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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 2, 1991)
\ X Monday, September 2, 1991 The Battalion Page 3 A&M and Slocum stand test of time by Scott Wudel The Battalion When Richard Copeland Slocum was in elementary school, his first grade class visited a local bread company in Orange, Texas, on one of its many field trips. While there, the young Slocum was given a wood ruler. "The Golden Rule" was print ed on that ruler. Across the ruler were the words "Do unto others as you have oth ers do to you," Slocum remem bers - Words the coach has lived by all of his life. And an idea he has tried to instill in his players and the entire A&M football pro gram. When Slocum replaced former A&M coach Jackie Sherrill almost three years ago, he redefined the direction of the program with the philosophy that you can't have athletic in tegrity without academic in tegrity. With that in mind, he sat down and mapped out the direction he wanted the pro gram to take. "I wanted to build a firm, sol id foundation n eac j football coach R. C. Slocum that we could teases hj s players how to respect 3dd to, ana en sure we would have a stable program - where we wouldn't be a flash in the pan," Slocum said. "There's a tendency of people to want to run out and just get all the players - junior col lege players, transfers, dropouts - whoever they could drag up to try to win 'x' number of games. "I felt like it was important to try to establish a recruiting pro gram where we brought in fresh men and trained and kept them in the program." Using that gameplan, Slocum and his staff have succeeded in re cruiting one of the best classes of football talent in the nation for two consecutive years. More im portantly, all but one of those players has been academically eli gible to set foot on Kyle Field for the Aggies. "We wanted to build a pro gram where academics was at the forefront of the program," Slocum explained. "Where you could go into a home and recruit a young man and tell his parents that we have a program where he would have the opportunity to graduate - that we would have programs in place to see that we didn't short change him from an academic standpoint." It may be Slocum's concern for the other man that has led to his success on and off the field. But how did this calm-demeanored man and his good ol' boy charm come to learn this lesson of life? "It's just the right thing to do," Slocum said modestly. "We're all a product of our upbringing. You're taught to be honest with people. "My reason for coaching is that I enjoy being around young people," he ex plained. "And I would hope that a player coming out of our program would have more than just say he played on some winning teams - that the lessons he learned in our program were the ones that he could take from here and be assets to him as he tries to go out in the real world and earn a living and deal with his fellow man." Slocums recalls his junior high school football coach and the ef fect he had on his career. "I don't even know if he was a good football MIKE C. MULVEY/The Battalion Coach Or not," he others with a simple philosophy - "Treat ^ctring^uv that others as you would like to be treated." care d Ibout his ‘ players. I've never had any question that he cared about me more than just being a football player." The lesson he learned from that experience has influenced his method of coaching young play ers. He has spent many hours teaching the aspects of the Golden Rule. See Slocum/ page 12 Who will be the Aggies’ backup quarterback? By Anthony Andro The Battalion Bucky Richardson is the start ing quarterback for the Texas A&M football team — Case closed. But the backup quarterback sit uation is not so clear. Texas A&M head football coach R.C. Slocum said the num ber two slot will belong to either junior Kent Petty or redshirt fresh man Jeff Granger. "I feel like we're in pretty good shape at quarterback," Slocum said. Right now, Slocum and A&M offensive coordinator Bob Toledo have not made a decision on who will be the number two signal caller. Petty has played in nine games, for the Aggies in his two years on the team, completing three of five passes for 76 yards and a touch down. He also has studied Tole do's system for the last two years while standing on the sideline waiting for his chance behind Richardson and Lance Pavlas. Granger played baseball in the Pan Am Games this summer and also missed part of spring football because he was pitching for the A&M baseball team. Although Granger had to di vide his time between baseball and football during the spriirg, Slocum said he is confident in what Granger was able to learn about the A&M offense during that time. Granger said he is almost caught up with the other quarter backs after his baseball stint. "I feel real comfortable," Granger said. "I already know the offense and I'm just learning the defense." Richardson said he is also com fortable with the backups. "Pm confident in them, Richardson said. "They know what's going on, and the coaches are also comfortable with them." Richardson, who missed the entire 1989 season with a knee in jury, said good football programs prepare their backups in case the starting quarterback gets injured Granger also likes the battle for the number two spot with Petty. "I feel that Petty and 1 are go ing to have good competition for the backup job," he said. The A&M quarterback depth chart is stacked this season. Listed behind Richardson, Petty, and Granger are redshirt freshman Steve Emerson, and true freshmen Matt Miller and Tommy Preston. 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