Former Texas A&M infielder Boomer White played under Jim Schlossnagle for two seasons at TCU before transferring to Aggieland. On Thursday morning, White spoke to TexAgs Radio about his transactional relationship with the turncoat coach and much more.
Key notes from Boomer White interview
- Good morning. I’m sure the last 24 to 48 hours have been some of the most unique in your career.
- There is something, especially when you get your fanbase and your school, and you get everyone to rally together, and you let some anger exist, and there’s going to be some retribution. That’s a unique feeling, and I think that sometimes that can unite a bunch of people and a university. Yeah, it’s kind of fun.
- To be honest, I’ve often held back a little bit on the story at TCU and what it was like there, but I’ll be as blunt as I can right here. I had tremendous success at TCU, so I didn’t really run into many issues with playing time. I was already on the field. I had headbutts with coach Jim Schlossnagle. I can’t really talk negatively from that standpoint because I was just one of the better players, so things typically go well for you in that case.
- But I will say this: Jim Schlossnagle was never, ever going to be a reason that I stayed at TCU. He was never going to keep me from leaving because there was just no relationship there. There was no father figure. There was no real establishment of trust. There is a bond between a player and a coach, and I think that has continued, but I know that that’s continued among former players and former coaches. I think that was something that just didn’t make the decision hard.
- I love Texas A&M, and I love what this university, this town and everything stood for. When I had to look at coach Schlossnagle and say, “Hey, I’m leaving for another university,” I really didn’t feel much tug at my heart during that, and that wouldn’t have been the case with someone like Rob Childress. There was just more of a… I will use this term a lot, just a transactional relationship. It was player-coach. It just didn’t really run any deeper than that, and I don’t think it’s changed a whole lot, but yeah, that was kind of my time at TCU.
- I would say that a few years prior to that, I had been hearing that maybe there was a little change of heart and a little change of how he did things at TCU. But yeah, I was definitely hopeful.
- Hand up for me, and I think for a lot of other individuals who had relationships with him, he did a great job of talking the talk and even walking the walk here at A&M to make you believe that this was his home, his long-term home and a place that he genuinely loved and almost bled Maroon. I think that I wanted to convince myself that this has been really good for him, and this has been really good for him personally and professionally.
- I say all that because I was a little surprised, based on what I hoped was transpiring. I was also a little surprised because I didn’t think really any coach had the guts to kind of make this move, given all the circumstances.
- No matter who you are, I thought it was going to be such a, for lack of a better term, slutty historical move amongst college baseball that you just couldn’t do that to yourself. I was wrong. But I will say this: Tony Vitello is a players’ coach. Jim Schlossnagle is not. There are players’ coaches out there that when they look you in the eye and they say something to you, you have a different gut feeling about them and what they stand for.
- Jim Schlossnagle is not a players’ coach. He’s not a guy that you look at, and you’re like, “Man, this guy will never leave me. This guy is ride-or-die.” These aren’t terminologies that you use to describe Jim Schlossnagle.
- Given that, I guess I am not that surprised that he left because he’s very transactional, and it’s just the next step. In a way, I am, and in a way, I’m not. There are definitely coaches out there that I would have said are significantly less likely to make this move than him. I’ll just say that.
- Props to Richard Zane, my goodness. If you look back, that question has done so much for Texas A&M and has made it so much more difficult on Jim Schlossnagle and the University of Texas. He had to address it in his Texas press conference. The clip has gone viral. All he wanted to do was get out of there. Just be able to release a statement and disappear. Move on a not have to face the music. He didn’t get to do that, and you saw his true colors come out on camera and what we hear happen off camera.
- Jim Schlossnagle is an emotional man who really can’t control himself in high-pressure situations. He’s been open about that. He talks about his emotions that run high in the heat of battle, and I think that was a first-hand example of a man who thought he was going to get out Scot-free, had to face the music, gave us that soundbite, and I think a lot of people heard it and did exactly what you and I did and be like, “OK, I feel kind of good about this,” and then you look back and you are like, “You’ve got to be kidding me like I feel horrible believing this” because it was all in the works, the whole time. It’s just a nasty situation.
- On one hand, you know for a fact that Chris Del Conte and Jim Schlossnagle are liars, and I’ll be very clear. They are liars when they look at the camera and look at the media, and they say that they didn’t communicate about this until Monday or Tuesday. They are lying. They are lying. They are lying.
- With that said, I do not know how involved other staff members or coaching staff were at Texas A&M. I can actually speak to vague examples that show that Texas A&M was not involved for very long in recruiting Texas players.
- I know two weeks ago, before Omaha, I can be very certain that the coaches were actively pursuing current players, how to keep them at Texas A&M and structure their NIL deals so that they don’t leave. I know that for a fact.
- I also know for a fact that there was a staff member or a coach who was informed, and his family was informed of this move the night of the national championship that something was coming. With those two in mind, I’d like to believe, and I think, that most of all of this season, maybe except for the last couple of days, that most of the staff, other than Jim Schlossnagle, were still all-in on Texas A&M. There’s a chance that may have changed in the last couple of days, but I cannot say that for sure.
- No, you can’t even be close to all in if you are planning your next move. You can’t be 90 percent. You can’t be 80 percent. That had to have been laying so heavily on his heart the last… Well, let’s go back to LSU or Georgia. This is late April, but no, you cannot be.
- You can try to make the right baseball decisions analytically, and I think he could do that with support from his coaching staff, but as far as emotionally getting with your team that you got here together with, you can’t be there with them. I’ve heard from players, coaches and boosters, that was very, very apparent. There was a different coach at the beginning of the season than it was at the end.
- When you’re in the biggest game in college baseball in your school’s history, and you can’t give 100 percent of what you have, and I don’t care what he says, if he says he’s 100% percent, he’s a liar again. You’re not 100 percent, and you don’t give your team the best chance to win it.
- I don’t think the assistants are comfortable. I think this is so crazy for them, and I think this is going to take a toll on them that they won’t get over for a while. Jim’s an emotional man, and when he can’t control everything, and he can’t do it his way and be prepped, then you can really see it right on his face. It’s very apparent. I think that this is just a tough decision for him, and I don’t know if this is going to be working out as soon as he’d like for quite some time.