Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,331

This is the grave of Shelby Metcalf.

Born in 1930 in Tulsa, Metcalf was a basketball star there and he played at East Texas State in college as a guard. That school is today Texas A&M-Commerce. This was a NAIA school at the time and so this was not the peak of the college hoops world, but he was still very good and was an All-American at that level. After graduation, he took a job at Cayuga High School in Texas for a year and then joined the Air Force. While in the military, he was in Germany but he wasn’t fighting. Nope, he was in charge of something far more important–basketball. In fact, he was the Athletic Officer at Sembach Air Base from 1956 to 1958 and he played on and coached the base’s basketball team, which won the title among American teams in Germany twice.

When Metcalf left the Air Force, he now had plenty of experience and knew a lot more people than he would have in small town Texas or Oklahoma. So he got a job at Texas A&M coaching the school’s freshman basketball team, which was important because in these years, freshmen were not allowed to play on the varsity team and that was a universal thing. So imagine a little later than this Kareem or Bill Walton on a freshman team….What this did as well was train Metcalf to take over for head coach Bob Rogers in 1963.

Metcalf would remain head coach of Texas A&M until 1990, nearly 27 years. It’s an interesting career in that it wasn’t the most epic career ever in terms of NCAA appearances or anything, but since A&M traditionally did not care about hoops at all, with people only caring about football, Metcalf having consistent, sustained success was basically unprecedented and also caught the attention of the football people. He actually managed to win the Southwest Conference in his first year of 1964, which was the first conference title for that school since 1923. He would go on to win 6 SWC titles over the years, mostly just one every 5 years or so except for back to back titles in 75 and 76. His teams never made it past the Sweet 16 in the NCAA tournament, but for the school, it was a huge advance.

Somewhat hilariously, Metcalf did a PhD at A&M during his coaching career in something called Recreation and Resource Development. His dissertation was on the topic of how loud the crowd was for home games in College Station. This is definitely the peak of the American academic experience.

Metcalf finally recruited a Black player in 1971, hardly making him the first in the conference to do so. His teams remained pretty strong through the 80s. But when A&M hired local football hero John David Crow to be Athletic Director, it all fell apart because the two men hated each other. Metcalf had zero respect for Crow and told him so. Then Crow fired him for insubordination. Metcalf told the media “I made a comment that I didn’t think John David was all that bright. And I thought I was being generous.” I imagine the actual conversation was a bit more colorful than that.

In the aftermath of Metcalf’s firing, A&M reverted to being horrible at hoops for the next 15 years. Today, the program is pretty strong again, though more at the respectable level than actually a power. It has only made the NCAA tournament three times since joining the SEC in 2012, including this year where it was promptly upset in the first round.

Metcalf spent the rest of his life as Senior A&M Guy. He got some cushy “job” that mostly included giving speeches to boosters, raising money, and being Shelby Metcalf. He died in 2007, at the age of 76,

Shelby Metcalf is buried in Memorial Cemetery of College Station, College Station, Texas.

If you would like this series to visit other college basketball coaches, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Metcalf is presently tied at 111th all time coaching wins with 443. Peck Hickman, the Louisville coach from 1944-67 and who is the tie with Metcalf, is in Louisville and Johnny Orr, the long time Iowa State coach who is in 92nd place all time, is in Ames, Iowa. Truth be told, because there are so many more games played today, the list of all time winning coaches is increasingly dominated by active or recently retired coaches. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.