My email account is full, and 99 percent of the responses I've received are about our baseball series with our friends from the state capital. The emails started Friday, and waned a little on Saturday. However, Sunday evening I received an avalanche of concerns relating to the quality of umpiring of Big 12 baseball games.

There were two recurring themes from folks. First, they believe umpires are professionals, and if that is true, the writers are wondering how the umpires make glaring mistakes? The other theme focuses on the process to make sure mistakes don't happen again.

The Big 12 Conference has a very strict rule stating we cannot make any comments on officiating, good or bad. Candidly, I'm not in favor of that rule. But it's a rule and we will abide by it.

Last year, Texas A&M paid over $1 million in officiating fees across the board. The lion's share of the time, I believe we are getting our money's worth. No matter the outcome of the game, the checks always clear the bank. I've never had an official return a game check or fail to cash one either.

Rest assured I will raise the proper issues with the conference office. I've done this before in a variety of sports. However, I've seen the same officials still show up at our games. I rarely see changes.

***
To the few of you who attended the NCAA Tennis First and Second Rounds we hosted on campus last weekend, thank you. For the rest, you are missing out on seeing some great athletes. The NCAA Championships are back in College Station beginning Thursday.

Our men are seeded 15th and will face No. 2-seeded Mississippi on Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Sweet 16. Let's have a great crowd to support our team. One of the big reasons we host so many NCAA Championships is to give our teams the home court advantage. Our coaches have our team playing the best we played all season, and they advanced to the Sweet 16 in front of less than 300 fans last Saturday.

However, we found out this week, our men's team won the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's national attendance race for April, and we finished second in average attendance for the season. There was not a regular season men's dual match in the country which drew more fans than our match against Texas Tech. We had 1,089 at the Mitchell Tennis Center to watch the Aggies win.

You can purchase tickets in advance for the NCAA Tennis Championships by clicking here.

One of the things people often overlook is the logistics in running large championships like this. For example on Monday morning, we had a crew hauling furniture out of our player's lounge at the tennis center to relocate it to a new hospitality area, while through the other door people were bringing in equipment to transform the player's lounge into an interview and media work room.

Our shipping and receiving area at Kyle Field has been filled to the ceilings with an assortment of boxes for the NCAA Championships. On Monday, all those boxes had to be taken to the tennis center. We will help the NCAA distribute more than 650 mementos to student-athletes and coaches, and handout a variety of awards for the national champions and semifinalist teams, and several outstanding athletes who will compete in the singles and doubles championship next week.

We also received 80 cases of Wilson tennis balls and 1,100 umpire scorecards for use during the tournament.

Needless to say, Jim Kotch, who manages our receiving area at Kyle, is glad to see the tennis championships starting.

I bet you can't guess where we stored the extra water for the swimming championships last March.

A tip of the hat to our staff for all the extra hours they put in hosting not just tennis, but swimming and diving, and track and field. These events bring a lot of money into the community, and add to the prestige of Texas A&M University and the Athletic Department.

***
I was in Arizona last week for coaches and athletic directors meetings, and during some free time on Thursday and Friday, I went out to watch our women's golf team play in the NCAA West Regional.

Thursday, we teed off at 11:30 a.m., and the temperature was 102 degrees. But, it was a dry heat.

It was really neat to spend time with our team as well as their parents. An extra bonus for me was the Aggies were paired with the Oregon Ducks. One of the people I saw on the course was Oregon's senior women's administrator Renee Mack Baumgartner, someone I hired many years ago as the women's golf coach at Oregon.

I was able to see the Aggies play golf and able to see some old friends whose kids play for the Ducks.

The next morning at 7 a.m. it was a pleasant 78 degrees on the first tee. By the end of the front nine, it was 98 degrees. I decided not to follow on the back nine. On the third day, we played one of our tougher rounds of the season and missed the national championships by a few strokes.

I was reminded again how special it is to spend a few hours with our players, coaches, and families. They are wonderful people. Golf, like all of our teams, represents us well. An on-course official took time to come up to me and said our team was the most polite team she had ever encountered. She asked if all Texans are like that, I said, of course!

This week, our No. 13 men's golf team is seeded second at the NCAA West Regional in Daly City, Calif. Play begins on Thursday. The top five teams from each of six regionals will advance to the national championships on May 26.

***
We had a tough time in softball and women's tennis over the weekend.

Our softball team lost in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Championship to Baylor, 5-4. Then, on Sunday night, we learned our place in the field of 64 for the NCAA Softball Championship. We will be traveling to Gainesville, Fla., this week to face Lehigh, No. 1 ranked and No. 1 seeded Florida, and Florida A&M. Our first game is Friday at 2:30 p.m. It's the 19th NCAA appearance for our team. Last year, we played in the national championship game at the Women's College World Series.

We learned recently that former pitcher Amanda Scarborough will be a game analyst during ESPN's coverage of the softball Super Regionals

Meanwhile, our women's tennis season came to an end in Waco the first round of the NCAA Championship. We fell to No. 23 SMU, 4-1. It was our 10th straight appearance in the postseason.

One bit of good news this week in women's tennis came from the Intercollegiate Tennis Association. I'm proud to say we have won the national attendance race in women's tennis for the second straight year. We totaled 2,000 more fans than runner-up Alabama.

***
Our top-ranked women's track and field team, and our No. 3 men's team, will be in Lubbock this weekend for the Big 12 Championships. It's been fun following the success of our team this year. We have some amazing athletes who continue to impress me with their marks and the manner in which they conduct themselves on and off the track.

Two important points in the State Farm Lone Star Showdown are up for grabs during the meet. We trail our friends from the state capital 9.5 to 7.5. If we finish ahead of our friends in the final men's and women's standings, the State Farm Lone Star Showdown will end in a tie for the first time. A tie means the trophy will stay in possession of the school which won it the previous year. I'm proud to say that's us!

I rarely root for a tie in sports, but I'll make an exception this time.

After the Big 12 Championships, our team will be competing in the NCAA Midwest Regional in Norman, Oklahoma at the end of the month. The NCAA Championships will be June 10-12 in Fayetteville, Ark.

***
This weekend, a record 120 student-athletes are scheduled to graduate. I am so proud of all of our athletes, and how well they managed academics and their athletic endeavors. Here are a few notables among our graduates:
-Quarterback Stephen McGee is earning his master's degree in marketing, and already working at his other place of employment the Dallas Cowboys.
-Matt Van Zant will be competing in the NCAA golf regionals this weekend.
-Morenike Atunrase has finished work on her degree after playing in the WNBA.
--Former basketball player Atanas Kavaliauskas has completed his degree.
And Takia Starks takes her degree to the WNBA while Chinemelu Elonu has finished his degree and still has eligibility remaining.

***
When I opened the door to my office on Monday at 7:30 a.m. (it only took me 15 minutes to get to work because the students are taking finals), I hardly recognized the place. There were no photos on the walls or on the shelves, no files on my desk, and Post-It notes on all my furniture. It was a clear sign we are close to our moving date.

The next time I correspond with you, it will be from Reed Arena. We have transformed the third floor, also known as the Above the Rim Club room to some of you, into offices for some of our administrative staff, our swimming coaches, and for Hullaballoo Band.

Over the last two months, we have been moving out of our home offices in Koldus to new offices at the soccer complex, Kyle Field, Bright Complex, and Reed Arena. It's all part of the three-year renovation project of the Memorial Student Center as many of those offices will be moving to Koldus where we've been headquartered since 1992. It won't seem the same to me on football weekends being able to look out my window overlooking Houston Street for a few moments as people gathered for the Spirit Walk and Aggie Band march-in. I'll really miss that.

I've really enjoyed my communications with you over the academic season. Like we do each semester when the students leave, we will take a hiatus from Wednesday Weekly. If there are some hot button issues which arise, I will post a summer column. Until the fall, when we will be preparing to face New Mexico at Kyle Field, it's never too early to say let's beat the hell outta New Mexico!