.
“She demonstrated I think for lots of people, when something becomes untenable, you remove yourself from it,” Price said. “When you’re in a relationship like this that has a power differential, the people in power believe that you should be gracious enough to take what they give you. And she said, no I don’t.”
Simmons said she believes A&M has continued to miss the mark, as it would be credited in the public eye for improving Prairie View. And the school’s history is inextricable from A&M’s flagship in College Station, both founded in 1876 and owned by the state as a result of post-Civil War land grants for higher education.
“It has to be because they cannot understand the relationship between this history of race in the state of Texas, and where the university is today and where it should be today, based on all of the discrimination that has taken place over decades,” she said. “It's a failure at some level to understand the duty of people today to deal with that history.”
The former president’s biggest regret, she said, is that her plan for a smooth transition failed. But she’s encouraged by what she’s hearing from people in the Prairie View community – that they were glad she vocalized what they have always felt.
“I really do hope that it helps the system understand that Prairie View is not a little kind of insignificant bump,” Simmons said. “It's not that at all. It is an incredible institution that is waiting for the proper leadership in in the system to value it, and to help it become the place that it can become.”
samantha.ketterer@houstonchronicle.com
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Samantha Ketterer
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Samantha Ketterer is a Houston Chronicle reporter covering higher education.
Are we sure @Randolph Duke didn't write your article?
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17 minutes ago, Blotto said:
I think it fantastic that the players hold a meet and greet with the fans before the game. That connection is what makes college sports great. I'm surprised that those ears shade their eyes as well as a traditional baseball cap, but hey I didn't think the world needed a maroon carrot either!
Ranks up there with this aggy uniform
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Just now, BornOrange said:
That's an April Fools joke, right?
RIght.........?
Well, ESPN did have aggy preseason #6 last year.....right? Click the link to find out.
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14 hours ago, Jkwellborn said:
ESPN has to have something to talk about.Well, they've been hyping up the SEC for years now. Gotta move on to the next "big thing".
Coach Prime will be entertaining, if nothing else.
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From @ Texas Humor
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2 minutes ago, RomaVicta said:
The chances of me conforming to a naming convention to be used universally to presumably belittle a football rival/cult are remote. I'm as likely to enroll in Fish Camp for yokel indoctrination.
Aggy had it's time. A million years ago we had a come back win in a bowl game. On Hornfans one of the regular posters, Italian name, wrote something celebratory. A&M must have lost their game. "This ain't Aggy." I laughed. I laughed at other uses. Now it's tired.
No offense intended.
I use aggy for two reasons;
- It gets under their thin skin and mocks their "tu"
- It distinguishes them from the other run-of-the-mill Aggies; NMSU, USU, NCAT, etc.
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39 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:
I’m used to the Texas Aggies bullshit, but I hated the font (and kerning if I’m honest) that they used for Texas- especially when used in conjunction with the sweep line under with logo. That’s normally something you do after a cursive/script name.
bugged me all game, but the adidas logo right above it was all the explanation necessary.
Agreed
That's the shittiest baseball jersey I've seen in awhile, if not ever. Made me think adidas should stick to futbol. But, aggy gon aggy.
Realignment talk not going away
in Football
Posted
I look forward to seeing USC's first snow game in Madison, Ann Arbor, or Columbus.