The 100-Year Decision: Texas A&m and the SEC

On June 15, 2009, Texas A&M University made the seemingly insignificant announcement that R. Bowen Loftin, a bespectacled vice president with several physics degrees, had been promoted to serve as interim president of the College Station campus. No one could have predicted at the time that the bowtie-adorned, self-proclaimed technology and computer "geek" would emerge from obscurity to lead A&M on one of the most significant and landscape altering journeys in the history of the high-stakes world of college athletic conferences. The 100-Year Decision: Texas A&M and the SEC is Loftin's compelling, first-person account of the events that led to A&M's historic exit from the Big 12 Conference and its entry into the prestigious SEC. In this candid memoir, readers witness what happened in the closed-door meetings that fed this Texas-sized controversy, with all the deception, manipulation, political pressure, and deal-making anyone could expect.

R. Bowen Loftin, a 1970 graduate of Texas A&M University, served as president of Texas A&M from 2010 to the end of 2013, following eight months as interim president and four years as a university vice president assigned as the chief executive officer of Texas A&M's Galveston branch campus, where he was also a professor of maritime systems engineering. Loftin became chancellor of the University of Missouri on February 1, 2014. Rusty Burson covered Texas A&M athletics for more than 20 years in newspapers and at 12th Man Magazine. He has authored 15 books previously, most associated with Texas A&M and Aggie athletics.