Cuss the College Football Playoff committee members all you want, and Notre Dame will, but you can’t say they don’t have a sense of humor. Not only did they suddenly remember that Miami beat the Fighting Irish, they arranged a first-round game at Kyle Field with the only other team that did the same this year.
The “Irish Eyes Are Crying” Bowl?
Maybe not.
But if seventh-ranked Texas A&M loses Saturday on top of its loss to Texas, the Aggies will be crying plenty.
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And that’s what makes their first-round CFP game against 10th-ranked Miami so important, or else a loss renders an 11-win season moot.
Look, don’t get me wrong, winning 10-plus games is still a really big deal, even accounting for inflation. Only one other time this century has A&M won as many as 10, and that was at the height of Johnny Football. Mike Elko has already delivered three wins over his inaugural season. The Aggies appear on the cusp of their greatest era since R.C. Slocum’s prime. Sure, Texas won in Austin, but the Aggies have a home game this weekend, and the Longhorns are spending the holidays with Mickey. You can’t spell “Citrus” without UT, right?
Maroon is the new black, no?
Try selling it to the faithful, whose angst is getting on Elko’s nerves.
Battered Aggie Syndrome isn’t just a character on SEC Shorts, the epic YouTube comedy team. BAS is real. Might be insensitive, but it’s been a recognized condition around Aggieland for years.
You could find “BAS” all over TexAgs message boards last spring, when the condition was at an all-time high after a football season in which Texas made the CFP semis in its SEC debut while the Aggies went 8-5. A headline in The Battalion, the campus newspaper, asked in March, “WebMD, what is Battered Aggie Syndrome?”
Several volunteers offered their descriptions.
“Aggie sports are a living example of why you should never, ever get your hopes up,” an A&M student told The Battalion. “You know you’re going to be let down. BAS truly is inevitable.
“It always wins.”
Yikes.
Elko has seen and heard it all, and he’s had it up to his hoodie. Even referenced BAS directly at one point this fall. Came up at an alumni event in Houston after the Aggies’ win in South Bend. A woman described BAS in a question to Elko and wanted to know, notwithstanding the achievement against the Irish, how they could believe, as ESPN paraphrased it, “the bottom’s not going to drop out any day again.”
“Great question,” Elko replied. “That’s a tremendous buildup for me to touch on … Let’s start with this: I’m sorry, but I have nothing to do with the majority of it, so I want to make sure that that’s made loud and clear to everybody in the audience.”
Elko isn’t nearly as magnanimous with reporters. He’s bristled at questions about the Aggies’ past all season, no doubt because he’s tired of hearing references everywhere else.
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A pressbox culture primer: The reason we ask is because that’s what we do. We put stuff in perspective. Programs and athletic departments know this, which is why releases regularly cite achievements as “the first time since … ” Quantifies just how good or bad or historic something is. Nothing sinister in any of it.
Unless, of course, your history is against you.
As you may know, A&M hasn’t won a national title in football since 1939 or worn so much as a conference crown since 1998. For Texas Tech or TCU or Baylor or Houston, it wouldn’t be an indictment. But, for a school with A&M’s resources, including annual football revenue regularly among the nation’s top three, it gives credence to descriptions like “underachievers.”
The problem isn’t so much that the Aggies haven’t won it all since World War II. Only one team wins a year. Handicaps the field, you might say. You also need luck to win a national title. Problem is, A&M has so rarely even put itself in a position where a little luck could matter.
A dumpster full of rabbit feet and horseshoes and four-leaf clovers couldn’t bail you out if you’re losing four games a year.
Funny thing is, it seems to me that if anyone is going to buck the Aggies’ history, it’s Elko. He’s smart, tough, a coach’s coach. He’s winning at a rate (76%) exceeded over the last hundred years at A&M only by the likes of D.X. Bible. Now there’s some good history.
Here’s another kind: He’s put together winning streaks of seven and 11 games in his first two years, and it’s only fed the condition. Instead of each successive win ratcheting up hope, the feeling seems to be it’ll only make the fall more painful.
Frankly, I could see Saturday’s game going either way. The Aggies have some first-rate talent, but so do the Hurricanes. Two good defenses. Carson Beck will throw a back-breaking interception, but so will Marcel Reed. Both have 10 picks.
For my money, the difference will be the 100,000 plus who make the pressbox shake, rattle and roll. That’s the thing about the Aggies. They may expect the worst, but they show up. Maybe they’ll even keep their eyes open.
On Twitter/X: @KSherringtonDMN
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