The difference is that our death spiral had a fairly easy solution: get the right coach. Other than that, our schedule is not terribly difficult, and we do not have a lot of competition for top recruits in Texas. Once we fixed the coaching problem, everything fell into place. By contrast, I don't see aggy climbing out of this hole without changing conferences. They are always going to have several guaranteed losses in the SEC. And as long as Texas is doing well, it will be hard for aggy to attract recruits with promises that aggy will play a lot of superior in-conference opponents. Nobody wants to go to a school where they are basically guaranteed a bunch of losses, especially if they can go to Texas and see a clear path to winning the conference and getting into the championship mix. Moreover, even when aggy collectively realizes that their conference is dooming them, where are they going to go? They cannot very well come back to the Big 12. That would be admitting a mistake. They can't go to a lesser conference, because they think they are above that. Aggy is going to be stuck in this situation for a long, long time.