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ousux

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Damn, get those pants taken up about 4 inches.  
It would be easy to excuse that as a 5 year old suit that he "outgrew", but he was never tall enough for those pants. Looks like he stopped at JC Penney on the way to the aggy plane and just grabbed whatever they had that wasnt too small or too large.
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ousux

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They are blaming the recruit tracking services for their massive bleeding out their portal?
 
How does the logic of that work?
In their mind a media person simply contacting a player to see if they are thinking of entering the portal counts as pushing them in the motherfucker.

aggy logic, don't spend too much time trying to make sense of it.
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SHOOTER12

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2 hours ago, ousux said:
10 hours ago, HouTex said:
Damn, get those pants taken up about 4 inches.  

It would be easy to excuse that as a 5 year old suit that he "outgrew", but he was never tall enough for those pants. Looks like he stopped at JC Penney on the way to the aggy plane and just grabbed whatever they had that wasnt too small or too large.

JC Penney????

Try Salvation Army.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54,254

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3 hours ago, ousux said:
11 hours ago, HouTex said:
Damn, get those pants taken up about 4 inches.  

It would be easy to excuse that as a 5 year old suit that he "outgrew", but he was never tall enough for those pants. Looks like he stopped at JC Penney on the way to the aggy plane and just grabbed whatever they had that wasnt too small or too large.

Yet somehow, that suit manages to look both too small and too large.

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Hagbard Celine

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Sam Khan

The Athletic

20230629 (5 months ago)

spoilered for longcat but it's fantastic to read given the events of the past 5 months

https://theathletic.com/4650245/2023/06/29/texas-am-football-history/

Spoiler

What’s holding Texas A&M back? Six theories about college football’s would-be elites
Sam Khan Jr.
Jun 29, 2023

Former Texas A&M linebacker Dat Nguyen displays multiple flags outside of his home at any given time. He always features one representing his alma mater, where he starred from 1995 to ‘98.

Last fall, with the Aggies ranked sixth in the preseason AP Top 25 and optimism running high, Nguyen was so fully caught up in the hype that in place of a traditional Texas A&M flag, he created a custom design that he hoped would prove prophetic.

On the left was an old-school Texas Aggies logo, complete with Ol’ Sarge. On the right were four lines of text:

2023 CFP
National
Champions
Gig ‘em

Nguyen hung the flag up ahead of Texas A&M’s Week 2 game against Appalachian State. Hours later, after a stunning 17-14 loss to the Mountaineers, the flag came down, as did the Aggies’ hopes of a dream season.

“I put it up on Friday night and took it down Saturday afternoon,” Nguyen said with a laugh. “It didn’t even last 24 hours.”

Texas A&M football seems to have everything an elite program needs: Passionate, devoted fans. A top-tier athletics budget. An ideal recruiting footprint. Pristine facilities. But while other resource-rich programs have cemented their dominance of college football as more money flows through the sport, those same advantages haven’t brought consistent, big-time success to College Station in this century.

Last fall’s 5-7 debacle presented a unique set of problems for head coach Jimbo Fisher to solve, but his predecessors ran up against their own troubles while attempting to crack the code on how to raise Texas A&M football to an elite level. The Aggies haven’t won a conference championship since 1998 and last won a national title in 1939.

Why can’t Texas A&M seem to break through? Former Aggie players, administrators and longtime observers certainly have their theories.
Theory 1: Lack of administrative stability and alignment

Robert Gates, the former CIA director and U.S. Secretary of Defense who was Texas A&M’s president from 2002 to ‘06, once told Time Magazine that “Texas A&M football caused me more stress than I ever had.

“I asked my wife one time, ‘Why is that?’ And she said, ‘Because you have no control.’ … Here (as defense secretary), I have a little control.”

Administrative alignment and stability are a common thread among championship-caliber football schools. A clear understanding of who controls the program is as important as ever.

From 1999 to 2016, Oklahoma had the same president (David Boren), athletic director (Joe Castiglione) and head coach (Bob Stoops). In that time, the Sooners won a national championship and 10 conference titles. Though the president and coach have changed, Castiglione remains the school’s AD.

Clemson has had just two presidents since 1999 and three athletic directors since 2002. The Tigers’ current athletic director, Graham Neff, was at the university for eight years before being promoted in 2021 to succeed Dan Radakovich. Clemson’s president has even hosted recruits in his office and home to support football.

Georgia has had a total of three presidents since 1988 and four athletic directors since 1979. Alabama has had just three ADs since 1999. Ohio State has had two since 1994.

By comparison, since 2002, Texas A&M has had five school presidents, eight when including interim presidents. The school has had three athletic directors since joining the SEC in 2012.

“There’s no doubt that some stability is really critical to most things,” former Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin said.

“There are many hands involved at public universities of consequence, like the University of Texas or Texas A&M. You can argue whether that’s a good or bad thing, but it just is, and it has somewhat of a destabilizing effect.”

At Texas A&M, Loftin said, a “huge amount” of control was exercised by the Texas A&M university system rather than campus leadership itself during his tenure. He cited past football coach hiring and firing decisions that were made above the school president level as evidence. Eric Hyman, A&M’s athletic director during its first five years in the SEC, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2017 that he had “nothing to do” with a contract extension given to coach Kevin Sumlin at the end of 2013. “The contract was given to me, and it was, ‘This is what we are going to do,’” Hyman said. “I had no say over it.”

There’s also the task of dealing with Texas A&M’s multiple fundraising arms: the 12th Man Foundation, the primary athletics fundraiser; the Texas A&M Foundation, the primary academic fundraising entity; and the Association of Former Students, the school’s alumni organization. All three have their own boards, independent of the university. Loftin said the analogous organizations at Missouri, where he was chancellor following his A&M tenure, fell under the university’s umbrella and reported to him.

The independence of these types of entities at other schools can vary. At Georgia, both the academic and athletic fundraising arms are part of the university and the athletic department, respectively. Texas’ “Longhorn Foundation” and the “Red Raider Club” at Texas Tech are both part of their respective athletic departments. But at LSU, the Tiger Athletic Foundation is independent of the school. Clemson’s athletic fundraiser, IPTAY, is also classified as independent.

At Texas A&M, Loftin said, “every day was a negotiation.” Asked how possible it is to get everyone on the same page, Loftin said, “it’s possible but not easy or likely.”

To combat this, Loftin formed a council to bring the three presidents and board chairs of each of the fundraising organizations together to get them in sync. Loftin said things have gotten much better on that front since he left A&M in 2014.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Loftin said it’s hard to blame ADs for failings because “others get involved,” but that’s a common challenge at public universities, especially those with large alumni bases.

Still, Loftin believes that “if you were to get Jimbo alone right now and ask him who his real boss is, you might not get the answer you expect.”

Current Texas A&M AD Ross Bjork has spoken plenty in recent years about the athletic department and university’s support of Fisher. That was clear when they extended Fisher’s contract in 2021, and the Aggies have addressed virtually every resource need Fisher has raised.

But when comparing the minimal administrative turnover at other successful programs, it’s hard to ignore what A&M has endured on that front in the last 20 years.
Theory 2: Flubbed head coaching moves

The last time Texas A&M ranked No. 1 in the AP poll was November 1957.

The Aggies had a three-week stay atop the rankings under legendary coach Bear Bryant. They were 8-0 and had hopes of winning it all. The day before A&M met No. 20 Rice, newspaper reports surfaced indicating that Bryant was the choice to be Alabama’s next coach.

Bryant vehemently denied it, saying, “We’re fighting for our lives here both tomorrow and on Thanksgiving Day (against Texas). I have recommended a coach for Alabama and it isn’t Paul Bryant.”

The Aggies lost 7-6 to the Owls the next day, to the Longhorns a week after and in the Gator Bowl to Tennessee, to finish 8-3. Bryant did leave for Alabama, and A&M hasn’t returned to No. 1 since.

It took the Aggies years to recover from Bryant’s exit. The next two coaches, Jim Myers and Hank Foldberg, went a combined 18-47-5 from 1958 to 1964. Gene Stallings went 27-45-1 in his seven years at the helm. Emory Bellard took A&M to consecutive 10-win seasons in 1975 and 1976 but resigned in the middle of 1978 after two blowout losses: a 33-0 defeat at Houston and a 24-6 home loss to Baylor.

The school’s two most successful coaches post-Bryant, Jackie Sherrill and R.C. Slocum, both won consistently but left unceremoniously. Sherrill led the Aggies to three Southwest Conference titles, but he was fired amid allegations of NCAA rules violations. Slocum, the winningest coach in Texas A&M history, went 123-47 over 14 years, led the Aggies to five double-digit win seasons and four conference championships and never finished a season with a losing record.

And in 2002, after a 6-6 finish, he was shown the door.

“R.C. had more success than any coach in the history of this school,” said former Texas A&M radio play-by-play announcer Dave South, who was the voice of the Aggies for 33 years. “Suddenly he’s gone, and you start from scratch.”

No coach since has lasted longer than six years. Dennis Franchione, Slocum’s successor, went 4-8 in his first season, including an embarrassing 77-0 loss to Oklahoma, the worst defeat in school history. But after going 7-5 in 2004, Franchione got a raise and a contract extension. He won more than seven games in a season only once and resigned after five years and a 32-29 record.

Mike Sherman followed in 2008 but went 25-25 in four seasons. His final year, 2011, began with Texas A&M in the preseason top 10, but the Aggies lost five games in which they built double-digit leads, including a 27-25 loss to rival Texas, and finished 6-6, leading to Sherman’s dismissal.

After making an early splash in the SEC with help from Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel during an 11-2 debut season, Kevin Sumlin got not one but two contract extensions within a year — one after the 2012 season and another late in the 2013 season as his name emerged in the coaching carousel rumor mill.

The second extension fully guaranteed Sumlin $30 million over six years and included a clause that the buyout had to be paid within 60 days of termination. According to USA Today, at that time every other school in the country that paid its coach at least $4 million per year included a buyout that stopped short of the full contract value. Sumlin never reached double-digit wins again in his tenure and was fired after six seasons.

One longtime Texas A&M observer called the school “the most extension-happy university I’ve ever seen in my life.” The observer cited the scars from Bryant’s departure as an undertone to the extensions, hypothesizing that A&M fears an elite coach leaving the university again.

Fisher, who followed Sumlin, received a fully guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract when hired in December 2017. In 2021, a year after the Aggies went 9-1 and finished No. 4 in the AP poll, he received a contract extension that raised his salary to $9 million and guaranteed him $94.9 million. On July 1, there will be $81.3 million remaining on the deal, which runs through 2031.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Coaching turnover happens everywhere, and A&M is no different in that regard. And the Aggies aren’t the only school to give massive guaranteed contract extensions. Michigan State gave Mel Tucker a 10-year, $95 million extension that was fully guaranteed in 2021.

Fisher’s extension in 2021 was a proactive move to help stave off potential suitors following the top-five finish. It worked, but now the Aggies are stuck with Fisher for a long time unless they want to pay a hefty buyout. Coaches typically have the biggest impact on a team’s success, so finding and keeping the right one is critical.
Theory 3: The expectations don’t always match the money

Why the Aggies haven’t put it all together is “the million-dollar question … or in this case, the almost billion-dollar question,” former Texas A&M quarterback Stephen McGee said.

But McGee, who played at A&M from 2005 to 2008, wonders if Texas A&M is demanding enough of success.

“The culture and the expectation, not just internally in the program but externally, isn’t demanding of greatness,” McGee said.

McGee offered as a counterexample a program like Alabama, where after one 9-3 season, “they’re pissed off. They’re ready to get rid of people.” That culture seeps into the program itself, he said.

At Texas A&M? “There’s an acceptance of 9-3, that we had a great year.”

The Aggies have reached nine wins just six times in the 24 seasons since their last conference title. They’ve won at least nine games in consecutive seasons just once: 2012 and 2013, the two years with Manziel as the starter. His Heisman Trophy year was the only double-digit win season in that span, though the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign had the makings of a 10-win season if the Aggies had played a full slate of games.

The Manziel years, during which the Aggies went 20-6, triggered a new financial era for A&M. According to the Knight Foundation, Texas A&M’s athletic revenue has ranked in the top 10 nationally in 10 of the last 11 years. Between 2015 and ‘19, A&M ranked either first or second in the nation in revenue.

The Aggies spent $485 million to renovate Kyle Field, a project that was completed in 2015. Another $32 million went toward Bright Complex renovations in the mid-2010s. A $9 million, 19,000-square foot football-only weight room was erected in 2012 and upgraded later in the decade.

Another Bright renovation and a new indoor practice facility are part of a $200 million athletics facilities plan that has already begun construction.

These are all positives for A&M football. You’d be hard-pressed to find a program that wins at the highest level and doesn’t have nice things.

But it takes more than money to build a consistent winner.

“You can spend as much money as you want and you still might get some bad bounces in the course of a season,” former Texas A&M defensive lineman Jay Arnold said. “And somebody else is going to be spending, too. … Money isn’t going to be the be-all, end-all.”

A&M wasn’t always flush with money. Loftin, a 1970 graduate of A&M, said “we were a very poor school” back then. The baseball field sat at the south end of Kyle Field and had no lights until Pat Olsen donated money for some in the late 1970s. The Aggies played every LSU football game at Tiger Stadium between 1960 and 1975 because at the time, seating at Kyle Field was insufficient. “They paid us,” Loftin said. “It was a money game.”

Even at the turn of the century, the Aggies weren’t at the forefront of spending on football. Before the 2003 opening of the Bright Football Complex — a building he helped raised money for but never got to use — Slocum told the Austin American-Statesman that the locker rooms he showed recruits in 2002 were the same ones he showed Ray Childress, the Aggies’ 1984 All-American. Meanwhile, rival Texas was in its fifth year of residence in the Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletic Complex, giving then-coach Mack Brown and the Longhorns a recruiting advantage.

A&M doesn’t want for anything these days. Everything is first-class. McGee said all the money spent to be competitive makes the lack of success disappointing, but he wonders if it can backfire with 18- to 22-year-olds.

“One of my concerns is that when you create all this, it opens the door for some entitlement to creep in,” McGee said. “Like, ‘I don’t have to work, I’m great and I deserve this,’ as opposed to having a chip on your shoulder and really being hungry. That’s one of the battles these coaches have to deal with on a daily basis, and it’s not just A&M.”

Bottom line, McGee said, the culture and expectation has to “strongly push that anything less than perfection is not acceptable.”

How credible is this theory in 2023? It’s hard to criticize A&M for spending lavishly on infrastructure because college football’s arms race has largely demanded it. Skyrocketing television money meant windfalls for athletics and particularly college football programs.

McGee’s theory that A&M is OK with less than perfection is fascinating but hard to quantify. But the extensions early in the Franchione, Sumlin and Fisher eras — even if they’re in line with what it takes to keep a coach these days — lend it some credence.
Theory 4: The SEC move made the football program’s journey to the top harder

Ask any Aggie who is invested in the school’s athletic success about the decision to join the SEC, and it’ll undoubtedly be framed as a positive.

Though the move was hotly debated at the time, there’s no question Texas A&M has benefited from membership in its current league. The immediate success of 2012 raised the program’s profile immensely and paved the way for that influx of cash and infrastructure upgrades, not to mention an uptick in the recruiting rankings.

The program has had a better winning percentage in the SEC (.652) than it did during its time in the Big 12 (.568), but championships have been harder to come by. Of the last 17 national champions, 13 have come from the SEC. Nine of those titles have been won by other SEC West teams: Alabama (six titles), LSU (two) and Auburn.

The Aggies played in two Big 12 championship games in the league’s first three years, winning the league in 1998, but they haven’t been to a conference title game since and are still waiting to make a trip to Atlanta.

“You’re coming through the toughest maw there is: the SEC,” Loftin said.

How credible is this theory in 2023? A&M’s first year in the SEC was a perfect storm, providing a glimpse of the potential the program has. But winning consistently in the SEC requires something it took time for the Aggies to build: SEC-quality roster depth.

The Aggies have reached that point on the strength of recruiting (last year they were fourth nationally in 247Sports’ Team Talent Composite), but two of the three teams above them reside in the SEC: Alabama and Georgia.

Would the Aggies reach this level of recruiting if they had stayed in the Big 12? It’s hard to know for sure, but it seems unlikely.  The Aggies have signed six top-10 classes since joining the league, including the No. 1 class in 2022. In A&M’s last 10 years in the Big 12, the Aggies signed just two top-10 classes.

The shift from a four-team College Football Playoff to a 12-team field could change Texas A&M’s outlook on its conference gauntlet. In the current four-team setup, getting in without winning the SEC, or at least the SEC West, is virtually impossible. But neither will be a prerequisite to be one of the six at-large bids in a 12-team format. A 10-2 record in the SEC will likely be good enough.

Meanwhile, the league will get even deeper when Texas and Oklahoma join in 2024.
Theory 5: Bad luck

Setting aside the bigger-picture issues, a few what-ifs and bad bounces in recent A&M history have left Aggies wondering how close to the mountaintop they really are.

What if, in 2012, Texas A&M doesn’t miss two field goals and an extra point in a five-point loss to LSU? Do the Aggies still win out — including the memorable win over Alabama — finish 11-1 and go to the SEC championship game? Would the Aggies have played for a national title?

“I think A&M in 2012 was the hottest team in the country at the end of that season,” Arnold said.

What if, in 2016, after the Aggies debuted at No. 4 in the College Football Playoff rankings, quarterback Trevor Knight doesn’t suffer a shoulder injury at Mississippi State? Do the Aggies come back to win that game, remain in Playoff contention and retain their momentum instead of losing three of their last four?

“Things happen,” Nguyen said. “Some things you can’t control.”

Last season was littered with injuries. Expected A&M starters missed at least 86 combined games in 2022 because of injury or illness, and all three quarterbacks who started a game were unavailable for at least one. Five different players started at left guard. True freshmen accounted for 72 combined starts.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Yes, A&M has endured some bad bounces, but plenty of other teams have bad luck. It’s valid to assign some blame here, but it’s hard to chalk all of the Aggies’ struggles up to misfortune.
Theory 6: They’ll get there, it just hasn’t happened yet

Because recent years have seen such heavy investment and accumulation of talent via recruiting, many still hope that A&M can turn the corner.

Nguyen recalled a rough showing in 1996, A&M’s first in the Big 12, when the Aggies went 6-6. The next year they improved to nine wins but were routed in the Big 12 title game by Nebraska. The team made a pact never to let it happen again. The next year, the Aggies went 11-3 and upset Kansas State to win the Big 12.

“When you hit rock bottom, you gotta climb and go back up somehow,” Nguyen said. “I know we have fighters in the program.”

Despite all the handwringing about the Aggies’ disastrous 2022, there’s real reason for optimism in 2023. They have a quarterback, Conner Weigman, who looks like a future star. They’ll have one of the most talented receiving corps in the country, led by Ainias Smith, Evan Stewart and Moose Muhammad III. The entire offensive line is back. Fisher hired Bobby Petrino to run the offense after the head coach endured widespread criticism for the unit’s downturn.

The Aggies have so much talent that it wouldn’t be a complete shock if they made legitimate noise this fall.

“I’m not predicting that we’re going to win the championship this year,” McGee said, “but I feel as good about (Weigman) and his ceiling as a quarterback as almost any guy we’ve ever had.”

Leveling up in college football is hard but not impossible. Clemson went from 1991 to 2010 without winning 10 games a single time. They won nine games six times in that 20-year window and had four different coaches. But Dabo Swinney and the Tigers found their breakthrough eventually, and Clemson has won at least 10 games every single season since 2011. In 2016 and 2018, they won the national championship.

McGee, who said he’s “an eternal optimist,” thinks it’s a matter of time before the Aggies turn that corner.

Loftin thinks that when A&M gets to the level it desires, it will hang around for a while.

“I’m confident it’s going to happen, I just can’t tell you when,” he said. “It won’t be a single season. We will win not only multiple football championships, but multiple championships in other sports as well.

“That’s going to happen. I just pray I’m alive for it.”

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories examining the 2023 college football season’s most intriguing programs. Which teams are primed to break out? Struggling to find consistency? What’s gone right — or wrong — and what comes next? More recent stories in this series:

    What will Navy be after Ken Niumatalolo? New coach, new approach, ‘no excuses’
    After Oklahoma State’s roller-coaster 2022, Mike Gundy ‘ain’t gonna get surprised again’
    How Luke Fickell is changing Wisconsin football: Will Chris McIntosh’s bold move pay off?
    Can Bret Bielema lead Illinois out of its 30-year slumber?
    Can Mel Tucker, Michigan State find an identity amid transfer portal highs, lows?
    Will Syracuse football ever reclaim glory? Former players reminisce, and answer is unclear

(Top illustration: Sean Reilly for The Athletic; Photos: Brian Bahr / Allsport, Scott Halleran, Jack Gorman / Getty Images)
Get all-access to exclusive stories.

Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. Try a week on us.

[Image: Sam Khan Jr.]

Sam Khan Jr. is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football and recruiting primarily in Texas. Previously, he spent eight years covering college sports at ESPN.com and seven years as a sports reporter at the Houston Chronicle. A native Houstonian, Sam graduated from the University of Houston. Follow Sam on Twitter @skhanjr

 

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1 hour ago, Hagbard Celine said:

Sam Khan

The Athletic

20230629 (5 months ago)

spoilered for longcat but it's fantastic to read given the events of the past 5 months

https://theathletic.com/4650245/2023/06/29/texas-am-football-history/

  Reveal hidden contents

What’s holding Texas A&M back? Six theories about college football’s would-be elites
Sam Khan Jr.
Jun 29, 2023

Former Texas A&M linebacker Dat Nguyen displays multiple flags outside of his home at any given time. He always features one representing his alma mater, where he starred from 1995 to ‘98.

Last fall, with the Aggies ranked sixth in the preseason AP Top 25 and optimism running high, Nguyen was so fully caught up in the hype that in place of a traditional Texas A&M flag, he created a custom design that he hoped would prove prophetic.

On the left was an old-school Texas Aggies logo, complete with Ol’ Sarge. On the right were four lines of text:

2023 CFP
National
Champions
Gig ‘em

Nguyen hung the flag up ahead of Texas A&M’s Week 2 game against Appalachian State. Hours later, after a stunning 17-14 loss to the Mountaineers, the flag came down, as did the Aggies’ hopes of a dream season.

“I put it up on Friday night and took it down Saturday afternoon,” Nguyen said with a laugh. “It didn’t even last 24 hours.”

Texas A&M football seems to have everything an elite program needs: Passionate, devoted fans. A top-tier athletics budget. An ideal recruiting footprint. Pristine facilities. But while other resource-rich programs have cemented their dominance of college football as more money flows through the sport, those same advantages haven’t brought consistent, big-time success to College Station in this century.

Last fall’s 5-7 debacle presented a unique set of problems for head coach Jimbo Fisher to solve, but his predecessors ran up against their own troubles while attempting to crack the code on how to raise Texas A&M football to an elite level. The Aggies haven’t won a conference championship since 1998 and last won a national title in 1939.

Why can’t Texas A&M seem to break through? Former Aggie players, administrators and longtime observers certainly have their theories.
Theory 1: Lack of administrative stability and alignment

Robert Gates, the former CIA director and U.S. Secretary of Defense who was Texas A&M’s president from 2002 to ‘06, once told Time Magazine that “Texas A&M football caused me more stress than I ever had.

“I asked my wife one time, ‘Why is that?’ And she said, ‘Because you have no control.’ … Here (as defense secretary), I have a little control.”

Administrative alignment and stability are a common thread among championship-caliber football schools. A clear understanding of who controls the program is as important as ever.

From 1999 to 2016, Oklahoma had the same president (David Boren), athletic director (Joe Castiglione) and head coach (Bob Stoops). In that time, the Sooners won a national championship and 10 conference titles. Though the president and coach have changed, Castiglione remains the school’s AD.

Clemson has had just two presidents since 1999 and three athletic directors since 2002. The Tigers’ current athletic director, Graham Neff, was at the university for eight years before being promoted in 2021 to succeed Dan Radakovich. Clemson’s president has even hosted recruits in his office and home to support football.

Georgia has had a total of three presidents since 1988 and four athletic directors since 1979. Alabama has had just three ADs since 1999. Ohio State has had two since 1994.

By comparison, since 2002, Texas A&M has had five school presidents, eight when including interim presidents. The school has had three athletic directors since joining the SEC in 2012.

“There’s no doubt that some stability is really critical to most things,” former Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin said.

“There are many hands involved at public universities of consequence, like the University of Texas or Texas A&M. You can argue whether that’s a good or bad thing, but it just is, and it has somewhat of a destabilizing effect.”

At Texas A&M, Loftin said, a “huge amount” of control was exercised by the Texas A&M university system rather than campus leadership itself during his tenure. He cited past football coach hiring and firing decisions that were made above the school president level as evidence. Eric Hyman, A&M’s athletic director during its first five years in the SEC, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2017 that he had “nothing to do” with a contract extension given to coach Kevin Sumlin at the end of 2013. “The contract was given to me, and it was, ‘This is what we are going to do,’” Hyman said. “I had no say over it.”

There’s also the task of dealing with Texas A&M’s multiple fundraising arms: the 12th Man Foundation, the primary athletics fundraiser; the Texas A&M Foundation, the primary academic fundraising entity; and the Association of Former Students, the school’s alumni organization. All three have their own boards, independent of the university. Loftin said the analogous organizations at Missouri, where he was chancellor following his A&M tenure, fell under the university’s umbrella and reported to him.

The independence of these types of entities at other schools can vary. At Georgia, both the academic and athletic fundraising arms are part of the university and the athletic department, respectively. Texas’ “Longhorn Foundation” and the “Red Raider Club” at Texas Tech are both part of their respective athletic departments. But at LSU, the Tiger Athletic Foundation is independent of the school. Clemson’s athletic fundraiser, IPTAY, is also classified as independent.

At Texas A&M, Loftin said, “every day was a negotiation.” Asked how possible it is to get everyone on the same page, Loftin said, “it’s possible but not easy or likely.”

To combat this, Loftin formed a council to bring the three presidents and board chairs of each of the fundraising organizations together to get them in sync. Loftin said things have gotten much better on that front since he left A&M in 2014.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Loftin said it’s hard to blame ADs for failings because “others get involved,” but that’s a common challenge at public universities, especially those with large alumni bases.

Still, Loftin believes that “if you were to get Jimbo alone right now and ask him who his real boss is, you might not get the answer you expect.”

Current Texas A&M AD Ross Bjork has spoken plenty in recent years about the athletic department and university’s support of Fisher. That was clear when they extended Fisher’s contract in 2021, and the Aggies have addressed virtually every resource need Fisher has raised.

But when comparing the minimal administrative turnover at other successful programs, it’s hard to ignore what A&M has endured on that front in the last 20 years.
Theory 2: Flubbed head coaching moves

The last time Texas A&M ranked No. 1 in the AP poll was November 1957.

The Aggies had a three-week stay atop the rankings under legendary coach Bear Bryant. They were 8-0 and had hopes of winning it all. The day before A&M met No. 20 Rice, newspaper reports surfaced indicating that Bryant was the choice to be Alabama’s next coach.

Bryant vehemently denied it, saying, “We’re fighting for our lives here both tomorrow and on Thanksgiving Day (against Texas). I have recommended a coach for Alabama and it isn’t Paul Bryant.”

The Aggies lost 7-6 to the Owls the next day, to the Longhorns a week after and in the Gator Bowl to Tennessee, to finish 8-3. Bryant did leave for Alabama, and A&M hasn’t returned to No. 1 since.

It took the Aggies years to recover from Bryant’s exit. The next two coaches, Jim Myers and Hank Foldberg, went a combined 18-47-5 from 1958 to 1964. Gene Stallings went 27-45-1 in his seven years at the helm. Emory Bellard took A&M to consecutive 10-win seasons in 1975 and 1976 but resigned in the middle of 1978 after two blowout losses: a 33-0 defeat at Houston and a 24-6 home loss to Baylor.

The school’s two most successful coaches post-Bryant, Jackie Sherrill and R.C. Slocum, both won consistently but left unceremoniously. Sherrill led the Aggies to three Southwest Conference titles, but he was fired amid allegations of NCAA rules violations. Slocum, the winningest coach in Texas A&M history, went 123-47 over 14 years, led the Aggies to five double-digit win seasons and four conference championships and never finished a season with a losing record.

And in 2002, after a 6-6 finish, he was shown the door.

“R.C. had more success than any coach in the history of this school,” said former Texas A&M radio play-by-play announcer Dave South, who was the voice of the Aggies for 33 years. “Suddenly he’s gone, and you start from scratch.”

No coach since has lasted longer than six years. Dennis Franchione, Slocum’s successor, went 4-8 in his first season, including an embarrassing 77-0 loss to Oklahoma, the worst defeat in school history. But after going 7-5 in 2004, Franchione got a raise and a contract extension. He won more than seven games in a season only once and resigned after five years and a 32-29 record.

Mike Sherman followed in 2008 but went 25-25 in four seasons. His final year, 2011, began with Texas A&M in the preseason top 10, but the Aggies lost five games in which they built double-digit leads, including a 27-25 loss to rival Texas, and finished 6-6, leading to Sherman’s dismissal.

After making an early splash in the SEC with help from Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel during an 11-2 debut season, Kevin Sumlin got not one but two contract extensions within a year — one after the 2012 season and another late in the 2013 season as his name emerged in the coaching carousel rumor mill.

The second extension fully guaranteed Sumlin $30 million over six years and included a clause that the buyout had to be paid within 60 days of termination. According to USA Today, at that time every other school in the country that paid its coach at least $4 million per year included a buyout that stopped short of the full contract value. Sumlin never reached double-digit wins again in his tenure and was fired after six seasons.

One longtime Texas A&M observer called the school “the most extension-happy university I’ve ever seen in my life.” The observer cited the scars from Bryant’s departure as an undertone to the extensions, hypothesizing that A&M fears an elite coach leaving the university again.

Fisher, who followed Sumlin, received a fully guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract when hired in December 2017. In 2021, a year after the Aggies went 9-1 and finished No. 4 in the AP poll, he received a contract extension that raised his salary to $9 million and guaranteed him $94.9 million. On July 1, there will be $81.3 million remaining on the deal, which runs through 2031.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Coaching turnover happens everywhere, and A&M is no different in that regard. And the Aggies aren’t the only school to give massive guaranteed contract extensions. Michigan State gave Mel Tucker a 10-year, $95 million extension that was fully guaranteed in 2021.

Fisher’s extension in 2021 was a proactive move to help stave off potential suitors following the top-five finish. It worked, but now the Aggies are stuck with Fisher for a long time unless they want to pay a hefty buyout. Coaches typically have the biggest impact on a team’s success, so finding and keeping the right one is critical.
Theory 3: The expectations don’t always match the money

Why the Aggies haven’t put it all together is “the million-dollar question … or in this case, the almost billion-dollar question,” former Texas A&M quarterback Stephen McGee said.

But McGee, who played at A&M from 2005 to 2008, wonders if Texas A&M is demanding enough of success.

“The culture and the expectation, not just internally in the program but externally, isn’t demanding of greatness,” McGee said.

McGee offered as a counterexample a program like Alabama, where after one 9-3 season, “they’re pissed off. They’re ready to get rid of people.” That culture seeps into the program itself, he said.

At Texas A&M? “There’s an acceptance of 9-3, that we had a great year.”

The Aggies have reached nine wins just six times in the 24 seasons since their last conference title. They’ve won at least nine games in consecutive seasons just once: 2012 and 2013, the two years with Manziel as the starter. His Heisman Trophy year was the only double-digit win season in that span, though the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign had the makings of a 10-win season if the Aggies had played a full slate of games.

The Manziel years, during which the Aggies went 20-6, triggered a new financial era for A&M. According to the Knight Foundation, Texas A&M’s athletic revenue has ranked in the top 10 nationally in 10 of the last 11 years. Between 2015 and ‘19, A&M ranked either first or second in the nation in revenue.

The Aggies spent $485 million to renovate Kyle Field, a project that was completed in 2015. Another $32 million went toward Bright Complex renovations in the mid-2010s. A $9 million, 19,000-square foot football-only weight room was erected in 2012 and upgraded later in the decade.

Another Bright renovation and a new indoor practice facility are part of a $200 million athletics facilities plan that has already begun construction.

These are all positives for A&M football. You’d be hard-pressed to find a program that wins at the highest level and doesn’t have nice things.

But it takes more than money to build a consistent winner.

“You can spend as much money as you want and you still might get some bad bounces in the course of a season,” former Texas A&M defensive lineman Jay Arnold said. “And somebody else is going to be spending, too. … Money isn’t going to be the be-all, end-all.”

A&M wasn’t always flush with money. Loftin, a 1970 graduate of A&M, said “we were a very poor school” back then. The baseball field sat at the south end of Kyle Field and had no lights until Pat Olsen donated money for some in the late 1970s. The Aggies played every LSU football game at Tiger Stadium between 1960 and 1975 because at the time, seating at Kyle Field was insufficient. “They paid us,” Loftin said. “It was a money game.”

Even at the turn of the century, the Aggies weren’t at the forefront of spending on football. Before the 2003 opening of the Bright Football Complex — a building he helped raised money for but never got to use — Slocum told the Austin American-Statesman that the locker rooms he showed recruits in 2002 were the same ones he showed Ray Childress, the Aggies’ 1984 All-American. Meanwhile, rival Texas was in its fifth year of residence in the Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletic Complex, giving then-coach Mack Brown and the Longhorns a recruiting advantage.

A&M doesn’t want for anything these days. Everything is first-class. McGee said all the money spent to be competitive makes the lack of success disappointing, but he wonders if it can backfire with 18- to 22-year-olds.

“One of my concerns is that when you create all this, it opens the door for some entitlement to creep in,” McGee said. “Like, ‘I don’t have to work, I’m great and I deserve this,’ as opposed to having a chip on your shoulder and really being hungry. That’s one of the battles these coaches have to deal with on a daily basis, and it’s not just A&M.”

Bottom line, McGee said, the culture and expectation has to “strongly push that anything less than perfection is not acceptable.”

How credible is this theory in 2023? It’s hard to criticize A&M for spending lavishly on infrastructure because college football’s arms race has largely demanded it. Skyrocketing television money meant windfalls for athletics and particularly college football programs.

McGee’s theory that A&M is OK with less than perfection is fascinating but hard to quantify. But the extensions early in the Franchione, Sumlin and Fisher eras — even if they’re in line with what it takes to keep a coach these days — lend it some credence.
Theory 4: The SEC move made the football program’s journey to the top harder

Ask any Aggie who is invested in the school’s athletic success about the decision to join the SEC, and it’ll undoubtedly be framed as a positive.

Though the move was hotly debated at the time, there’s no question Texas A&M has benefited from membership in its current league. The immediate success of 2012 raised the program’s profile immensely and paved the way for that influx of cash and infrastructure upgrades, not to mention an uptick in the recruiting rankings.

The program has had a better winning percentage in the SEC (.652) than it did during its time in the Big 12 (.568), but championships have been harder to come by. Of the last 17 national champions, 13 have come from the SEC. Nine of those titles have been won by other SEC West teams: Alabama (six titles), LSU (two) and Auburn.

The Aggies played in two Big 12 championship games in the league’s first three years, winning the league in 1998, but they haven’t been to a conference title game since and are still waiting to make a trip to Atlanta.

“You’re coming through the toughest maw there is: the SEC,” Loftin said.

How credible is this theory in 2023? A&M’s first year in the SEC was a perfect storm, providing a glimpse of the potential the program has. But winning consistently in the SEC requires something it took time for the Aggies to build: SEC-quality roster depth.

The Aggies have reached that point on the strength of recruiting (last year they were fourth nationally in 247Sports’ Team Talent Composite), but two of the three teams above them reside in the SEC: Alabama and Georgia.

Would the Aggies reach this level of recruiting if they had stayed in the Big 12? It’s hard to know for sure, but it seems unlikely.  The Aggies have signed six top-10 classes since joining the league, including the No. 1 class in 2022. In A&M’s last 10 years in the Big 12, the Aggies signed just two top-10 classes.

The shift from a four-team College Football Playoff to a 12-team field could change Texas A&M’s outlook on its conference gauntlet. In the current four-team setup, getting in without winning the SEC, or at least the SEC West, is virtually impossible. But neither will be a prerequisite to be one of the six at-large bids in a 12-team format. A 10-2 record in the SEC will likely be good enough.

Meanwhile, the league will get even deeper when Texas and Oklahoma join in 2024.
Theory 5: Bad luck

Setting aside the bigger-picture issues, a few what-ifs and bad bounces in recent A&M history have left Aggies wondering how close to the mountaintop they really are.

What if, in 2012, Texas A&M doesn’t miss two field goals and an extra point in a five-point loss to LSU? Do the Aggies still win out — including the memorable win over Alabama — finish 11-1 and go to the SEC championship game? Would the Aggies have played for a national title?

“I think A&M in 2012 was the hottest team in the country at the end of that season,” Arnold said.

What if, in 2016, after the Aggies debuted at No. 4 in the College Football Playoff rankings, quarterback Trevor Knight doesn’t suffer a shoulder injury at Mississippi State? Do the Aggies come back to win that game, remain in Playoff contention and retain their momentum instead of losing three of their last four?

“Things happen,” Nguyen said. “Some things you can’t control.”

Last season was littered with injuries. Expected A&M starters missed at least 86 combined games in 2022 because of injury or illness, and all three quarterbacks who started a game were unavailable for at least one. Five different players started at left guard. True freshmen accounted for 72 combined starts.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Yes, A&M has endured some bad bounces, but plenty of other teams have bad luck. It’s valid to assign some blame here, but it’s hard to chalk all of the Aggies’ struggles up to misfortune.
Theory 6: They’ll get there, it just hasn’t happened yet

Because recent years have seen such heavy investment and accumulation of talent via recruiting, many still hope that A&M can turn the corner.

Nguyen recalled a rough showing in 1996, A&M’s first in the Big 12, when the Aggies went 6-6. The next year they improved to nine wins but were routed in the Big 12 title game by Nebraska. The team made a pact never to let it happen again. The next year, the Aggies went 11-3 and upset Kansas State to win the Big 12.

“When you hit rock bottom, you gotta climb and go back up somehow,” Nguyen said. “I know we have fighters in the program.”

Despite all the handwringing about the Aggies’ disastrous 2022, there’s real reason for optimism in 2023. They have a quarterback, Conner Weigman, who looks like a future star. They’ll have one of the most talented receiving corps in the country, led by Ainias Smith, Evan Stewart and Moose Muhammad III. The entire offensive line is back. Fisher hired Bobby Petrino to run the offense after the head coach endured widespread criticism for the unit’s downturn.

The Aggies have so much talent that it wouldn’t be a complete shock if they made legitimate noise this fall.

“I’m not predicting that we’re going to win the championship this year,” McGee said, “but I feel as good about (Weigman) and his ceiling as a quarterback as almost any guy we’ve ever had.”

Leveling up in college football is hard but not impossible. Clemson went from 1991 to 2010 without winning 10 games a single time. They won nine games six times in that 20-year window and had four different coaches. But Dabo Swinney and the Tigers found their breakthrough eventually, and Clemson has won at least 10 games every single season since 2011. In 2016 and 2018, they won the national championship.

McGee, who said he’s “an eternal optimist,” thinks it’s a matter of time before the Aggies turn that corner.

Loftin thinks that when A&M gets to the level it desires, it will hang around for a while.

“I’m confident it’s going to happen, I just can’t tell you when,” he said. “It won’t be a single season. We will win not only multiple football championships, but multiple championships in other sports as well.

“That’s going to happen. I just pray I’m alive for it.”

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories examining the 2023 college football season’s most intriguing programs. Which teams are primed to break out? Struggling to find consistency? What’s gone right — or wrong — and what comes next? More recent stories in this series:

    What will Navy be after Ken Niumatalolo? New coach, new approach, ‘no excuses’
    After Oklahoma State’s roller-coaster 2022, Mike Gundy ‘ain’t gonna get surprised again’
    How Luke Fickell is changing Wisconsin football: Will Chris McIntosh’s bold move pay off?
    Can Bret Bielema lead Illinois out of its 30-year slumber?
    Can Mel Tucker, Michigan State find an identity amid transfer portal highs, lows?
    Will Syracuse football ever reclaim glory? Former players reminisce, and answer is unclear

(Top illustration: Sean Reilly for The Athletic; Photos: Brian Bahr / Allsport, Scott Halleran, Jack Gorman / Getty Images)
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[Image: Sam Khan Jr.]

Sam Khan Jr. is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football and recruiting primarily in Texas. Previously, he spent eight years covering college sports at ESPN.com and seven years as a sports reporter at the Houston Chronicle. A native Houstonian, Sam graduated from the University of Houston. Follow Sam on Twitter @skhanjr

 

They are beating around the bush they are racist, noone wants to really go there and they can only motivate through greed not excellence or competence.

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closetojumping

closetojumping 62,746

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I guess it should be a given that at least once every 3-4 months that the fucking band nerds and another dumb fucking band discussion has to spring up on the aggie thread. We can’t let them dork out too far in front of us. Got to rein that shit in with some grade school band nostalgia and an argument about pace or whatever the fuck. Jesus. 

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miguelito

miguelito 11,266

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2 hours ago, closetojumping said:

I guess it should be a given that at least once every 3-4 months that the fucking band nerds and another dumb fucking band discussion has to spring up on the aggie thread. We can’t let them dork out too far in front of us. Got to rein that shit in with some grade school band nostalgia and an argument about pace or whatever the fuck. Jesus. 

That is interesting about the 6:5 steps.  I thought 8:5 was pretty standard on a football field. 

But I'd also like to add that they just don't sound good at all.  You can hear the footsteps.  The good thing about military march music is that the notes are short and quick, to match the cadence of the steps.  But if they play any note longer than a quarter note, you can hear the performers step, it alters the sound of the note.  Most good bands practice light footsteps so that the music comes through clearer.  But the aggy band just plods along with heavy steps, and it comes through too loud and too clear. 

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Tex Pete

Tex Pete 20,399

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5 hours ago, Hagbard Celine said:

Sam Khan

The Athletic

20230629 (5 months ago)

spoilered for longcat but it's fantastic to read given the events of the past 5 months

https://theathletic.com/4650245/2023/06/29/texas-am-football-history/

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What’s holding Texas A&M back? Six theories about college football’s would-be elites
Sam Khan Jr.
Jun 29, 2023

Former Texas A&M linebacker Dat Nguyen displays multiple flags outside of his home at any given time. He always features one representing his alma mater, where he starred from 1995 to ‘98.

Last fall, with the Aggies ranked sixth in the preseason AP Top 25 and optimism running high, Nguyen was so fully caught up in the hype that in place of a traditional Texas A&M flag, he created a custom design that he hoped would prove prophetic.

On the left was an old-school Texas Aggies logo, complete with Ol’ Sarge. On the right were four lines of text:

2023 CFP
National
Champions
Gig ‘em

Nguyen hung the flag up ahead of Texas A&M’s Week 2 game against Appalachian State. Hours later, after a stunning 17-14 loss to the Mountaineers, the flag came down, as did the Aggies’ hopes of a dream season.

“I put it up on Friday night and took it down Saturday afternoon,” Nguyen said with a laugh. “It didn’t even last 24 hours.”

Texas A&M football seems to have everything an elite program needs: Passionate, devoted fans. A top-tier athletics budget. An ideal recruiting footprint. Pristine facilities. But while other resource-rich programs have cemented their dominance of college football as more money flows through the sport, those same advantages haven’t brought consistent, big-time success to College Station in this century.

Last fall’s 5-7 debacle presented a unique set of problems for head coach Jimbo Fisher to solve, but his predecessors ran up against their own troubles while attempting to crack the code on how to raise Texas A&M football to an elite level. The Aggies haven’t won a conference championship since 1998 and last won a national title in 1939.

Why can’t Texas A&M seem to break through? Former Aggie players, administrators and longtime observers certainly have their theories.
Theory 1: Lack of administrative stability and alignment

Robert Gates, the former CIA director and U.S. Secretary of Defense who was Texas A&M’s president from 2002 to ‘06, once told Time Magazine that “Texas A&M football caused me more stress than I ever had.

“I asked my wife one time, ‘Why is that?’ And she said, ‘Because you have no control.’ … Here (as defense secretary), I have a little control.”

Administrative alignment and stability are a common thread among championship-caliber football schools. A clear understanding of who controls the program is as important as ever.

From 1999 to 2016, Oklahoma had the same president (David Boren), athletic director (Joe Castiglione) and head coach (Bob Stoops). In that time, the Sooners won a national championship and 10 conference titles. Though the president and coach have changed, Castiglione remains the school’s AD.

Clemson has had just two presidents since 1999 and three athletic directors since 2002. The Tigers’ current athletic director, Graham Neff, was at the university for eight years before being promoted in 2021 to succeed Dan Radakovich. Clemson’s president has even hosted recruits in his office and home to support football.

Georgia has had a total of three presidents since 1988 and four athletic directors since 1979. Alabama has had just three ADs since 1999. Ohio State has had two since 1994.

By comparison, since 2002, Texas A&M has had five school presidents, eight when including interim presidents. The school has had three athletic directors since joining the SEC in 2012.

“There’s no doubt that some stability is really critical to most things,” former Texas A&M president R. Bowen Loftin said.

“There are many hands involved at public universities of consequence, like the University of Texas or Texas A&M. You can argue whether that’s a good or bad thing, but it just is, and it has somewhat of a destabilizing effect.”

At Texas A&M, Loftin said, a “huge amount” of control was exercised by the Texas A&M university system rather than campus leadership itself during his tenure. He cited past football coach hiring and firing decisions that were made above the school president level as evidence. Eric Hyman, A&M’s athletic director during its first five years in the SEC, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2017 that he had “nothing to do” with a contract extension given to coach Kevin Sumlin at the end of 2013. “The contract was given to me, and it was, ‘This is what we are going to do,’” Hyman said. “I had no say over it.”

There’s also the task of dealing with Texas A&M’s multiple fundraising arms: the 12th Man Foundation, the primary athletics fundraiser; the Texas A&M Foundation, the primary academic fundraising entity; and the Association of Former Students, the school’s alumni organization. All three have their own boards, independent of the university. Loftin said the analogous organizations at Missouri, where he was chancellor following his A&M tenure, fell under the university’s umbrella and reported to him.

The independence of these types of entities at other schools can vary. At Georgia, both the academic and athletic fundraising arms are part of the university and the athletic department, respectively. Texas’ “Longhorn Foundation” and the “Red Raider Club” at Texas Tech are both part of their respective athletic departments. But at LSU, the Tiger Athletic Foundation is independent of the school. Clemson’s athletic fundraiser, IPTAY, is also classified as independent.

At Texas A&M, Loftin said, “every day was a negotiation.” Asked how possible it is to get everyone on the same page, Loftin said, “it’s possible but not easy or likely.”

To combat this, Loftin formed a council to bring the three presidents and board chairs of each of the fundraising organizations together to get them in sync. Loftin said things have gotten much better on that front since he left A&M in 2014.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Loftin said it’s hard to blame ADs for failings because “others get involved,” but that’s a common challenge at public universities, especially those with large alumni bases.

Still, Loftin believes that “if you were to get Jimbo alone right now and ask him who his real boss is, you might not get the answer you expect.”

Current Texas A&M AD Ross Bjork has spoken plenty in recent years about the athletic department and university’s support of Fisher. That was clear when they extended Fisher’s contract in 2021, and the Aggies have addressed virtually every resource need Fisher has raised.

But when comparing the minimal administrative turnover at other successful programs, it’s hard to ignore what A&M has endured on that front in the last 20 years.
Theory 2: Flubbed head coaching moves

The last time Texas A&M ranked No. 1 in the AP poll was November 1957.

The Aggies had a three-week stay atop the rankings under legendary coach Bear Bryant. They were 8-0 and had hopes of winning it all. The day before A&M met No. 20 Rice, newspaper reports surfaced indicating that Bryant was the choice to be Alabama’s next coach.

Bryant vehemently denied it, saying, “We’re fighting for our lives here both tomorrow and on Thanksgiving Day (against Texas). I have recommended a coach for Alabama and it isn’t Paul Bryant.”

The Aggies lost 7-6 to the Owls the next day, to the Longhorns a week after and in the Gator Bowl to Tennessee, to finish 8-3. Bryant did leave for Alabama, and A&M hasn’t returned to No. 1 since.

It took the Aggies years to recover from Bryant’s exit. The next two coaches, Jim Myers and Hank Foldberg, went a combined 18-47-5 from 1958 to 1964. Gene Stallings went 27-45-1 in his seven years at the helm. Emory Bellard took A&M to consecutive 10-win seasons in 1975 and 1976 but resigned in the middle of 1978 after two blowout losses: a 33-0 defeat at Houston and a 24-6 home loss to Baylor.

The school’s two most successful coaches post-Bryant, Jackie Sherrill and R.C. Slocum, both won consistently but left unceremoniously. Sherrill led the Aggies to three Southwest Conference titles, but he was fired amid allegations of NCAA rules violations. Slocum, the winningest coach in Texas A&M history, went 123-47 over 14 years, led the Aggies to five double-digit win seasons and four conference championships and never finished a season with a losing record.

And in 2002, after a 6-6 finish, he was shown the door.

“R.C. had more success than any coach in the history of this school,” said former Texas A&M radio play-by-play announcer Dave South, who was the voice of the Aggies for 33 years. “Suddenly he’s gone, and you start from scratch.”

No coach since has lasted longer than six years. Dennis Franchione, Slocum’s successor, went 4-8 in his first season, including an embarrassing 77-0 loss to Oklahoma, the worst defeat in school history. But after going 7-5 in 2004, Franchione got a raise and a contract extension. He won more than seven games in a season only once and resigned after five years and a 32-29 record.

Mike Sherman followed in 2008 but went 25-25 in four seasons. His final year, 2011, began with Texas A&M in the preseason top 10, but the Aggies lost five games in which they built double-digit leads, including a 27-25 loss to rival Texas, and finished 6-6, leading to Sherman’s dismissal.

After making an early splash in the SEC with help from Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel during an 11-2 debut season, Kevin Sumlin got not one but two contract extensions within a year — one after the 2012 season and another late in the 2013 season as his name emerged in the coaching carousel rumor mill.

The second extension fully guaranteed Sumlin $30 million over six years and included a clause that the buyout had to be paid within 60 days of termination. According to USA Today, at that time every other school in the country that paid its coach at least $4 million per year included a buyout that stopped short of the full contract value. Sumlin never reached double-digit wins again in his tenure and was fired after six seasons.

One longtime Texas A&M observer called the school “the most extension-happy university I’ve ever seen in my life.” The observer cited the scars from Bryant’s departure as an undertone to the extensions, hypothesizing that A&M fears an elite coach leaving the university again.

Fisher, who followed Sumlin, received a fully guaranteed 10-year, $75 million contract when hired in December 2017. In 2021, a year after the Aggies went 9-1 and finished No. 4 in the AP poll, he received a contract extension that raised his salary to $9 million and guaranteed him $94.9 million. On July 1, there will be $81.3 million remaining on the deal, which runs through 2031.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Coaching turnover happens everywhere, and A&M is no different in that regard. And the Aggies aren’t the only school to give massive guaranteed contract extensions. Michigan State gave Mel Tucker a 10-year, $95 million extension that was fully guaranteed in 2021.

Fisher’s extension in 2021 was a proactive move to help stave off potential suitors following the top-five finish. It worked, but now the Aggies are stuck with Fisher for a long time unless they want to pay a hefty buyout. Coaches typically have the biggest impact on a team’s success, so finding and keeping the right one is critical.
Theory 3: The expectations don’t always match the money

Why the Aggies haven’t put it all together is “the million-dollar question … or in this case, the almost billion-dollar question,” former Texas A&M quarterback Stephen McGee said.

But McGee, who played at A&M from 2005 to 2008, wonders if Texas A&M is demanding enough of success.

“The culture and the expectation, not just internally in the program but externally, isn’t demanding of greatness,” McGee said.

McGee offered as a counterexample a program like Alabama, where after one 9-3 season, “they’re pissed off. They’re ready to get rid of people.” That culture seeps into the program itself, he said.

At Texas A&M? “There’s an acceptance of 9-3, that we had a great year.”

The Aggies have reached nine wins just six times in the 24 seasons since their last conference title. They’ve won at least nine games in consecutive seasons just once: 2012 and 2013, the two years with Manziel as the starter. His Heisman Trophy year was the only double-digit win season in that span, though the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign had the makings of a 10-win season if the Aggies had played a full slate of games.

The Manziel years, during which the Aggies went 20-6, triggered a new financial era for A&M. According to the Knight Foundation, Texas A&M’s athletic revenue has ranked in the top 10 nationally in 10 of the last 11 years. Between 2015 and ‘19, A&M ranked either first or second in the nation in revenue.

The Aggies spent $485 million to renovate Kyle Field, a project that was completed in 2015. Another $32 million went toward Bright Complex renovations in the mid-2010s. A $9 million, 19,000-square foot football-only weight room was erected in 2012 and upgraded later in the decade.

Another Bright renovation and a new indoor practice facility are part of a $200 million athletics facilities plan that has already begun construction.

These are all positives for A&M football. You’d be hard-pressed to find a program that wins at the highest level and doesn’t have nice things.

But it takes more than money to build a consistent winner.

“You can spend as much money as you want and you still might get some bad bounces in the course of a season,” former Texas A&M defensive lineman Jay Arnold said. “And somebody else is going to be spending, too. … Money isn’t going to be the be-all, end-all.”

A&M wasn’t always flush with money. Loftin, a 1970 graduate of A&M, said “we were a very poor school” back then. The baseball field sat at the south end of Kyle Field and had no lights until Pat Olsen donated money for some in the late 1970s. The Aggies played every LSU football game at Tiger Stadium between 1960 and 1975 because at the time, seating at Kyle Field was insufficient. “They paid us,” Loftin said. “It was a money game.”

Even at the turn of the century, the Aggies weren’t at the forefront of spending on football. Before the 2003 opening of the Bright Football Complex — a building he helped raised money for but never got to use — Slocum told the Austin American-Statesman that the locker rooms he showed recruits in 2002 were the same ones he showed Ray Childress, the Aggies’ 1984 All-American. Meanwhile, rival Texas was in its fifth year of residence in the Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletic Complex, giving then-coach Mack Brown and the Longhorns a recruiting advantage.

A&M doesn’t want for anything these days. Everything is first-class. McGee said all the money spent to be competitive makes the lack of success disappointing, but he wonders if it can backfire with 18- to 22-year-olds.

“One of my concerns is that when you create all this, it opens the door for some entitlement to creep in,” McGee said. “Like, ‘I don’t have to work, I’m great and I deserve this,’ as opposed to having a chip on your shoulder and really being hungry. That’s one of the battles these coaches have to deal with on a daily basis, and it’s not just A&M.”

Bottom line, McGee said, the culture and expectation has to “strongly push that anything less than perfection is not acceptable.”

How credible is this theory in 2023? It’s hard to criticize A&M for spending lavishly on infrastructure because college football’s arms race has largely demanded it. Skyrocketing television money meant windfalls for athletics and particularly college football programs.

McGee’s theory that A&M is OK with less than perfection is fascinating but hard to quantify. But the extensions early in the Franchione, Sumlin and Fisher eras — even if they’re in line with what it takes to keep a coach these days — lend it some credence.
Theory 4: The SEC move made the football program’s journey to the top harder

Ask any Aggie who is invested in the school’s athletic success about the decision to join the SEC, and it’ll undoubtedly be framed as a positive.

Though the move was hotly debated at the time, there’s no question Texas A&M has benefited from membership in its current league. The immediate success of 2012 raised the program’s profile immensely and paved the way for that influx of cash and infrastructure upgrades, not to mention an uptick in the recruiting rankings.

The program has had a better winning percentage in the SEC (.652) than it did during its time in the Big 12 (.568), but championships have been harder to come by. Of the last 17 national champions, 13 have come from the SEC. Nine of those titles have been won by other SEC West teams: Alabama (six titles), LSU (two) and Auburn.

The Aggies played in two Big 12 championship games in the league’s first three years, winning the league in 1998, but they haven’t been to a conference title game since and are still waiting to make a trip to Atlanta.

“You’re coming through the toughest maw there is: the SEC,” Loftin said.

How credible is this theory in 2023? A&M’s first year in the SEC was a perfect storm, providing a glimpse of the potential the program has. But winning consistently in the SEC requires something it took time for the Aggies to build: SEC-quality roster depth.

The Aggies have reached that point on the strength of recruiting (last year they were fourth nationally in 247Sports’ Team Talent Composite), but two of the three teams above them reside in the SEC: Alabama and Georgia.

Would the Aggies reach this level of recruiting if they had stayed in the Big 12? It’s hard to know for sure, but it seems unlikely.  The Aggies have signed six top-10 classes since joining the league, including the No. 1 class in 2022. In A&M’s last 10 years in the Big 12, the Aggies signed just two top-10 classes.

The shift from a four-team College Football Playoff to a 12-team field could change Texas A&M’s outlook on its conference gauntlet. In the current four-team setup, getting in without winning the SEC, or at least the SEC West, is virtually impossible. But neither will be a prerequisite to be one of the six at-large bids in a 12-team format. A 10-2 record in the SEC will likely be good enough.

Meanwhile, the league will get even deeper when Texas and Oklahoma join in 2024.
Theory 5: Bad luck

Setting aside the bigger-picture issues, a few what-ifs and bad bounces in recent A&M history have left Aggies wondering how close to the mountaintop they really are.

What if, in 2012, Texas A&M doesn’t miss two field goals and an extra point in a five-point loss to LSU? Do the Aggies still win out — including the memorable win over Alabama — finish 11-1 and go to the SEC championship game? Would the Aggies have played for a national title?

“I think A&M in 2012 was the hottest team in the country at the end of that season,” Arnold said.

What if, in 2016, after the Aggies debuted at No. 4 in the College Football Playoff rankings, quarterback Trevor Knight doesn’t suffer a shoulder injury at Mississippi State? Do the Aggies come back to win that game, remain in Playoff contention and retain their momentum instead of losing three of their last four?

“Things happen,” Nguyen said. “Some things you can’t control.”

Last season was littered with injuries. Expected A&M starters missed at least 86 combined games in 2022 because of injury or illness, and all three quarterbacks who started a game were unavailable for at least one. Five different players started at left guard. True freshmen accounted for 72 combined starts.

How credible is this theory in 2023? Yes, A&M has endured some bad bounces, but plenty of other teams have bad luck. It’s valid to assign some blame here, but it’s hard to chalk all of the Aggies’ struggles up to misfortune.
Theory 6: They’ll get there, it just hasn’t happened yet

Because recent years have seen such heavy investment and accumulation of talent via recruiting, many still hope that A&M can turn the corner.

Nguyen recalled a rough showing in 1996, A&M’s first in the Big 12, when the Aggies went 6-6. The next year they improved to nine wins but were routed in the Big 12 title game by Nebraska. The team made a pact never to let it happen again. The next year, the Aggies went 11-3 and upset Kansas State to win the Big 12.

“When you hit rock bottom, you gotta climb and go back up somehow,” Nguyen said. “I know we have fighters in the program.”

Despite all the handwringing about the Aggies’ disastrous 2022, there’s real reason for optimism in 2023. They have a quarterback, Conner Weigman, who looks like a future star. They’ll have one of the most talented receiving corps in the country, led by Ainias Smith, Evan Stewart and Moose Muhammad III. The entire offensive line is back. Fisher hired Bobby Petrino to run the offense after the head coach endured widespread criticism for the unit’s downturn.

The Aggies have so much talent that it wouldn’t be a complete shock if they made legitimate noise this fall.

“I’m not predicting that we’re going to win the championship this year,” McGee said, “but I feel as good about (Weigman) and his ceiling as a quarterback as almost any guy we’ve ever had.”

Leveling up in college football is hard but not impossible. Clemson went from 1991 to 2010 without winning 10 games a single time. They won nine games six times in that 20-year window and had four different coaches. But Dabo Swinney and the Tigers found their breakthrough eventually, and Clemson has won at least 10 games every single season since 2011. In 2016 and 2018, they won the national championship.

McGee, who said he’s “an eternal optimist,” thinks it’s a matter of time before the Aggies turn that corner.

Loftin thinks that when A&M gets to the level it desires, it will hang around for a while.

“I’m confident it’s going to happen, I just can’t tell you when,” he said. “It won’t be a single season. We will win not only multiple football championships, but multiple championships in other sports as well.

“That’s going to happen. I just pray I’m alive for it.”

Editor’s note: This is part of a series of stories examining the 2023 college football season’s most intriguing programs. Which teams are primed to break out? Struggling to find consistency? What’s gone right — or wrong — and what comes next? More recent stories in this series:

    What will Navy be after Ken Niumatalolo? New coach, new approach, ‘no excuses’
    After Oklahoma State’s roller-coaster 2022, Mike Gundy ‘ain’t gonna get surprised again’
    How Luke Fickell is changing Wisconsin football: Will Chris McIntosh’s bold move pay off?
    Can Bret Bielema lead Illinois out of its 30-year slumber?
    Can Mel Tucker, Michigan State find an identity amid transfer portal highs, lows?
    Will Syracuse football ever reclaim glory? Former players reminisce, and answer is unclear

(Top illustration: Sean Reilly for The Athletic; Photos: Brian Bahr / Allsport, Scott Halleran, Jack Gorman / Getty Images)
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[Image: Sam Khan Jr.]

Sam Khan Jr. is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football and recruiting primarily in Texas. Previously, he spent eight years covering college sports at ESPN.com and seven years as a sports reporter at the Houston Chronicle. A native Houstonian, Sam graduated from the University of Houston. Follow Sam on Twitter @skhanjr

 

So: Dat Nguyen and Stephen McGee are both idiots. Nguyen put up a special flag thinking they were going to be in the thick of the national championship chase in 2022 based on what? Then Stephen McGee said the problem is that their expectations aren’t high enough. Dat Nguyen in 2022 proves that is false. 
 

Their expectations are consistently unrealistic for a mediocre program. They’ve never won anything so they should be patient and allow a coach to build his program. They can’t do that because all of their media are aggies and not neutral observers and they’re incapable of being objective since they’re emotionally invested. They immediately spin everything as pro-Aggie and try to manipulate people with the things they write and say. Their writers recruit for the school. They HAVE to toe the party line. As a result, people’s expectations are unreasonable and they panic at the least sign of failure and then push Eject and don’t give a coach a chance to work through struggles. And then repeat it all over again. 
 

Khan also should have noted that RC cheated just like Jackie Sherrill. That also adds to their being unreasonable. Their only two coaches who have tasted success since 1939 were buying players. 
 

TLDR: if they’d shut the fuck up and watch events unfold instead of beating their bird chests about every little perceived win, things would go better for them. They’re utterly incapable of doing so. Their culture is the problem. 

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