Last week, I read a fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Unlikely College Football Powerhouse Fueled by Texas Gas Money.” It was about Tarleton State University, a school in Stephenville, Texas, that most people outside of Texas probably hadn't heard much about until recently. The article highlighted the university's remarkable growth, its investment in athletics, and its emergence as a legitimate competitor on the national stage. As a Tarleton alumnus and former baseball player, I couldn't help but smile reading it. It's pretty incredible to see a university that was relatively unknown when I attended in the early 1990s getting this kind of national attention.
Tarleton President Dr. James Hurley made a comment in the article that really stuck with me. “Athletics will never be the most important endeavor we embark upon,” he said, “but it is the most visible.” I think he's exactly right. Athletics can bring attention to a university in ways that few other things can. Winning football games, competing in NCAA tournaments, and building world-class facilities generate headlines, attract students, and create a sense of pride that extends well beyond campus. But as I thought about the article, I found myself reflecting on something that doesn't get nearly as much attention: what athletics actually do for the young people who participate in them.
My own story with Tarleton started in 1992, and it wasn't exactly a traditional college recruiting experience. I had spent the fall of 1991 at Texas A&M University, where I was studying chemical engineering and trying to walk on to both the football and baseball teams. I had always been a pretty good student in high school, but engineering at A&M was a different animal, and I'll admit I was probably having a little too much fun while trying to juggle everything else. By the end of that first semester, my grades weren't where they needed to be, and I found myself back home attending junior college, wondering what came next.
I still wanted to play baseball, so I started writing letters to college coaches. Actual letters, with stamps, mailed through the post office. This was long before you could email a coach, send a recruiting video from your phone, or look up an entire program on the internet. I sent letters to several schools, hoping someone might give me an opportunity. As best I remember, only one coach wrote me back. His name was Jack Allen, and he was the head baseball coach at Tarleton State University.
I'd never heard of Stephenville, Texas. I certainly didn't know anything about Tarleton. But I knew I wanted to play college baseball, so I got in my truck and drove about five hours from Lake Jackson to Stephenville to meet Coach Allen. I thought the team had a game that afternoon, but when I arrived at the baseball field, there wasn't a soul around. I had no idea where the team was or what to do next. So, for reasons I still can't explain, I drove to the McDonald's on Washington Street, walked inside, and asked someone working there if he knew where the Tarleton baseball team was playing.
Somehow, he did. They were playing at Dallas Baptist University.
So I got back in my truck and drove to Dallas. I watched the game, stood outside the dugout afterward, and walked up to Coach Allen to introduce myself. I told him I was the kid he'd written the letter to. He had just finished coaching a baseball game and probably wasn't expecting some random teenager to show up asking for a spot on his team. He was polite, but we didn't talk long. I drove back to Stephenville, spent the night, and the next day drove right back to Dallas Baptist to watch another game.
After that game, I waited outside the dugout again. Coach Allen recognized me, and I remember him saying something along the lines of, “Son, you must want to play college baseball pretty bad if you drove over here twice to talk to me.” He told me to meet him at his office in Wisdom Gym the next morning.
I showed up early. The building was practically empty. Coach Allen reached into his filing cabinet, pulled out the letter I'd mailed him, and read it out loud. Then he looked at me and basically said that it sounded like I really wanted to play baseball and he'd love to have me. He reached into his desk, pulled out a letter of intent, and I signed it right there. I still have that letter today. Afterward, I walked around the corner to a pay phone and called my dad to tell him what had happened.
Of course, there was still one small problem. My grades were so bad that I wasn't sure I could actually transfer to Tarleton. That summer, while working and taking classes at Brazosport College, I needed to make an A in a history class to get my academic standing where it needed to be. I went into the final exam knowing that my opportunity to play baseball depended on it. Somehow, I made the grade, and in the fall of 1992, I showed up in Stephenville as a Tarleton Texan.
Now, if you've seen the facilities at Tarleton today, you might have a hard time imagining what college baseball looked like back then. There were roughly 6,000 students at the university, and we were playing NAIA baseball. We didn't have fancy uniforms, equipment sponsorships, or much of anything else. We bought our own gear, mowed the grass, painted fences, and cleaned the dugouts. Our batting cage was an old chicken coop, and there wasn't a weight room to speak of. It was pretty scrappy, West Texas baseball, and I loved it.
Coach Allen, however, was not a particularly easy man to play for. He was a legendary Texas baseball coach who had won national championships at Ranger College, and he brought that same demanding mentality to Tarleton. He expected things to be done right, whether you were fielding ground balls, taking batting practice, or painting a fence. If you didn't meet his expectations, there was usually some running involved.
But the thing I remember most wasn't what he expected on the baseball field. It was what he expected in the classroom.
We carried these little yellow grade reports in our backpacks, and every couple of weeks we had to get our professors to report our grades and attendance. Coach Allen's expectations were pretty simple. You didn't miss class, and you didn't bring him grades below a B. If you did, there were consequences.
I remember watching five or six teammates jogging along the warning track one afternoon, passing an old car tire over their heads. When the tire reached the last guy in line, he had to sprint to the front, and they kept doing this from foul pole to foul pole. I remember thinking that looked absolutely miserable, and there was no way I wanted to be part of it. I'd much rather be taking batting practice than running around the field with a tire over my head.
So I went to class. Every class. I studied, turned in my assignments, and figured out how to manage my time. And something interesting happened. I started making pretty good grades.
It wasn't that I'd suddenly become smarter. I had always been capable of doing the work. What changed was that I developed the discipline and study habits to actually do it. By the end of my first semester at Tarleton, I was making better than a 3.0, and over the next few semesters I began to realize that I could succeed in college if I was willing to put in the effort.
That lesson extended well beyond the classroom. During the spring of 1993, I was the starting first baseman, playing a schedule of roughly 60 games while traveling around Texas on long bus rides. There were no online learning management systems, recorded lectures, or elaborate academic support programs. If you were going to miss class because of a road trip, you had to talk to your professors, figure out what you were missing, and make arrangements to get your work done. Nobody was going to do it for you.
Looking back, I learned as much about responsibility, communication, planning, and leadership during those years as I did about baseball. And I certainly didn't recognize that at the time. I was just trying to keep my grades up, stay out of trouble with Coach Allen, and earn my spot in the lineup.
Unfortunately, my baseball career ended sooner than I expected. I tore my rotator cuff during my redshirt sophomore year and never played again. For anyone who has spent most of their childhood and teenage years playing a sport, there's a real sense of loss when it's suddenly over. Baseball had been such a big part of my identity, and it was the only reason I'd come to Tarleton in the first place. But by then, something else had happened. I had found a university where I belonged, discovered that I could be a successful student, and started building a foundation for a life beyond athletics.
I eventually graduated from Tarleton in 1996 and went into education. Years later, I returned to Texas A&M, the same university where I'd struggled academically as a freshman, and earned my Ph.D. in Educational Administration. I've spent much of my career working in schools, supporting educators, and leading education organizations. I often wonder how different that journey might have been if Coach Allen hadn't answered my letter.
The Wall Street Journal article also got me thinking about where college athletics are today. Between NIL, the transfer portal, recruiting, and the enormous amount of money flowing through major college sports, it's easy to forget that the athletes we see on television represent only a small fraction of the young people participating in college athletics. I don't begrudge athletes the opportunity to earn money from the value they create. In many cases, I think it's long overdue. But I do worry that we've become so focused on the business of college sports that we sometimes lose sight of its broader educational purpose.
Most college athletes aren't preparing for professional sports. They're preparing for professional lives.
The overwhelming majority will never sign a professional contract, play in front of 100,000 fans, or earn millions of dollars from their athletic ability. But they'll become teachers, engineers, business leaders, parents, and members of their communities. They'll carry with them lessons about teamwork, accountability, perseverance, and dealing with disappointment. For some students, particularly those who might not otherwise have the opportunity, athletics can also open the door to a college education that changes the direction of their lives.
As an educator and a parent, I've come to believe that some of the most important things we can give young people are opportunities to discover what they're capable of doing, learn how to handle adversity, and develop the confidence to pursue something bigger than themselves. Athletics can be an extraordinary vehicle for that, but only when we remember that developing people is ultimately more important than developing athletes.
That's one reason I've enjoyed watching Tarleton grow over the past several years. The university has more than doubled its enrollment, invested in academic facilities, moved into Division I athletics, and become a source of pride for Stephenville and the surrounding region. Its football program has reached the top of the FCS rankings, and the baseball team recently made its first Division I NCAA tournament appearance. For someone who remembers mowing the baseball field and taking batting practice in a chicken coop, it's pretty remarkable.
I also understand the challenges that come with that kind of growth. As Tarleton looks toward the next level of college athletics, maintaining competitiveness, managing the cost of that ambition, and preserving the sense of community that makes the university special will be important. But I appreciate the vision behind what President Hurley and the university's leadership are building. The attention athletics brings can introduce thousands of students to a university they might otherwise never have considered. And those students can go on to accomplish things that extend far beyond the playing field.
In some ways, that's exactly what happened to me.
After my playing days ended, I wasn't particularly connected to the baseball program for a number of years. Life and career took me in different directions. But eventually, one of my former teammates, Bryan Conger, became Tarleton's head baseball coach, and I started finding my way back. When my son Carson was being recruited by Tarleton, we attended alumni events and reconnected with people I'd known decades earlier. Today, Coach Fuller Smith and his staff do a great job of keeping former players involved, and I've enjoyed supporting the program and watching it continue to grow.
And in one of life's more interesting turns, I now live on a ranch in Stephenville, the same town I'd never heard of when I climbed into my truck in 1992 and drove five hours hoping to find somewhere to play baseball.
Coach Allen passed away in 2016. I recently read a fascinating article by Jarrod D. Schenewark, “Jack Allen: Baseball in the Land of ‘Gushers’ and Cowboys,” published by the Society for American Baseball Research. It reminded me just how remarkable his contribution to Texas baseball really was. He won more than 1,200 games, coached national championship teams, and influenced generations of players at Ranger College and Tarleton. But when I think about him today, I don't think first about the wins or championships. I think about that letter he pulled from his filing cabinet, those yellow grade reports, and the opportunities he gave a young man who was still trying to find his way.
I've reconnected with several former teammates since moving back to Stephenville, and it's funny how similar our memories are. Playing for Coach Allen wasn't always a lot of fun. He was tough, demanding, and could make your life pretty miserable when you didn't meet his expectations. But as we've gotten older, we've come to appreciate what he meant to us. We all went in different directions, built different careers, and lived different lives, but many of us can trace important lessons back to those years playing for him.
I don't think Coach Allen ever knew how much he influenced my life. I only spoke with him a handful of times after graduating, and I never really had the opportunity to tell him. If I could sit down with him today, I'd thank him for answering that letter and giving me a chance when he had very little reason to do so. I'd tell him about my career in education, about earning my doctorate at Texas A&M, and about finding my way back to the part of Texas he called home for so many years.
As I've gotten older, I've tried to be more intentional about telling people when they've made a difference in my life. Sometimes we don't recognize the influence someone has had until years later, and sometimes we wait too long to say thank you. I wish I'd had that conversation with Coach Allen, but I hope he'd be proud of the lives his former players have built and the program he helped establish.
So when I read about Tarleton's investment in athletics, its national rankings, and its plans for the future, I see more than football stadiums, basketball arenas, and baseball facilities. I see opportunities for young people who may not yet understand what those experiences will mean to them decades from now. I see a university that can change lives, just as it changed mine.
And I can't help but think that somewhere in all those impressive numbers and headlines, there's a young athlete who just needs someone to answer a letter, give them a chance, and hold them to a standard they haven't yet learned to hold themselves to.
That's the part of college athletics the scoreboard doesn't show.
