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Brad Marquardt (Texas A&M University) – 25-Year Award
by Jose De Jesus Ortiz, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Marquardt with his wife, Jenny, at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field.
As he was being knocked around from side to side while sitting atop an enormous drilling rig tower 100 feet above ground,
Brad Marquardt realized he needed a college education.
Marquardt, who grew up in a farm in tiny Boerne, Texas, spent his summers in high school working for his family’s well-drilling business. His father Glenn ran the shop and his mother Barbara handled the books. Marquardt was so busy holding on for dear life while moving pipes in those summers atop the drilling rig, he didn’t have time to dream of one day helping Johnny Manziel at the Jay Leno Show or Myles Garrett at the Lombardi Award Dinner or Dat Nguyen at the ESPN College Football Awards show.
The scared and shaking teenager atop the drilling rig never could have envisioned the countless magical sports moments he would see working for Texas A&M’s sports information department. This teenager from the small ranching community in the Texas Hill Country near San Antonio never could have expected to one day travel the country with some of the greatest names in Texas A&M sports history.
Back in the early 1980s, Marquardt was certain of only one thing: he needed to get a college education, preferably at Texas A&M.
“I was on top being knocked around,” Marquardt said. “And that’s when I said, ‘I have to go to college. I'm not cut out for this.’”
Although his parents didn’t attend Texas A&M, Marquardt grew up in an A&M family. That’s the university the family pulled for each Thanksgiving when the Aggies played the rival University of Texas Longhorns. Texas A&M hats and sweatshirts were the wardrobe accessories of choice when the Marquardts watched the Aggies against the Longhorns growing up. So there was no doubt that Marquardt would follow his older brother to Texas A&M.
Marquardt’s first step to Aggieland was an easy decision. The career choice that has kept him at Texas A&M was quite happenstance, though.
As fate would have it, one of the student assistants in the Texas A&M sports information department left school in 1987. A friend who was a fellow journalism student was already working for the SID office when Marquardt visited one day in the Fall of 1987.
That’s when Phyllis Miller, who worked for then-football coach Jackie Sherrill, asked Marquardt if he would be interested in working for the SID office.
“That sounds great,” Marquardt recalls saying, “but I don’t know what it is.”
Thirty-one years later, SID work still sounds great to Marquardt. He definitely knows more than quite a bit about the job’s requirements now. Serving as the associate director of media relations for the Aggies, he’s one of the best in the business, respected by fellow athletic communications professionals around the country, local beat writers, big-time national reporters and countless Texas A&M athletes he has helped throughout his career.
Marquardt, who will turn 52 in May, has been part of the Texas A&M athletic media relations office either as a student assistant or an employee at the school for all but one year since 1987. After graduating from Texas A&M in December 1988, he spent a semester as a student assistant. Then in the summer of 1989 he joined the SID office at the University of Georgia.
A year later, legendary Texas A&M media relations director Alan Cannon summoned Marquardt back home as an assistant SID. Marquardt began as a full-time assistant SID in 1990, primarily working with the football and men’s and women’s tennis teams. He was also responsible for the 12th Man Sports Hotline, which was a small tabloid newspaper produced for the 12th Man Foundation.
One of his first duties as a student assistant required him to find, cut and compile stories written about Texas A&M sports.
“I remember calling my mother and saying. ‘They’re paying me money to read the newspaper,’” Marquardt recalls with a chuckle.
Student assistants no longer search the print edition to compile the clips. They go online to find the stories, but Marquardt has his own special way that he likes to see the clips. So he still compiles the clips and puts them in a Microsoft Word file during the football season for the broadcasters who have grown accustomed to them. He spends his work day either writing press releases, media advisories, game previews and recaps. He also updates and tracks the notes of what happens through the year.
“I have to know what's going on in a big-picture way as far as record keeping and what’s important,” he said. “I guess just the years of covering Aggie football stand out. I love doing it.
I love knowing facts and figures and obscure things. I love the whole job of recording history and promoting student athletes, helping them with the media.”
Marquardt has helped many of the biggest names in Texas A&M sports history over the last three decades. He traveled to the Heisman and Davey O'Brien award presentations with Manziel in the days leading up to the event and through the presentations to help Manziel during numerous media obligations. He joined Von Miller in the weekend leading up to the Butkus Award dinner, and kicker Randy Bullock in the weekend leading up to the Groza Award dinner. He has chaperoned three of the biggest Texas A&M football stars of the last three decades - Nguyen, Mike Evans and Manziel - at ESPN’s Home Depot College Football Awards show.
Marquardt has tied so many tie knots during his career, he has lost count of the tie knots he has tied for numerous Texas A&M football players before awards shows across the country. He once even took off his Texas A&M pullover so that Manziel could wear it over a random T-shirt during an impromptu media session during the Heisman Award weekend.
“At the award shows I’m part media guy and part fashion consultant,” Marquardt said.
He has gone to New York for the NFL draft with Manziel, Evans and Jake Matthews. He also joined Manziel at the ESPYs.
Marquardt has come a long way since he sat atop that drilling rig. He found a home in Aggieland, where the world has opened up to him while he has spread the gospel of Texas A&M sports.