{"id":79613,"date":"2025-12-07T20:20:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T20:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79613\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T20:20:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T20:20:10","slug":"texas-am-had-to-kick-a-door-down-to-make-the-cfp-now-aggies-face-difficult-title-path","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/79613\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas A&M had to \u2018kick a door down\u2019 to make the CFP. Now, Aggies face difficult title path"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a multitude of worthwhile reasons to revisit Texas A&M\u2019s early-season statement road win over Notre Dame<\/a> after Sunday\u2019s College Football Playoff bracket reveal. <\/p>\n

For one thing: It undoubtedly had a say in where the Aggies are seeded and why the Irish were controversially omitted from the 12-team field. For another: It\u2019s a reminder of what A&M will need to do to capitalize on the opportunity now afforded to them. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we were magically going to become a team where everything comes smooth,\u201d A&M head coach Mike Elko said after his team\u2019s 41-40 win at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Ind. \u201cWe had to kick a door down.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Aggies (11-1) kicked another down Sunday when they officially reached the College Football Playoff for the first time in program history<\/a> and earned first-round home field advantage at College Station\u2019s Kyle Field as the 12-team bracket\u2019s seventh-seeded team. <\/p>\n

Sports Roundup<\/p>\n

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The turbulence \u2014 or, at least, the potential for it \u2014 comes next. <\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

The playoff committee\u2019s bait-and-switch decision to flip Notre Dame and Miami at seemingly the last second cost A&M a rematch with an Irish team that it beat to kick start a historic season. The Aggies will instead host the 10th-seeded Hurricanes (10-2) who, like A&M, beat Notre Dame by a single score earlier this year and sharpened their playoff resume because of it. <\/p>\n

The winner of that first-round game will play second-seeded Ohio State (last year\u2019s national champion<\/a>) in Cotton Bowl Classic at Arlington\u2019s AT&T Stadium on New Year\u2019s Eve. The victor of that quarterfinal may have to play third-seeded Georgia (the SEC championship game winner) in the Fiesta Bowl one week later to clinch a trip to the championship game. Texas \u2014 the only team that beat A&M this season<\/a> \u2014 lost to both Ohio State and Georgia earlier in the year. <\/p>\n

There are nine teams ranked ahead of the Aggies in ESPN\u2019s Football Power Index. Three of them \u2014 Ohio State (second-best FPI rank), Georgia (sixth-best) and Miami (seventh-best) \u2014 are on their side of the bracket and would be first or second-round opponents. Per ESPN\u2019s SP+ metrics, which are measured differently than their FPI figures, the Aggies and Hurricanes have an identical rating but both lag behind the Buckeyes and Bulldogs. <\/p>\n

Or, in other words, this ain\u2019t Samford. <\/p>\n

The Aggies will need to beat two of them to reach the national championship game. It\u2019s no doubt a tougher path on paper than what Texas faced last season when it played three-loss Clemson and automatic bid Big 12 champion Arizona State in rounds one and two en route to a national semifinals appearance. <\/p>\n

The Longhorns missed this year\u2019s playoff<\/a>, though, because a loss to a rudderless Florida team outweighed their wins vs. A&M, No. 7 Oklahoma and No. 14 Vanderbilt despite a hard-fought political campaign led by head coach Steve Sarkisian and company. The Aggies are seeded where they are in part because they beat the teams that they were supposed to beat and handled the conference\u2019s bottom feeders (like Florida and Mississippi State) more comfortably than their in-state rivals did. <\/p>\n

Their signature wins were what catapulted the Aggies into no-doubter status. Their Sep. 13 thriller against Notre Dame was the program\u2019s first ranked road win in more than a decade. Their Oct. 25 romp against LSU was their first win at Baton Rouge\u2019s Tiger Stadium in more than three decades. <\/p>\n

Both \u2014 the first of which was nearly a walk-off and the second of which was a walk-down \u2014 were proof that Elko\u2019s Aggies had shaken some big-game struggles and that quarterback Marcel Reed<\/a> could meet the moments in high-stakes atmospheres. <\/p>\n

The Aggies will need to channel both when the Hurricanes come to town and if the Buckeyes await them. <\/p>\n

It could get bumpy if they don\u2019t. <\/p>\n

Final College Football Playoff bracket: See where Texas Tech, A&M and Oklahoma landed<\/a>Letters to the Editor \u2014 Should universities retreat on DEI courses?<\/a><\/p>\n

Find more Texas A&M coverage from The Dallas Morning News here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a multitude of worthwhile reasons to revisit Texas A&M\u2019s early-season statement road win over Notre Dame after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3688,772,27,260,29,537,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-79613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-colleges","9":"tag-oklahoma-sooners","10":"tag-texas","11":"tag-texas-am-aggies","12":"tag-texas-headlines","13":"tag-texas-longhorns","14":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}