Texas A&M athletic director Bill Byrne was a guest on the "Aggie Hour" this week at a local restaurant. During his stint, he answered some questions in regards to the potential move the Aggies could have made to the SEC this summer.
On why the team decided to stay put: "I was concerned with changing conferences that we may not be ready for the level of competition if we decided to leave. I was very concerned about trying to take things slowly, and not rush."
He continued on, citing budgetary reasons: "If we looked at where we stacked up financially in the Pac 10 conference, we were about third. If we looked at where we stacked up in the Southeastern Conference, we were eighth out of 12. We didn't rank very well."
He also looked back at when A&M as an athletic department was not ready for the switch from the SWC to the Big 12: "My big concern was that when Texas A&M made the move from the Southwest Conference to the Big 12 conference [in 1996], they were not ready for the level of competition that was out there."
"[A&M] had not made the investment in facilities, staff or salaries - all the things you need to build a great program. And you saw the results of that. We had a good football team in 1998, then we had problems.
"We had terrible basketball [teams]. ... We had significant issues in track and field. We had problems with most of our sports because we were not ready for the level of competition
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1 comment:
I am going to post these comments again....I cannot believe he told the truth.
j
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