The Bonfire of the Inanities

False. We are Texas A&M. We judge greatness by winning champships and we have the most national championships over the last three years in the NCAA. All other athletic departments are inferior. We are a year away from getting our revenue sports back on top of the national landscape, and when we do, households from Texas to Florida will be covered in maroon and whooping in church.

The SEC provided us an unconditional offer and begged us for 1.5 years to join them. After analyzing the facts, we selected them. We are Texas A&M. Conferences do not pick us, we pick our conference.

The SEC has never seen an offensive force like Mike Sherman. Day one next year, Mike Sherman is the most dynamic force in the SEC. The man made Brett Favre who he was. He has experience scouting the NFL combine. He turned a back-up WR turned QB and a couple frosh OT into one of the most prolific offenses in the nation. He is Mike Sherman, give the man some fucking respect.

There is going to be a new world order in the SEC starting next year. Kentucky, the Mississippi schools and Vandy better tuck their tra-la-la’s between their legs and start running because the Aggies are about to wreck shop on them.

Say goodbye to Texas 5-star prospects whorn fans. Mack, Bobby and the lot can fight over our scraps.

Whoop whoop!

Will their irrational, burning hatred of UT be the flame to start their final self immolation?

I’m going to miss Aggie Rick dearly.

Interesting write up and likely accurate as to A&M’s prospects. I was puzzled by one conclusion:

“The primary strength of Texas A&M was it’s identity with the state of Texas. And that just went out the door…”

That comes at the end of a description of other leagues and then the SEC. I don’t follow your reasoning there.

The one big flaw in Aggie Rick’s schtick is that he writes way to well to be a real aggie.

A thoughtful post, TTR.

5. This decision was made from emotion, not logic, and carries extremely high risk.

This.

By defining itself as an institution steered by its football desires, A&M has diminished its links to UT and downplayed the research mission of a Tier-1 school. It’s actually a very strong research institution, but this move takes people’s attention away from that.

UT is, obviously, quite culpable in this athletic madness. But A&M has just elected to go full redneck, trading in the family Suburban for an F-150 with a gun-rack and a yellow 91101 Terrorist Hunting License sticker. Funyons strewn about the back seat.

If you hold an A&M degree, it just depreciated.

The ags spend around $16.5 mil/ year to field their football program (about average for the Big 12). The average program in the SEC spends around $20mil/yr. Even after giving Sherm a $600k raise last year, he still makes less than at least 30 D1 schools. DeRuyter could get a 50% raise and still make less than Diaz. In short, aggie is going to have to commit millions more each year, just to remain average in terms of coaches (and we all know coaches drive recruiting). Texas spends $10mil more each year to field its program. Florida, LSU, Bama and Georgia spend even more than Texas. Take the $16.5 they currently spend, add in $1.6 for their loan repayment to the school, another $1 mil for additional travel costs and the extra 10 mil necessary to match resources and you have $29 mi as the cost (before the exit fee) to play with the big boys. If ag had that level of commitment, we would have already seen it.

Aggy made a bad decision.

Shocking.

“And it’s goodbye to a&m”

Good write-up.

I agree, both the Aggie and (now) Mizzou decisions were forced by fans and boosters, both of which are emotional and think short term. AD’s think much longer term, but when someone is threatening your job, you just go along with it (see Byrne out of the country when the SEC deal went down). IMO, Byrne did not want this. This was President Bowtie and their boosters/fans (and probably just a very vocal minority) forcing the issue. I will posit this doesn’t go down if Gates is president. Gates was the best thing to happen to A&M. Solid president, and smart has hell. Pres. Bowtie is a prime example of why you don’t hire an alumnus to run your university. Too much attachment clouds their ability to make the hard decisions and to see what really is best for the university. As for Mizzou, the fact that a booster leaked the SEC offer and the fact that curators are citing fan/booster pressure as reasons for their decision speaks to who is running things. No wonder these two programs have under performed. No one there has any balls. Thank god for DeLoss and Powers. They have the cojones to tell the fans and Big Cigars to chill out.

Actually, there are many flaws with AR’s retort. One that stands out is “The SEC has never seen an offensive force like Mike Sherman.” Last I checked, LSU plays in the SEC and the whooping they gave Aggie last year could be heard in church and all over the state of Texas. I guess they’re bringing the same shop wrecking meltdown they brought to Arkie this year, another SEC team. This is the difference between myth and reality or shrooms and coca cola. While caffeinated I can still function but on shrooms, think I can fly. AR has verified he just stepped off the ledge.

If “Aggie Rick” is a barker or a Longhorn trolling, I don’t want to know. It’s too funny assuming he’s real.

The second paragraph of section 5 was really interesting. It’s apparently inevitable that they’ll be paying players, and I wonder who actually made the decision to join the S …

Lots of great stuff, Taylor. Some thoughts:

Is there any reason to think there isn’t a similar disparity in 1st and 2nd tier rights value, making Texas’ 1st and 2nd tier rights (which we exchange for $20 million/year) worth something closer to $50 million/year?

I’ve gotta think scarcity of supply plays a role here. Much like ESPN overpaid for MNF, almost as a loss leader, the WWL felt that it had to have the LHN brand. Aside from BYUtv, the only other schools I can see with a realistic shot at a 24/7 network are ND and possibly OU. The SEC and Big 10 teams are tied up with their television deals. So it was basically LHN or bust for ESPN. They decided to pay the premium. Not saying that individual 1/2 tier rights aren’t worth a healthy sum (see the NBC-ND contract), but not sure you can escalate valuation based on the 3rd tier number alone.

If Texas and OU continue to snatch up the top recruits, TAMU will be mired in a mediocrity prison with no chance of parole.

I still think the “A&M will automatically suck in the SEC” premise is a false meme. A&M, for the most part, hasn’t been competitive in the Big 12 due to coaching limitations. Put in the right coach, who gets the right players, and he’ll succeed in the Big 12 or the SEC. Would A&M in the SEC really be worse than Arkansas? Can they not “buy” (note: alleged only. don’t hate, Auburn fans) a championship like Auburn? A&M isn’t a top-tier SEC school like LSU or Florida; neither is it a bottom rung one like Vanderbilt.

The SEC is a collection of schools committed to football excellence at the expense of all else. Vandy is an exception, and Florida has managed to excel academically (mainly because it does not have to sell its soul to get the players needed to compete nationally).

Football excellence? Tell that to Kentucky. Seriously though, it’s not like the Big 12 was an academic wonderland. I mean, does the Big 12 even have a philosophy besides unequal revenue sharing (which is now out the window anyway). I fail to see why A&M has to sacrifice academics just because it’s joining a (currently) superior football conference.

In future water cooler discussions, while other alums are discussing trips to Eskimo Joes, Joe T. Garcia’s, and Scholz Beer Garden, Ags will be met with glazed over eyes as they try to explain how great the trip to Fayetteville was.

Don’t knock it; I’ve been there: Fayetteville actually ain’t too shabby. I actually think the collegiate environment and atmosphere of a Fayetteville, Baton Rouge, Oxford, Athens, etc., fit the “College Station” mentality quite well. Yeah, it’s rural and hard to drive to, but so is College Station. Just pull an Andy Staples, fly into Austin (Memphis? Atlanta? Orlando), check out Snow’s, and head to the college town for the tailgating and chicks.

Any good case study report of a poor decision has to address why it was made. The reason here is that TAMU is (and has always been) a dysfunctional organization.

No arguments here. I posted this in an earlier column, but my personal lamentation about A&M leaving is the blow to Texas football. Not Longhorns football, but the State of Texas football.

A joint Aggie-Longhorn network would have been a huge boon to the state, uniting the “pride of Texas” under one banner. More exposure for the colleges. More exposure for high school players, coaches, etc. More Friday Night Lights. Shining a positive light on Texas football.

Right now, we’re known for a Monty Burns cash-grabbing flagship and a Cletus-like deranged little brother school that doesn’t win. Not to mention the laughable Baylor posturing and the rehashing of our SWC family breakup. Can’t say that Texas football is being cast in a good light right now.

Well, Stallings was the 1st proponent. Gene Stallings, by all accounts, is a gentleman, an advocate for the disabled, and a coach who won a MNC at Alabama with store bought players.

jc25, some good points. I’ll address a couple.

TAMU, recruiting honestly, can dominate the SEC West when LSU is coached by a DiNardo and Alabama by a Dubose (it happens). Similarly, they can dominate the Big 12 when Texas is coached by a Mackovic and OU by a Blake (it happens). They can be very successful in either conference when one of the key flagships is operating at half speed.

I never said, or meant to imply, that the Big 12 has a cohesive identity like the Big 10 or SEC. That’s one of its problems. Spending a century ina conference without an identity doesn’t mean that you should expect other conference’s to not have powerful cultures.

Kentucky doesn’t care about football, true. They are as shameless in pursuit of basketball dominance as any of their conference mates are in football.

I’m sure there are some great fan experiences in the SEC towns. My point is that most of us won’t care. There will be far more watercooler and radio talk in DFW about an OU/TCU game than a TAMU/LSU game.

Dear TaylorT, Interesting article, which begs a question: what power brokers are concealed by UT’s formal organization chart? Is the University of Texas any less immune to the whims of wannabe coaches and wish-they-had-been campus football stars with fat wallets than A&M? I thnk not, although I have neither the time nor the inclination to do the research that would prove it. This would be a worthy subject for for some promising management student at the Red McCombs Biz School though. Mebbe ol’ Red hisself might consent to an interview and weigh in on the subject. Cheers!

Taylor TRoom, don’t get me started on Gene Stallings. Listened to an interview with him and Norm on The Ticket and he stated that the decision if the aggies were to leave the Big 12 would have nothing to do with the LHN. Stallings said the aggies didn’t care about the LHN and were even happy for Texas. Fast forward to the actual announcement, and the words out of Stallings mouth were the exact opposite. Stallings blamed the evil LHN and Texas for pushing them to the SEC.

Would A&M in the SEC really be worse than Arkansas?

That’s pretty much the definition of “mired in mediocrity”.

And let’s also recognize that Auburn’s BCS Title* was an extraordinary set of circumstances that is unlikely to replicated there or anywhere else. They won the lottery.

Holy Crap! Aggie Rick certainly drank the kool-aid!

As far as “scouting the NFL combine” who cares? What does that have to do with getting into a BCS game? FYI – Last I knew more Texas produced more NFL players than any other school.

The commitment of resources by a&m to its football program just hasn’t been there and with average resources ($16mil/ yr in the Big 12) one gets average performance (Fran was 22-20, Sherm is 23-21. Rick, exactly how much “fucking respect” does 23-21 earn someone? During the same period, Mack is 34-11. Does that earn someone “fucking respect?”).

LSU, OU and UT, all schools surrounding a&m and recruiting from the same pool of talent have produced results in the past 10 years. What is lacking in farmville that they haven’t been able to do the same? It isn’t a matter of conference affiliation, because players commit to schools, not to conferences. At the end of the day, farmville will still be farmville. Until they change the culture of the school, the farmville experience is only going to be attractive to a certain profile of student athlete. Why go spend four years on the prairie when you could go to Austin, Gainesville or somewhere with an airport so momma can fly to see you play as opposed to sit for 8 hours (each way) on a Greyhound bus?

TCU pays Gary Patterson $3mil/yr. Sherm gets $2.2mil/yr. The best and brightest coaches and assistant coaches aren’t going to take sub-market pay to coach at a&m. Again, Sherm is 23-21 since he walked on campus. a&m just hasn’t shown the willingness to commit the resources to compete with the national programs in football while a member of the Big 12. Until that changes, a&m will continue to be attractive to coaches that manage to float around 2 games above .500.

I don’t think a&m is prepared to be surrounded by enemies. The image of the school will be assaulted and ridiculed even more than it is today. a&m just isn’t ready to take on a persona similar to the Oakland Raiders. When you beat a co-worker’s school, it has value around the water cooler. “We beat Kentucky” will only have so much resonance. The 27-3 non-conference record this year for the Big 12 schools is the best of any conference since 1996. Obviously, the Big 12 plays good football. Check the recruiting rankings and its Texas, followed by Free Shoe U. If a Big 12 school and an ACC school are at the top of the heap, not every athlete looks only to the SEC.

a&m better be ready to start spending out the nose or have a formula for winning big with a below average commitment of resources, because if they don’t, they are going to look around and not see many friends, some of their strongest traditions gone and no where to turn. Have fun sawing Vanderbilt’s horns off, you stupid f*cks.

Ag Rick,

You’re a year away from your revenue sports coming back to the top? All your good players are graduating, how is that exactly going to happen?

The SEC HAS seen an offensive force like Mike Sherman, in Cowboys Stadium, this season, and they beat you. It was called Arkansas. They wore red. Check your record against SEC teams, they routinely beat you.

The man who made the backup wide receiver great at qb also has to be the one that made the starting quarterback crappy. Remember Jerrod Johnson? Can’t have one without the other. I’ll give you Brett Farve, I am sure in appreciation he is still texting pictures of his junk to Coach Sherman.

Really going out on a limb challenging the lower half of the conference in Vandy, Miss x2, and Kentucky. That takes some guts. The same guts it takes to sucker punch an old lady on a Rascal. Be nice to those bottom schools, as they will be your peers.

It will take some time, if ever, before the Aggies realize that they are the fat man that walked into the cannibal village and asked what’s for dinner.

“This conference is really set up for a great fan experience”

I have to disagree with you here. The trip to tOSU was quite an experience and so was a trip to Nebraska. Can’t quite say the same about visits to TCU, Baylor, Okie State. Their fans will enjoy the stadiums and pageantry associated with SEC ball. Now the results might be a totally different experience……

The fish are really biting today…

We obviously need to take the BC sarcasm meter in for a check up.

My response wasn’t directed to Aggie Rick as an individual, it was directed at the mentality Aggie Rick’s posting represents. The whole “SEC uber alles” and “Sherm is a genius” mentality has grown tiring. aggie to the SEC is a slow motion train wreck I intend to watch and enjoy greatly.

JXR, the initial mistake many employees and alums make is thinking that every company or school operates and makes decisions the same way. Some schools are booster driven- TAMU, Auburn. Other schools have boosters separated from key decision-making – Texas, for example. It has been that way since Bible became AD.

An example is the decision to fire a coach. Texas has never fired a coach in the modern era that didn’t have a losing record in football the year of his firing. Other schools have fired coaches with winning or non-losing records (examples- TAMU with Slocum, Sherrill, Franchione, Wilson). The reason is that a firing decision at Texas has to be endorsed by several factions- the university president, the AD, the Board of Regents, the Athletics Council, and yes…boosters. No one faction has the power to fire by themselves, but each has the power to prevent the firing. That’s why coaches are fired at Texas only when they have lost all advocates. This is different than TAMU, where I think Slocum, for example, still had the support of some factions- just not the ones with any say.

A&M, with an 8-1 Big XII Conference record in their last 9 games, is clearly emotional and running away from Big Brother UT, who boasts a 1 – 8 Big XII Record over their last 9 conference games.

How is it possible for A&M to have “revenue sports” when they borrowed from the academic side of the institution to cover their costs?

Oh, and nice way to kick off the new tenure for your basketball coach.

2-7, Jagvocate. Your entire point is nullified. We win.

TaylorTRoom: “I’m sure there are some great fan experiences in the SEC towns. My point is that most of us won’t care. There will be far more watercooler and radio talk in DFW about an OU/TCU game than a TAMU/LSU game.”

The reverse is true for Houston. Say whatever else you want about aggy, but they delivered Houston to the Big 12 more than any other team (even Texas, especially now that we’re down). People in Houston care about TCU in the same way that people in the Metroplex care about U of H – which is to say, not at all. My feeling is that Houston will move squarely into SEC territory and the Big 12 will become largely an afterthought here, especially if Texas can’t get back to BCS-contender status quickly. Anecdotally, I’d guess the current pecking order in Houston right now is 1) aggy, 2) LSU, 3) Texas and then token amounts of UH and Baylor. Tech and OU fans are nonexistent here.

Aggie Rick, you are one delusional cat!

Anecdotally, I’d guess the current pecking order in Houston right now is 1) aggy, 2) LSU, 3) Texas and then token amounts of UH and Baylor. Tech and OU fans are nonexistent here.

That’s funny, given that Texas had eight of the nine highest rated football games in the Houston market last year, and we still dominate East Texas recruiting.

A&M, with an 8-1 Big XII Conference record in their last 9 games, is clearly emotional and running away from Big Brother UT, who boasts a 1 – 8 Big XII Record over their last 9 conference games.

Way to take a completely arbitrary and meaninglessly small sample size to prove your stupid point.

Congrats Jag- I hope you are enjoying your YEAR of success. Lets talk about aggy overall success since the big 12’s inception……… shall we.

I know the powers that be over at tamu have to love the fan base dynamic over there. Instead of calling for heads because you guys sucked forever in the big 12- years of disappointment and losses are forgotten in one decent year, not a great one. Add that to this year’s meltdowns on the field and you get aggy football…..destined for mediocrity because none of you can recognize or admit your own shortcomings. Such is aggy logic. You can whoop to Jesus, your mama, your third cousin/wife, and that sissy dog you call a mascot while watching the game in your truck/apartment, but all the whooping in the world won’t score more touchdowns or defend a pass (which I’ve heard you have trouble doing). I know-thats aggy spirit you say…..well, keep it up while the laughing continues.

The easy way to tell that Aggie Rick isn’t actually an Aggie is that real Aggies, while just as delusional, aren’t nearly as funny.

@tokamak -

Trust me, UT dominates Houston. Hurricane Katrina helped LSU gain a foothold in the Houston market and but the ags in Houston are not a big force. I have been to the Howdy Club happy hours and to the game watching parties. a&m is a farm school. Houston is an actual city. Kids who grow up in Houston aren’t going to run down to the farm for four years to be part of the latest incarnation of a long running joke. The LHN being available in the Houston market will cement UT’s continued dominance in the Houston market. TCU in the Big 12 is a net plus to the Houston market. It should be an easy ticket to get for alums without season tickets who want to see friends in Dallas and catch a Horns game. If a&m doesn’t win right out the gate in the SEC, they will be even more of a joke in Houston than they already are.

One question I have been pondering- anyone have a speculation as to what TAMU will do with all it’s “anti-tu” traditions? From the fight song on down to freshman orientation, it is a big part of their identity. With them not even playing Texas anymore, how will they modify these traditions? Or not? Will they keep them in place as a blind hatred for a team they don’t even have a rivalry with anymore (not that we think they are really a rival now, but in their mind we are).

Why the collective need to interpret AtM’s move through the LHN prism? “The average Texan will come to believe….” Seriously? LHN will dictate the very reality of all Texans by manipulating their perceptions of history? Maybe Dodds can get together with the textbook crowd and arrange for the Pilgrims land in Austin.

Honestly, the fact that we’re working this hard to define what AtM’s move means says a lot more about UT’s trajectory on and off the field in the past 12 months than AtM. Give it a rest. We can make fun of Colorado, Nebraska, AtM, and Missouri as much as we want, but that doesn’t change the fact that the B? as of now seems to be replacing 4 state universities with a collective enrollment around 150,000 with a private school in Dallas under 10,000.

In the old arrangement, the B12 had an infrastructure – campuses, programs, competitive depth, media markets – which made it a clear number 2 and held real promise for top status. Suddenly, it’s a distant 4th and scrambling.

In the past 20 years, the SEC has seen 7 schools hit multiple BCS bowls and 5 win national championships, 3 of them twice. Even Ole Miss had a couple of moments in the sun with Eli and Nutt’s first two years. On the outside looking into that club: Miss State, South Carolina, Vandy, Kentucky. AtM’s infrastructure looks far more similar to Georgia, Florida, LSU, and Alabama than those four.

Why does any of this matter? Because the bigger the other conferences get, the less flexibility Texas has a decade from now. It’s not panic time, but I, for one, am genuinely concerned.

TeeJay- I gurantee it will become part of a historical narrative that the tee-sips were afraid to play the mighty ags, so the aggies were forced to take their .333 overall record versus their rival and one big 12 championship to the mighty SEC conference in order to find a challenge. Watch.

tokamak trolled:

BS, the TV numbers say Texas is king by a wide margin in the number of top rated games in the Houston market compared to aTm.

Anecdotally, I’d guess the current pecking order in Houston right now is 1) aggy, 2) LSU, 3) Texas and then token amounts of UH and Baylor. Tech and OU fans are nonexistent here.

Laughable delusion.

I think you are absolutely wrong with the fan experience. Almost every SEC road game offers an incredible game day experience. The Big 12 have several locations I wouldn’t even consider going to, Waco, Ames, and Manhattan are awful. Stillwater, Meh, I’m sure you can find an “Eskimo Joes” in Athens, Auburn, South Carolina, knoxville, etc…. Lubbock smells.

Not to mention have you seen our home schedule next year? Terrible.

Sorry, but I find it little comfort to speculate on how much the gomers will suck in the SEC when things aren’t looking too rosy in Austin.

“Jagvocate said:

October 18th, 2011 at 8:29 am

A&M, with an 8-1 Big XII Conference record in their last 9 games, is clearly emotional and running away from Big Brother UT, who boasts a 1 – 8 Big XII Record over their last 9 conference games"

I guess Gary Barnett’s Northwestern teams were ready for the SEC too. Just like TCU last year and Cincinnati.

TTR – like you, I don’t think it will end that well – for many of the reasons that you point out.

I don’t imagine that letting a few football players pass communications 101 by taking an extra credit chest bump is going to threaten the research ranking though.

People still imagine A+M to be an all male military institution – a mixture of poor marketing and the visibility of the corps (which apparently has a higher mebership this year than for many years) are probably responsible for this. Obviously it isn’t the A+M of old, but the stereotype will exist for a long time to come – even if cheerleaders are introduced and the George Bush library is turned into a leading centre for LGBT studies.

A couple of the Texans I work with have asked for my thoughts on the SEC move and frankly it doesn’t effect us 2%ers – we are past the age when we are hired based on the university we studied at and we watch the football and basketball teams play when they are on TV.

Right now, the biggest issue for A+M is the number of different power brokers running the show. There are a lot of people used to getting their own way in their political, commercial and private affairs. The evidence shows that getting them together and asking them to reach consensus on an issue is very difficult.

I wonder if the decision to bolt to the SEC will pan out in the long run for the Aggies. They just don’t seem a good fit geographically or culturally, and your point about deep-pocketed boosters calling the shots is telling.

I saw a similar experience with my own fave team, Penn State, when they joined the B1G back in the early nineties. It’s worked out reasonably well, but not overwhelmingly so. PSU ditched all their traditional eastern rivalries with Pitt, WVU, Syr, Rutgers, BC, etc., in favor of schools they had seldom if ever played (save OSU). PSU is bascially an eastern school playing in midwestern conference, and their fans have found it much harder to travel with the team when they have to go to Minneapolis instead of Pittsburgh. And PSU is a much better cultural fit with the B1G, full of land-grant AAU schools, than Aggie is with the $EC.

Besides, how the hell is Aggy gonna “saw varsity’s horns off” when they no longer play them?

Great read, TTR. About the only thing not yet explored for the average a&m fan will be the substantial price increases headed their way for season tickets and everything aggie. They will likely again sell out their season ticket allocation for the next five years or so based on the opportunity to see 1-2 historic SEC teams play in College Station. I estimate that the average season ticket will double in price by 2013.

The ags have joined a sports conference based on the principle of mutually assured destruction via money. And they still have to replay that $16M “loan” from their university.

“A&M, with an 8-1 Big XII Conference record in their last 9 games, is clearly emotional and running away from Big Brother UT, who boasts a 1 – 8 Big XII Record over their last 9 conference games.”

Hey Jag… I think Buford covered what I was going to say, and I still congratulate you on your 1st NINE-Win season in 12 years! And yes, I was talking about last year? Hope you meet that expectation this year…

Dear TaylorT, You honor me with a response, sir! And as in your main essay, your clarification is well reasoned, perhaps too well reasoned. First this bidness of assuming all organizations operate the same. Shame on you for putting words into my mouth; nothing of the sort was said. I only ask, What are the hidden forces? What you’ve laid out in your response is, well, . . . an organizational chart, of sorts! It’s all reasonable and rational, and I’m sure bears some approximation to the truth, but misses the question that is difficult to answer, To what degree do boosters have a say in decisions made about the Texas football program? My guess is a lot, or much, much more than meets the eye. Maybe not all thumbs a lot like A&M, maybe not casinos and cash cards a lot like Auburn, but much more than ever meets the sparkling light of day. My point is simply, we are naive to rear up on our hind legs about this. I don’t believe DeLoss (is mine, I’m sure) is running the whole show. I’m not even sure he’s running half of it (although he would certainly like you to leave with that impression). Ciao!

@BigAl
I’m not so sure you know what we’re talking about. You what the Houston area has? Oil companies and lots of them. You know one thing those companies take a lot of? Engineers. You know one thing A&M is known for? A very good engineering school. So there aren’t any Aggies in Houston because it’s a city? I bet every 4th person I met while at A&M said they were from Houston. The suburbs surrounding Houston are full of Aggies.

Aggie Rick is a pimp. He never could have outfought Santino. But I didn’t know until this day that it was Barzini all along.

Aggie Rick is a bit guys. It’s funny. That’s why he references the Shermanator’s ability to evaluate talent at the NFL Combine… I think Aggie Rick is TDL? I think TDL actually claimed he was once. If I’m wrong, straighten me out TDL.

BigBadHenry said:
October 18th, 2011 at 9:53 am
@BigAl
I’m not so sure you know what we’re talking about. You what the Houston area has? Oil companies and lots of them. You know one thing those companies take a lot of? Engineers. You know one thing A&M is known for? A very good engineering school.

http://www.testpreppractice.net/GRE/engineering-university-rankings/petroleum-engineering-school-rankings.html

TTR has to be Aggy Rick! There is no way a post that well written (not from a logic stand point) and that long could have made it in if it had not already been prepared.

It’s not me. If I were impersonating an Ag, I would include my class year in there somewhere.

Here is my modest proposal to the BC/Recruitocosm staff.

Upon logging in to either site, a visitor is presented with the following question:
Choose one
(a) Aggie Rick is an Aggie who trolls Barking Carnival, making ridiculous claims about A&M.

(b) Aggie Rick is a Longhorn fan who pretends to be an Aggie trolling Barking Carnival, making ridiculous claims about A&M and laughing at the resulting mayhem.

Those who choose (a) are routed to an alternative BC site where all posts are about why Mack Brown should be fired.

Everybody ends up happy, except maybe Aggie Rick. He could go on the alternative site and post absolutely anything and know he would be taken seriously, but he might miss the challenge.

Varsity said:

About the only thing not yet explored for the average a&m fan will be the substantial price increases headed their way for season tickets and everything aggie.

This is about the only part of this that somewhat makes sense. A&M has failed to consistently sell out until this year when the SEC move was mentioned.

This whole story may make a good appendix to Barbara W. Tuchman’s “The March of Folly”.

The hope I see for A&M is for a top coach to quit college coaching at the top of his career (to jump to the NFL or for health reasons, see Saban, Urban Meyer, Spurrier) and then want back into the SEC at a time A&M is hiring. That coach will bring instant credibility, winning records and top recruiting power. Then A&M would be on it’s way. So I think success is possible under the right circumstances.

I’m flattered you think I could pull off something that clever 1111, but it’s not me.

When it comes to BIG OIL, UT has it on lock down. It’s also the Harvard of Geo-science.

The petroleum ranking is nice and all, but there are many more ChemEs that work in the petroleum field. So you need to look at these rankings:
http://www.testpreppractice.net/GRE/engineering-university-rankings/chemical-engineering-school-rankings.html

Not that it paints a worse picture. Although I do think we’ve dropped 2-4 slots since I was in school.

TDL, drats!

Hey, who here thinks it’s Huckleberry? Or maybe Henry James has reappeared?

There is no conference that will give Texas full value for our rights, but it would be insane for us to give our rights to a conference, accept something like an even split, and also concede on every procedural issue to our disadvantage.

I agree with everything you said about the Aggies. However, your quote above is very telling of the Longhorn mindset. Unless and until the Longhorns are willing to stop thinking of all this as a purely business decision and understand that wherever they are, they owe a duty to the other school in the conference create more competitiveness, they may soon find it hard to find any top teams willing to schedule them.. Aggie pleas not withstanding.

Why? Well, because if the goal continues to be more, more, more, … we’re TEXAS, we’re the big dog, at some point you kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

This all reminds me of scholarship limits in the 1970’s. I’m sure that Texas fought this pretty hard, but in the end, it was the right thing to do. Darrell Royal made his entire reputation on being able to sign twice as many players as the other schools in the conference, and generally 75% of the best players, because, we’ll…WE’RE TEXAS. Thankfully, the NCAA understood that football needed a more level playing field, and imposed these limits. This gave college football a level of parity in the 1980’s which had never been seen, and this was a good thing.

Texas football isn’t Microsoft. Those who see no problems at all with LHN and ticket prices and are upset with the even split in revenue sharing miss this point.

Texas already has a huge recruiting advantage over most schools in Texas and the southwest. Not many schools could finish 5-7 and remain the #1 team in merchandising. They will do fine wherever they go.

If you want Texas to be Microsoft, just keep on swinging that big stick. Just don’t be shocked when everyone else grows tired and takes their sticks elsewhere.

So which top teams are going to stop scheduling us? The schools in our conference – the conference that we are keeping alive (which would be a pretty neat scheduling trick, btw) – or the schools outside our conference who don’t give a sweet goddamn what happens to the schools in our conference?

@ BigBadHenry -

Call me when engineering grads from a&m start decommitting from UT to play football at a&m because the ags are now in the SEC. As for TV ratings, no one is going to quit watching their school and switch to becoming an aggie fan because the ags are now in the SEC.

As for the quality of engineering grad a&m produces, when they learn to build a pile of logs without killing kids a dozen at a time I will start paying attention to the caliber of engineers that come out of farmville.

BBob said: October 18th, 2011 at 10:41 am

This all reminds me of scholarship limits in the 1970′s. I’m sure that Texas fought this pretty hard, but in the end, it was the right thing to do. Darrell Royal made his entire reputation on being able to sign twice as many players as the other schools in the conference, and generally 75% of the best players, because, we’ll…WE’RE TEXAS. Thankfully, the NCAA understood that football needed a more level playing field, and imposed these limits. This gave college football a level of parity in the 1980′s which had never been seen, and this was a good thing.

I always have to respond to this myth. Before there were NCAA scholarship limits (the ’70s introduced the first limit of 105 scholarships), there were SWC scholarship limits (limits of…wait for it…105 scholarships). Royal did not sign more than rival schools (except for the privates, who always signed about 20% less). Per old Dave Campbell magazines, Texas actually signed fewer players than TAMU in the ’60s.

I love how Aggies always tout their engineering departments when in reality they are ranked below UT’s. I guess if you say “we are #1” long enough you start to believe it.

I just ran a few errands around my office here inside the loop in Houston and paid attention to any bumper stickers on the cars around me. In about an hour of driving around town, I saw 8 A&M stickers and 3 Texas. Now, that’s not exactly a scientific survey, but to claim that Texas dominates Houston and A&M is a nonfactor here is just silly. I will freely admit that I don’t listen to sports radio because in general it makes me ill.

As far as the TV numbers that people keep throwing at me, I’d love to see a link, because they’re very surprising. Are aggy games even on TV?

Is Texas’ duty it owes the conference different than the duty any other school in any other conference owes?

tokamak said:

“October 18th, 2011 at 11:25 am

I just ran a few errands around my office here inside the loop in Houston and paid attention to any bumper stickers on the cars around me. In about an hour of driving around town, I saw 8 A&M stickers and 3 Texas. Now, that’s not exactly a scientific survey, but to claim that Texas dominates Houston and A&M is a nonfactor here is just silly. I will freely admit that I don’t listen to sports radio because in general it makes me ill.

As far as the TV numbers that people keep throwing at me, I’d love to see a link, because they’re very surprising. Are aggy games even on TV?"

Then I guess it’s settled

Sad to see that A&M is only third in the prestigious testpreppractice.net academic rankings of Petroleum Engineering schools.

That’s funny, given that Texas had eight of the nine highest rated football games in the Houston market last year, and we still dominate East Texas recruiting.

Glanced at where the top players in Houston are going to school next season?

Houston has the highest number of A&M grads of any city in the country. I’ll agree that Texas is very competitive in the market but Houston will definitely become a market for the SEC as well.

LSU, OU and UT, all schools surrounding a&m and recruiting from the same pool of talent have produced results in the past 10 years. What is lacking in farmville that they haven’t been able to do the same?

I think the short answer is that poor/questionable/bad coaching choices have put A&M in the current boat. After the debatable firing of RC, Fran came in as a hot big name hire and left the program in shambles a few years later. Sherman has done a good job of rebuilding from the ground up but may be lacking in the killer attitude needed in the SEC, time will tell.

As per why the move was made, the official word from A&M leadership is that it was done for conference stability, visibility of the university, and long term financial benefits . The stability aspect of the Big 12-2-1+1-maybe another is sort of obvious. A&M is currently using the exposure from the move to really start marketing the A&M brand nationally and will get far more exposure outside the region by being in the SEC.

Financially speaking, while there may be some short term drawbacks it’s been mentioned that the SEC’s look in clauses should allow them regenotiate their television deal. Based on what the Pac-12 has received it’s assumed the SEC deal would be rather lucrative.

Big Al – classless comment.

I always have to respond to this myth. Before there were NCAA scholarship limits (the ’70s introduced the first limit of 105 scholarships), there were SWC scholarship limits (limits of…wait for it…105 scholarships). Royal did not sign more than rival schools (except for the privates, who always signed about 20% less). Per old Dave Campbell magazines, Texas actually signed fewer players than TAMU in the ’60s.

I’ll take your word for it on this point, but you’d also have to assume that A&M as an all male college with required ROTC college up into the late 60’s missed out on some top recruits.

If Texas cares anything about it’s fanbase being able to see games, wants to continue in the Big 12, then, yes, they do owe a different duty than most of the other schools.

If they would rather see the world of college football evolve into a group of only 30-40 schools playing Div 1 in 20 years, with a schedule that involves traveling coast-to-coast, then just keep swinging that big stick. If that’s Texas’ goal…fine.

Until then, Tech & Baylor (and now TCU) are happy to tag along with Texas for as long as they can, but Texas need to continue to use the carrot as often as they use the stick.

“The SEC is a collection of schools committed to football excellence at the expense of all else. Vandy is an exception, and Florida has managed to excel academically (mainly because it does not have to sell its soul to get the players needed to compete nationally).”

I would add Georgia to that list.

@tokamak-

Do 5 star football prospects drive around inside the loop around noon in cars sporting bumper sticker of the schools they hope will give them an offer? No. What you saw were alums. Do we think any UT alum is going to be an aggie t-shirt fan because the aggies are in the SEC? No. If a&m jumps ahead of UT and Fla St in the recruiting rankings, I will believe the conference switch had an effect on recruiting. Until then, I will continue to consider farmville to be a god forsaken place and a lousy place for any 18 year old kid with other options to spend their college years.

As for TV viewers, no Tech, Baylor, UT, OU, U of H or any other fan in Houston or any other city is going to quit watching their team to start exclusively watching aggie games. Nor will they suddenly find Mississippi St vs LSU to be appointment television.

a&m to the SEC isn’t going to change TV viewing habits one bit. SEC games are already available in the Houston market and a lot of them already outdraw a&m games. The only thing that will change viewing habits is if a&m starts winning in the SEC. Taking it for granted that a&m football will be a ratings juggernaut simply because they are playing schools with few alumni in the marketplace instead of a number of alumni in the marketplace is absurd.

It was interesting to me that during the FX broadcast of the A&M-Baylor game, they did a promo featuring the previous nights yell practice. There was 1 very brief cut of the yell leaders, but the dance team was featured in at least 5 cuts. Wise move by FX. Maybe this is the new A&M branding.

Over the last 15 yrs, Texas added roughly 7 million people. The ones that like college football disproportionally became UT fans b/c UT won games, had 3 iconic players, a likable, charismatic coach, and a general attitude of inclusion into UT fandom whether you went to school there or not.

The bonfire tragedy brought the two schools together for a period of time. Let’s not demean the tragic loss of young kids with tasteless comments. Let’s concentrate on the fact that in a couple of years we should once again be vying for the MNC.

a&m to the SEC isn’t going to change TV viewing habits one bit.

Yes it will. It makes the SEC 3rd tier games available in the Texas markets, and that is a nice part of this deal for the SEC.

“a general attitude of inclusion into UT fandom whether you went to school there or not.”

I think that’s an often unsaid part of the Longhorns’ appeal. I don’t feel like anymore of a Longhorn fan for having gone to UT than my father who listened to Texas games on the radio back in 1930s. Dad went to SMU to pursue my mother instead of going to Texas after the war.

I’ve always been glad of Texas’ inclusive attitude as it befits the state university. The Aggies shoot themselves in the foot every time they spit out the words, “t-shirt fan.”

TaylortRoom -

“TAMU, recruiting honestly, can dominate the SEC West when LSU is coached by a DiNardo and Alabama by a Dubose (it happens). Similarly, they can dominate the Big 12 when Texas is coached by a Mackovic and OU by a Blake (it happens). "

Don’t remember them recruiting honestly in the Blake days. Wasn’t Sherrill there?

How about let’s quit caring about aggie and start concerning ourselves with us? Although it is an interesting business model decision for those who care to study, I’m sure to aggie it is a good ol’ redneck “let’s try this shit and see what happens!” model.

Didn’t read the comments. What would we do if we didn’t have Texas to tell us what’s best for us?

We’re fine. Thanks though.

@ag96-

Screw a&m. A lot of people are sick and tired of the ags playing the victim card. I get so pissed when I hear ags talk about the collapse of the bonfire as a senseless tragedy that must only be discussed in reverent, hallow tones. In reality, it was criminal negligence.

aggies need to take a cold, hard look at their school and their traditions because they are going to come under attack from every school in the State of Texas and from every competing program in the SEC. The days of “poor aggie” ended when a&m gave UT the finger on your way out of the conference. Loftin and Byrne were dishonest with the reason the school left, Byrne was dishonest about the bus incident at Tech and I’m sure we have seen the last of the classless crap from the clowns from farmville.

Hearing aggies use the term “classless” is comical.

Colorado Ag -

Guess you were checking in here to find out what to do since this isn’t an aggie blog.

“and a general attitude of inclusion into UT fandom whether you went to school there or not”

It’s funny you say that, my older sister is an Aggie. She took me to College Station when I was about 14 or 15 to hang out with her and her friends. I liked it (To be fair I had nothing else to compare it with) She of course bought aggie t-shirts for me and was working on me and I wore the shirts. My grandpa, a retire army Major, ran the Mcneese St. bookstore and I always had Mcneese gear, then later St. Mary’s gear when he moved to San Antonio and ran their bookstore. So I was used to wearing gear of schools I had direct affiliation with. Anyway, one day I was at the beach wearing an Aggie t-shirt and a couple of college chicks ( I looked older then I was), from A&M apparently, yelled out something incoherent in my direction and I looked at them and said “what?” apparently I failed the “flash/thunder” challenge question and they started ridiculing me as a “faker” and such. Never wore another piece of Aggie gear again. Funny how little things can steer your course.

Come to think of it, I’m not much of a “gear” wearer, except for what my 11 year old boy generously purchases me. He hates that I don’t wear sports gear and will often buy me Cowboys or Longhorn stuff for Xmas and my birthday. sweet kid.

@Big Al-

I never said that people in Houston who are established fans of schools are going to switch allegiances. And if I had, you’d be right and I’d be wrong. What I’m saying is that the SEC can tell TV networks that their games average X number of viewers in Houston and the Big 12’s games average Y number of viewers in Houston. With A&M to the SEC, X is greatly increased and Y is substantially decreased. Basically what I’m saying is that there are zillions of A&M fans and A&M t-shirt fans in Houston who are now going to be much more prone to watching a random SEC game than a random Big 12 game.

Say, just for argument sake, that Houston is made up of 50% Texas fans and 50% A&M fans. Texas fans are still going to watch Texas games and A&M fans are still going to watch A&M games of course. But whereas in the past, both fanbases may have had passing interest in a random Baylor vs. Oklahoma State matchup, now only half the city is interested in that matchup, and half is going to be watching Tennessee vs. South Carolina instead.

Several others have called me out for pointing out that aggy is a big deal in Houston (apparently on BC, “rational discussion” = “trolling”). But after having lived in Ft. Worth, Dallas, Austin, and now Houston for more than a year, it’s clear to me that Houston is the epicenter of Aggiedom in the state of Texas, and that rubs off and earns them quite a few t-shirt fans here as well. That in turn helped the Big 12 lock down the Houston TV market, whereas it has now been cleaved in two.

@srr50 -

3rd tier SEC games are already available in Houston on the SEC Network. I think this weekend’s game is Arky @ Ole Miss. We also get the Jacksonville St @ Kentucky game and Army at Vandy (ESPN U).

As I said, We get all kinds of SEC games in Texas as it is. The ags aren’t going to bring much that isn’t already available.

Should say “schools I had NO direct affiliation with”

Geeze

then = than

Big Al — Defending UT is fine, but bonfire remark was uncalled for. There are plenty of things Ags can be called out for, but tragic student accidents should be left alone.

I really don’t think we can legitimately argue that Houston is not an overall Aggie lean.

No need to bring in bonfire. It was a horrible thing long ago.

Lonesome Devil -

I write here.

@tokamak -

This weekend’s SEC schedule is:

*-Tennessee at Alabama (CBS)
*-Arkansas at Ole Miss
*-Auburn at LSU
Jacksonville State at Kentucky
Army at Vanderbilt

Every single game is already available to the Houston television market. If every game is already available, then all the ags to the SEC will do is earn $20mil for a&m from the conference for the same audience that is currently worth $15mil/yr. This makes sense only if a&m vs. Mississippi St. draws more viewers than a&m vs. Baylor in the Houston and Dallas markets. Seeing how there are more Baylor grads in those markets than Miss St viewers, that seems questionable. For every a&m/ Alabama game gained, an a&m/ OU or a&m/ UT game is lost. UT/ TCU on Thanksgiving will far outdraw a&m/ Mizzou or a&m/ Vandy game on Thanksgiving.

Again, the only thing that will affect TV ratings for a&m games in either the Texas markets is for a&m to start winning big in the SEC and for ESPN not to use UT or OU games as counter programming to a&m games being shown on CBS. Heads up against UT, OU or even Tech vs any other Big 12 school in the Dallas, San Antonio, Houston or Austin markets, a&m games will get crushed.

3rd tier SEC games are already available in Houston on the SEC Network. I think this weekend’s game is Arky @ Ole Miss. We also get the Jacksonville St @ Kentucky game and Army at Vandy (ESPN U).

As I said, We get all kinds of SEC games in Texas as it is. The ags aren’t going to bring much that isn’t already available.

Right now the SEC network is on 4 networks in the State (not in Austin) and is football only for the markets they are in. The SEC expects to expand into other markets as well as expand outside of football (especially basketball).

To dismiss out of hand the SEC’s opportunity to expand its media footprint throughout Texas by using A&M as a stalking horse is being naive.

The SEC doesn’t care about A&M winning or losing. They just want more outlets for their product.

@BigAl – others have already said it for me, but it’s quite possible to dislike something without being tasteless.

As per the SEC and Texas viewership I’m going to assume that SEC sees some potential there or they wouldn’t have expanded, particularly as I’ve learned from reading this site that A&M has no other redeeming value :)

Yeah, come on Big Al, I hate Aggy as much as the next guy but let’s not fuck with karma on that one.

I’ve always suspected Vasherized of being the man behind Aggie Rick. Of course, if his true identity was ever revealed, the fun would stop… and who wants that?!

Taylor,

Thanks for the response. I doubt very much that A&M will be a consistently “dominant” team without some very, very fortuitous luck. However, I do think they can retain a modicum of respectability (i.e., 7-9 wins consistently, a shot at a BCS Bowl every so often). You can argue that the SEC’s three big powers—LSU, Alabama, and Florida—all currently peaked over the past 5-6 years. Yet during that time, Arkansas has put together a couple very good teams under Petrino, South Carolina played in an SEC Championship game under Spurrier, and Auburn won a championship riding Cam Newton. I see no reason that A&M can’t sustain that level with proper coaching and solid, if not otherworldly, recruited talent. Is that any different than their ceiling in the Big 12 under Texas and Oklahoma? I say no.

Further, history has borne out time and again that the Aggies have no problem with lying, cheating or stealing, or tolerating those who do. Might as well be the SEC official motto.

ag96-

It may not be popular to say, but Oklahoma State basketball in 2001 was tragic. The bonfire was criminal negligence.

Auburn is already bad. Anyone who has watched college ball for more than 10-15 years knows that things are cyclical. OU sucked. LSU sucked. Bama sucked. LSU sucked. UT sucks. Maybe A&M is betting huge on the future. We’ll take it.

Dude. Al. Fuck off. That issue has nothing to do with TTR’s good writing piece. Beat it.

Auburn is already bad. Anyone who has watched college ball for more than 10-15 years knows that things are cyclical. OU sucked. LSU sucked. Bama sucked. LSU sucked. UT sucks.

It’s cyclical in that good programs have down spells, not in that every school gets its chance at the top.

A&M left for the same reasons that Nebraska, Colorado and now Missouri left—and for the same reasons that OU and OSU would have left if given half a chance. Texas didn’t get it then, and obviously still doesn’t get it, and the fact that y’all don’t understand those school’s reasoning doesn’t make it less valid. Mainly it demonstrates the complete state of denial of most Horns when it comes to Texas’ starring role in those six schools independantly reaching the same conclusion that leaving UT behind is in their best interests…..

Aggy will be an “outlier”

Hubris.

I think the people that don’t know Aggie Rick is trolling, are trolling themselves… No way someone could miss such blatant sarcasm.

Since Sherman has been HC for a&m, the ags are 0-5 versus the SEC. I think SEC teams like Sherman’s offensive philosophy.

Roberto,

We stand ready for you to explain their reasoning to us… I thought is was money and exposure, but it sounds like you’ve got the real scoop…. DeLoss never showers before Big 12 meetings?… Or was it something else I’m not thinking of?

“ColoradoAg said:

Lonesome Devil –

I write here."

Hillarious

Big Al said:

October 18th, 2011 at 1:02 pm

ag96-

It may not be popular to say, but Oklahoma State basketball in 2001 was tragic. The bonfire was criminal negligence

What difference does it make if fault can be assigned? You’re pretty much Monday morning QBing. It doesn’t eliminate the tragedy of it, it doesn’t make those students deaths any less heartrending. GIVE IT A REST, you won’t win this one.

“Roberto said:

October 18th, 2011 at 1:53 pm

A&M left for the same reasons that Nebraska, Colorado and now Missouri left–and for the same reasons that OU and OSU would have left if given half a chance. Texas didn’t get it then, and obviously still doesn’t get it, and the fact that y’all don’t understand those school’s reasoning doesn’t make it less valid. Mainly it demonstrates the complete state of denial of most Horns when it comes to Texas’ starring role in those six schools independantly reaching the same conclusion that leaving UT behind is in their best interests….."

Please enlighten us. We will require specific, cited, facts and evidence to back your claims.

“Since Sherman has been HC for a&m, the ags are 0-5 versus the SEC. I think SEC teams like Sherman’s offensive philosophy.”

Work on beating some Big 12 teams. That should keep you plenty busy.

A couple of comments cause me to react:

The first is simple: “Aggy made a bad decision.” You expect Aggy to make a good decision?

What other school has spawned so many jokes based on stupid action that a whole string of joke books sold thousands of copies? We once had the expectation that an Aggy alone could be OK but if you put two or more together they would turn stupid. I think that still applies. The movement to the SEC is just Aggies being Aggies.

And Aggie Rick cannot be from A&M. He writes too well.

I couldn’t read it all, so I apologize if this has been said already. SEC hasn’t seen an offensive force like Mike Sherman?? Are you insane? Have you heard of Spurrier? Petrino? Hell, does he even compare to Malzahn? Cutcliff?

codaxx – Your sarcasm meter needs calibration.

TDL—Nope, not going to play that game with you. The reasons have been spelled out ad naseum in the media for all who care enough to enquire. Fully half of the B12 have either left, are leaving, or tried to leave, so the ball’s in your court to specify why all those schools are deluded………

First, I think the photo accompanying this article should be used as a recruiting tool for Texas:

“Son, look at this photo. Are these the people you belong with?”

Second, it is the answer to every finger Aggie points at us. Texas doesn’t make you guys suck or hold you back. Look carefully at the picture. Who the fuck in their right mind…what kind of man…? The reason no one gives a shit about Aggie is because the people that go there really think that male cheerleaders in milkman outfits are cool. That is not conducive to excellence, dominance, or extended periods of rational thought or behavior.

Surely schools are leaving because they don’t know what’s best for themselves.

AZHorn -

How old are you? Fun game of “all in”. Who has the better record since you’ve been born?

P.S. Arizona fucking blows. Horrible place.

The White Mountains in Arizona are pretty damn nice, plus you can grow grapefruits in your back yard for Christmas saltydogs in Phoenix.

Makes perfect sence. They will have many more interesting and competitive games to offer their fans, thus will raise much more money and be able to charge much more for the 12 th man foundation and club level tickets.

In the meantime they distinguish themselves from us and givem themselves a recruiting angle to snare more guys we both are in on.

Addtionally with the right coaching hire and perhaps needing us to be slightly down (which will happen if it hasn’t happenned already) there is no reason that they can’t be a top 10 team that wins the SEC.

They are a 50k student body school, with 500k football crazed alumni, located in east Texas, one hour from Houston and 2 from Dallas.

This was a great decision by them and we will pay for this for a generation. Dodds is an idiot. Enjoy the LHN Kansas gaem on your espn gamecast people.

Emotional decisions are often mistakes, lots of emotion regarding all of the decisions being made regarding realignment, only time will tell but my guess is Sherman gets canned in 3-5 years and the Ags will have a chance to step up to the plate to land a heavy hitter.

“TDL–Nope, not going to play that game with you.”

Well reasoned argument is nothing more than a trick!!!!

Maybe you’ll play this game: Why didn’t all of the exiting schools unite in their horror of Texas, form a voting bloc, and change things? Simple question, not a tricky “game” to lure you into anything as complicated as presenting an argument.

“Maybe you’ll play this game: Why didn’t all of the exiting schools unite in their horror of Texas, form a voting bloc, and change things? Simple question, not a tricky "game" to lure you into anything as complicated as presenting an argument.”

I’ll play. Because they all voted for their best interests in the Big 12 , just like Texas did, until a better offer came along?

“Maybe you’ll play this game: Why didn’t all of the exiting schools unite in their horror of Texas, form a voting bloc, and change things? Simple question, not a tricky "game" to lure you into anything as complicated as presenting an argument.”

What’s teh point of them doing that? Clearly we are moving to such a monetary inbalance that we would dictate terms eventually or the implied threat of leaving them high and dry.

So instead of watiing for terms to be dictated to them and not having options, they all decided to move to good situations with certainty.

People on the longhorn interwebs delite in saying what our options will be in 6 years when LHN is up and running full force….well Neb, ATM and Missouri are not stupid. When that happens, we would throw our weight around to make the Big 12 our personal play ground….with the threat of going Indiependant as our stick. F#ck, I wouldn’t wait for that moment either if I were them.

We have no history together, few marquie games in conference. Big 10 for Neb and SEC for the other two is a much better option than being left out in the cold by us 6 years from now.

Thanks ColoradoAg, for helping to make my point on rational thought and behavior. Since I’ve been alive Texas has by far had the better overall record. Pick any 30 year period and I’m pretty sure the same can be said. Congrats on your record breaking 9-win season last year, you rule.

I guess I’d be touchy too if my school’s traditions included male cheerleaders, idolizing a bitch, Tourrette’s-like whooping, and whining. It would make me a little edgy too knowing that getting out of Texas’ shadow meant getting a train run on my team every year.

You must have stopped in Phoenix, the rest of the state is alright, but I’m sure someone that picked College Station to go to school has much more refined tastes than mine.

Who knows – the farmers might someday have their moment; however, history teaches us
that they have only been to one championship game in the 15-year history of the
Big 12. If the Big 12 is “weaker” than the SEC, that does not bode well. The “success”
they enjoyed in the late eighties / early nineties was largely due to a robust participation
during the “bought and paid for” era of football during the bleeding end of the Southwest
Conference – leading to the hasty departure of Jackie Sherrill and the very real possibility
of “The Death Penalty” (ala SMU). Jackie left and the aggies dodged a big bullet and only
received severe sanctions. That cycle and the associated recruits played out around 1993-4
and the aggies have been shitty ever since (as they were before Sherrill). Unless they can
revive these, lets say creative, recruiting tactics in the SEC culture, one would expect
abject mediocrity at best. Again, based on history.

Colorado Ag – Just because you “write here” doesn’t mean you know the deal. aggies are occasionally needed for folly.

Maybe aggie will be able to climb out of the debt sink hole you are in a few years. Good for you. The entire landscape will change over the next two years and I’m sure this is probably the best move you could or would have managed. No sweat. Everybody tries to stick their pitiful situation on Texas and it is getting old. This is all about money and nothing else.

Texas is trying to maintain the conference for the athletes and families as well as optimize revenue.

“the implied threat of leaving them high and dry.”

What indicates Texas would do that? Texas has traveled with A&M and Tech before and were looking to do so again when Missouri and Nebraska initiated the deterioration of the conference. This sounds like projection rather than anything proven about Texas.

The notion of a deteriorating conference has become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the schools fleeing it. Somehow, the school that remains in the conference is being blamed for the conference falling apart. That’s just weird.

Topwater’s response doesn’t make sense to me.

OK, well we are still willing to play Texas. And y’all fucking suck. But we’ll play our SEC West schedule and still make room for you. I know DeLoss is so loyal to his non conference contracts with Rice and the like. Such an honorable man.

ADs retire. We’ll play again.

VA Horn- I thought Bear Bryant was a heavy hitter. They fired him.

ColoradoAg, I hope that we don’t play y’all again.

When I heard you were leaving I was truly sorry about it, but after all of the pettiness coming from the so-called good Ag’s, don’t let the door knob hit you on the way out.

Good Luck and See ’Ya.

“well we are still willing to play Texas.” Thank goodness! You’re probably the only ones.

java,

Like all drunk, long lost lovers, we’ll play again. And it will be fun. We all know it too.

We are going to play ATM sooner than anyone thinks. The Cotton Bowl will draft one or both of us higher than we should be drafted in order to get the matchup. Unfortunetly I think it will happen where we play “up” in the bowl pecking order relative to ATM and get trounced.

ATM is already going to win the last regular season matchup this year; and very well could win the first bowl matchup. Its about to get really obnoxious in state.

And what I can’t figure out is why longhorn fans want to remove one of the few intense and eciting games we have a year. yes it means more to them than us; but that’s what makes it fun when we win. In fact that argumjent applies to nearly every game we play.

But nothing is funner than going into a game where the other team hates you more that life intself….and beating them. That is why the 2010 Neb game was so awesome.

hey, fear_the_cow, this “we” you keep talking about – who exactly???

and CO ag, before we play again, one or the other of us will have to be pretty significantly bloodied and humbled. The kind of bloodied and humbled that takes a lot of bad losses and hard years…

We…The University of Texas…I am a graduate and use “we” when referrign to the football team. Everyone thinks we are big and bad by denying ATM a game with us every year going forward; however the Cotton Bowl will do everything in its power to get this matchup as often as possible.

I predict about 1/4 years we will play ATM in teh Cotton Bowl and they will be way more amped up than we will be, to be there.

We aren’t gettign away from them, just providing them a platform to have the ultimate jihad of jihad game with us every 3rd or 4rth year. Not going to be the best situation for us.

Thanks for the comments, all. I’m a little surprised none of the Ag respondents addressed any of my points about what a huge, risky gamble (with a potentially catastrophic downside) this is for the Ags. As near as I can tell, their responses are:

1. The Ags are better than Texas. Prepare for your downfall, t-sips.
2. Ain’t no t-sip going to tell us what to do.
3. The SEC is the best conference. The Big 12 will die, and if it doesn’t, it will suck.

Well Taylor, the Ags didnt respond because there is a lot of truth in your comments, emotional decisions are often bad choices.

Secondly, everyone chooses to be a leader or a follower, for a century the Ag’s have tried to lead but mostly followed, now they want to be a full time leader and join the mighty SEC, be careful what you wish for Ags, the leader backpack is much heavier to carry around than the follower backpack.

TTR: Agree with your assessment, and your really well articulated analysis. That said, Aggie Response #3 that you just mentioned does seem to have a ring of truth about it, and I’d be interested to see your take about what proactive steps that Texas, the Big XII, or both, should take to solidify their status. I think your analysis of the Aggie decision is spot-on, and there’s really not much left to say after your post about the move. So, concentrating on the situation we’re left with, where do we go from here?

OK, well we are still willing to play Texas. And y’all fucking suck. But we’ll play our SEC West schedule and still make room for you. I know DeLoss is so loyal to his non conference contracts with Rice and the like. Such an honorable man.

You’re talking about honorable men is laughable at this point. Of course you are still willing to play Texas, but your actions make is so much easier to just say no.

The Aggies come in yelling "We are outta here! It’s all your fault! You are a bully,a liar and a cheat, we have found someone else who is richer and stronger who will treat us nice, so you can kiss our ass on our way out!!

Oh, BTW, Thanksgiving dinner is still on isn’t it?

Yeah right.

TTR, I agree….. but in my experience, its really hard to have a lucid back and forth dialogue with aggie fans…….I’m being serious, not trying to put em down. The second you try and talk about anything potentially negative, whether it be the SEC move, actual big 12 record, or anything not completely spewing maroon sunshine – they tune you out and say……“tsips suck, your just butthurt we’re going to the best conference, and we won 9 games last year, WHOOP!” I’m not exaggerating. Their “spirit” as they like to call it is their own downfall.

Sure, we’ve had a few blogs over the last few months detailing the SEC move, but take a visit over to texags – every 4th blog is about the tsips. Aggy dialogue is welcome here, but try and have a conversation over there……its trolling and they tell you to get the F out. Its impossible to get any type of quality feedback.

Like I said, those maroon goggles keep them from seeing whats right in front of them. Some ags on this blog are the exception, but holy crap…………. you can have the rest of them.

We should keep it very, very simple. Disregard aggie like we have in the past and consider our own course.

If it is deemed a net gain to play them, considering recruiting, finance, travel, bowl op, etc., then schedule aggie. If not, then don’t do it. Treat it like any other business decision. Do not consider whether it is good for them or not. Let them make that decision and go on about our rat killing.

Buford T. Justice said:

October 19th, 2011 at 6:31 am
Like I said, those maroon goggles keep them from seeing whats right in front of them. Some ags on this blog are the exception, but holy crap…………. you can have the rest of them.

There is a reason those exceptional Aggies post on here.

Dirty – That was my point

Roberto said:

October 18th, 2011 at 4:55 pm

TDL–Nope, not going to play that game with you. The reasons have been spelled out ad naseum in the media for all who care enough to enquire. Fully half of the B12 have either left, are leaving, or tried to leave, so the ball’s in your court to specify why all those schools are deluded………

This is exactly the answer, if any, I expected to receive. It’s the “PSHA! everyone knows” argument. YOU HAVE NOTHING, Roberto.

I am not sure the Cotton Bowl has complete leeway in their selection. I think the SEC actually has a rule that forces their bowl tie ins to take the teams as they are ranked (BCS bowls may be excepted). This was one of the things that Mizzou has now proffered as a major reason to leave the Big 12.

So it would take the Aggies finishing 3rd or 4th in the SEC (depending on if the conference gets two BCS bids) to get to the Cotton Bowl. So it is probably more likely that Dodds and Mack are gone and the new regime is open to slotting A&M in during the regular season.

I’m a little surprised none of the Ag respondents addressed any of my points about what a huge, risky gamble (with a potentially catastrophic downside) this is for the Ags

I don’t think most Ags would argue that there’s not a gamble here, I certainly wouldn’t, but I think the potential benefits are being downplayed. You also assume the decision was an emotional one, and I’d agree had we made the move last season but I think this time around it’s been much more carefully thought out.

On the financial side the SEC move has already been met with increased donations from former students and there’s been discussion of a possible effect on the cost of certain donor levels and ticket prices. It’s certainly a short term drawback but I’d imagine the assumption is that increased donations, along with the eventual renegotiation of the SEC contract and the potential for a third tier SEC network, will be a financial gain in the long run.

While I admire your vision for the LHN its success remains to be seen at this point, I imagine ESPN will eventually force it into cable packages as you mention but it’s impact can’t be evaluated yet. Personally I think the value of third tier rights is in conference networks but that’s a whole separate argument.

A&M has been a pretty average program the last 15 years or so largely due to some questionable coaching decisions, but few would argue that things don’t appear to be improving and that A&M has the resources and recruiting base to be a top tier program. There’s certainly a few risks with the SEC move, but also the chance to play the premier programs in the country on a regular basis and increased national exposure. Will that be outweighed by travel drawbacks and other potential issues? Way too early to tell.

One thing that sticks out in this whole mess, is that aggies care more about what teams they are playing than watching their own teams win games. All we have heard about since the move to the SEC is how they will be playing with the big boys, and mocking next year’s home schedule for the Horns. It bears out that the only time A&M has consistenly sold out their stadium was when Texas, OU and Tech played there, and now this year when the move to the SEC was annnounced.

When I go to the games in Austin, I go to see the Horns play. I don’t really care who they are playing. I’ll admit that it is more exciting when a big name team comes to town, but I am still there to see the Horns.

I have never seen ColoradoAg this drunkenly belligerent and I find it excellent. Mainly because, well, he’s defending the guys that wear the fascist jumpsuits, shave their heads, and grab their balls at football games. Seriously bizarre tradition dude, you have to admit. Just like the UT band’s weird leather fringe thing is seriously strange. Albeit, less strange than having a bunch of jackbooted guys march in the same formations and repeatedly play “Deutschland Uber Alles” or whatever.

That is probably the best Aggie Rick post of all-time. He does what he does so well. He’s the Keyser Soze of BC. The scouting combine and references to KY, Miss, and Vandy are the only certain giveaways this time and even they are brilliantly couched in delusional coherence. He really will be missed.

TT —

Good piece. I think the move made some sense for a&m. They won’t be very good there but they weren’t very good here. They could tell it was about to start storming and they found a stable to sleep in. Good for them. If they had manned up rather than pointing fingers then we’d all just say “whatever, have fun.” The fact they did it in such a suspect way is the real issue.

I guess maybe Katy is full of aggies? Don’t see too many of them in Houston proper. They are usually conspicuous with their man-rings and christian rock.

Late to post, but enjoyed the article. I do think it jumps to quite a few conclusions (especially in terms of the success and influence of the LHN), but arrives at basically the same point as me regarding the ultimate fate of A&M……if this doesn’t increase their record over their current situation, and doesn’t significantly increase AD revenues, then what was the point in moving? That answer always comes back to thumbing thier nose at Texas

One other point. I disagree on the roadtrip experiences. I think you are mistaking travel convenience for a great trip and game day atmosphere.

Just when you think that the agroid nation can’t fall any further… BOOM, they surprise you and find a way.

Honestly, I can’t think of a better, more deserving community of moron-promoting, mouth-breathing, group thinking folks than aggy. The are truly identifying with the moron-promoting, mouth-breathing, group thinking folks of the SEC and it’s just so darling.

I, for one, am very pleased by the prospect of aggy bashing in the near future come from those very same backwards folk whom aggy is squeezing right now as if they are their own valued wedding jewels. When, not ‘if’ but when, aggy begins their open pleas of returning to being Daddy’s little bitch brother again I just want to make certain that the door remains slammed shut, locked, dead-bolted, nailed shut, barricaded, welded solid and concreted over.

Au revoir aggy, s’il vous plaît laissez la porte vous frappez dans vos fesses à la sortie.

Addressing your points one at a time:

1. After years of ignoring them, Texas found out how much its 3rd tier rights were actually worth (but A&Ms are less and they aren’t going to make a heck of a lot of money on this – paraphrasing)

Where you are wrong that this is not a gamble or major downside is that this is a mostly geographically neutral move so there will be no significantly added costs there. And you are completely discounting the former students increased investment in A&M that has skyrocketed since the rumors were loud enough and became true this late summer/early fall. The 12th Man Foundation and the Association of Former Students has seen a significant increase in $$, and it is directly correlated to the SEC announcement. That is what the A&M brass has been counting on and it compounds the increases of money due SEC affiliation (conference payouts). There are also rumors of big time donors kicking in now that the deal is done and the ink is dry. Big facilities upgrades coming as well and those will garner donations.

2. TAMU is gambling that the SEC membership will boost their recruiting.

A lot of the stupidity you posted has already been debunked but I will go on to say that yes, you all know our recruiting will be positively impacted by this move and we will be seen as co-equal or dare I say a better option for the elite Texas HS recruit. The SEC is the best football conference and it attracts the best players (see NFL players and which conference schools they attended, it’s not even close). A&M gets helped by that and probably to UT’s detriment. It’s a big reason we’re leaving and we’re doing it at a time when we’re best poised to capitalize on it, we’re entering an upswing cycle and you’re on the downswing. Your tenuous perch at the top of college football has already been lost but did you know you were approaching doldrums like you saw in the 80s and 90s (and last year)?

3. The best conferences are collections of schools with aligned goals and missions.

We fit in with the SEC better than the Big 12. When Mizzou leaves for the SEC, the SEC will be without a doubt a better collection of academic universities than the Big 12. They probably already are without Mizzou and with A&m added (just not in total # of AAU status schools, which alone isn’t a complete measure).

4. I think the geography aspect will wear on the Ags if they don’t have success.
 
We’re not going to California and Oregon like you wanted to go. We’re going to places that are a days drive in most cases and an easy weekend trip. Closer than Ames and other teams you are speculating on adding to your Big 12 to replace us.

5. This decision was made from emotion, not logic, and carries extremely high risk.
  
In the SWC and Big 12, TAMU’s competition for elite status in this state has come from Austin. Its chief rival was a school that they had many ties to, and was unlikely to act out by buying players.

Texas was caught for recruiting violations in those days as well.

Even the Ags’ biggest gripe (the LHN) was over an issue the Ags were well positioned to contest as a conference mate. Now, the Ags are leaving and exercise no leverage over Texas.

I know we’ve made you our bitch the last year or so with making you capitulate to our demands over changing your LHN programming and just generally outperforming your teams in athletics overall, but we want to go somewhere that we don’t burn calories worrying about that crap. Your network has been sufficiently neutered to the point that it adds so little value, few cable and satellite carriers are willing to pick it up. ESPN is having second thoughts about what they are getting for their investment. It may crash and burn.
If it doesn’t and you are able to weasel your way back into showing the objectionable programming due to the rest of the conference giving in, well I guess we’ll see how long OU stands for it. The rest of them can’t fend for themselves but OU certainly can leave.

They will be in a conference where rivals pay street agents, buy players, oversign and willingly trade NCAA penalties for victories. If the Ags respond in kind in an attempt to compete, several hostile programs in this state (as well as OU) will be happy to turn them in to the NCAA as well as friendly media outlets.

That’s the environment we already live in the Big 12. Baylor, OU, all guilty of these types of things. You had a player tweet this week how he was giving his lil brother a G. Txting aka DUI covered up by players. NCAA infractions in other sports as well. Big 12 isn’t clean and you certainly aren’t clean.

Any good case study report of a poor decision has to address why it was made. The reason here is that TAMU is (and has always been) a dysfunctional organization. They won a MNC with Coach Homer Norton in 1939. After WWII, he was forced by Houston boosters to take on the Rice OC ("T" formation advocate) Harry Stiteler as his OC, and then was replaced by him. Later, Bear Bryant was sought and hired by boosters, not the Athletics Director. Emory Bellard was undermined by Houston boosters for not listening to their man, OC Tom Wilson. Wilson was fired by Dallas booster Bum Bright, who hired Jackie Sherrill. Slocum was run by San Antonio boosters, who also hired Franchione (they were firing the AD also at the time). See a pattern? They have key decisions made by different booster groups on a rotating basis. Their formal university organization chart is a shell to conceal the actual power brokers. You may agree with some of the actual decisions, but the "process" is horrible. There is no long term accountability, and no means of correcting the processes.
This won’t end well.

One thing about that good ol boy network though, the majority of people are happy with what we are doing. The majority of texas fans aren’t happy with the direction of their program and the path Dodds is taking it and arrogant comments. The strings are still pulled by the $$ at UT also, don’t be fooled. Dodds has been given just enough rope to hang himself.

If A&M succeeds and UT goes the way they are headed, this won’t end well for Dodds.

ag96, good/thoughtful reply. Obviously the move poses real risks (and also possibly large benefits) to A&M. Whether this turns out to be a great, a disastrous, or so-so move is a chapter that is yet to be finished. The Aggies have placed their bet, now we’ll see what the turn and river cards are.

ag96, you still have to win football games for all of this to materialize and I look forward to watching the Shermalounger coach his young lads in the SEC.

I would temper the upswing comment about the football team, lots of good players graduating this year and you will start SEC play with a new QB which is always tough.

SEC Bound and Ag96…decent replies. I’m still bullish on the LHN. Like the B10 network, which was slow to be picked up for the same reason (playing hardball with cable companies over pennies per subscriber), it will eentually be everywhere and it will be a hell of a marketing tool for UT athletics.

SEC Bound, your claims about UT violations in the ‘80s have been debunked time and again on this blog (basically, our DC McWilliams gave a kid who was quitting $40 for a bus ticket home, your asst coach drove a new car to a recruit). I won’t go over it again. I know the compliance issues are a non-starter with the Ags. Texas fans look at the ’80s, with the SMU, UH, and TAMU scandals as a horrible period. The Ags look at them as the glory days.

SEC Bound said: “ESPN is having second thoughts about what they are getting for their investment.”

Source?

TaylorT – I am loath to contradict you, but did you say SEC Bound had a ‘decent reply’?

Hmmm. By my reckoning, he:

- Mistakes a possible and slight 2-3 year bump in post-move recruiting juice, which could see A&M become competitive for Texas’ 10th or 11th in-state priority recruit, with some sort of long-term equivalence with Texas purely due to ‘SEC! SEC! SEC!’ In fact, the only top Texas recruits that Aggie won’t be watching on the LHN are the ones they’ll see wearing purple and gold or crimson and cream when they come to Collie Station to take part in the newest SEC tradition – thrashing A&M by 28 points.

- Utilizes foresight that would have done a Moody’s bond rater in late 2006 proud as he prophesies a looming stretch of 1980’s style ‘doldrums’ for Texas. Wish in one hand and shit in one bus, mi amigo, and see which one fills up first.

- Unabashedly displays a 2-digit IQ by proclaiming the equivalency of a bus ticket with fast-flying FedEx cash envelopes and Gold Trans Ams. Sadly, Eric Dickerson never won the Heisman, but at least he got to give the Heisman to A&M before driving up to Dallas in the care they bought him.

- Presents a hodgepodge of idiocy related to BIll Byrne’s bete noir , the LHN, that’s barely decipherable but in and of itself serves to degrade the value of any business or logic-related degree that A&M has ever handed out. As though it’s a Bugs Bunny changeup, he manages multiple swings and misses at a single target on angles such as programming decisions and network carriage negotiations while also presenting heretofore unrevealed insight into the thoughts of senior ESPN leadership. Please see hand wishing/bus shitting analogy above.

- Puts his prior equivalency argument to shame by equating SEC cash-on-the-barrelhead recruiting sleaze with heretofore unrevealed recent NCAA football recruiting violations by Baylor and unspecified others in the Big XII. I realize that moral equivalency regarding cheating must be somewhat ingrained for any fan of an institution whose lone stretch of gridiron relevance correlated perfectly with the period when FedEx’s ad slogan was, “It’s not just a package – it’s your business.” Even so, the ‘Big XII is as dirty as the SEC’ concept has to be breaking some sort of new ground.

- Pulls his khakis down around his jackboots and unloads a Dumb and Dumber-caliber diarrheal assault on fact, logic and reading comprehension by, in consecutive sentences, claiming that:

A) A ‘good ol’ boy network’ leads to an outcome that most people are happy with, when it had been spelled out in italics directly above his statement how this approach has, per usual, served to contravene consensus
B) ‘The majority of Texas fans’ are unhappy with the fantastically nebulous ’direction that Dodds is taking things. Link?

As deeply and direly as some Ags would like to believe that one point makes a trend line, or that 2011 somehow constitutes a second point in their imaginary ‘Trading Places’ scenario when both Texas and A&M are sitting at 4-2, perhaps a focus on the macro situation is more apt. And the macro situation is this.

Texas is, and shall remain in your blessed absence, one of the absolute premier programs in college football. A program that is second all time in the NCAA in wins, first by a country mile in cold cash money, that holds multiple national titles and Heisman Trophies, and is well respected enough throughout the land to assemble fantastic recruiting classes despite a once-in-a-decade hiccup and a full-scale restructure of the coaching staff.

A&M, for all the internal excitement generated by coating itself in BBQ sauce and sprinting into the SEC wolf den, is and shall remain one of college football’s also-rans. A program that is basking in a brief flirtation with relevance following an entire decade that defined the term "Commitment to Excrement". A decade that featured myriad humiliations, losses to 1-AA programs, running clock annihilations, death battles with service academies, recruiting fiascoes, street agent flirtations, Purple Drank smuggling rings, parking lot masturbators, an utter disappearance from the Top 25 deserving of its own Nancy Grace investigation, and a solitary bowl victory that included both the words "furniture" and ".com" on the trophy. A decade presided over by crotch-grabbing milkmen in a guano-ridden stadium where the siren call of "hullabaloo, kaneck, kaneck" echoed against acres of maroon faithful cunningly disguised as empty seats. The same seats that shall remain empty once the novelty of SEC competition has faded and the inevitability of SEC beatings really, truly sinks in.

Wow.

“A-Tex Devil said:

October 19th, 2011 at 12:22 pm

SEC Bound said: "ESPN is having second thoughts about what they are getting for their investment."

Source?"

They don’t need sources. EVERYBODY KNOWS.

It stems from the Aggie Infallibility complex that we all recognize when we see it. If something confirms their already held deeply belief that A&M is preordained to be the King of Colleges in Texas (“THE Texas University”) and Supreme Chancellor of Football and that those arrogant sips are destined to deservedly fall to the pits of sub-mediocrity and be shamed forever more for pretending to be “The University of Texas”, well it’s obviously true, no citation necessary..

This is basically a hail mary by the Ags. They are selling out their tickets and getting big bucks from their delusional donors in the hype of leaving the Big 12 and moving into the SEC. If they are successful in the near term then there is a chance for some continued momentum both for recruiting and for donations. But ‘SEC! SEC!’ won’t open the pocket books of the donors if the Ags barely keep up with their record here in the Big 12. Those donors will instead save their pennies so they can fire another coach and hope they win the lottery on the next guy.

Seriously, that was retarded Aggie wishcasting at its finest. Good response by Nobis60.

The best players don’t “go” to the SEC to play. They’re for the most part (90-95%) already there. Texas has a lot of great players, but the places with the highest per capita concentration of good players is along the Mississippi river in the deep south.

Good God, Nobis. Well done. I sure do a love a good ol’ fashioned systematic dismantling.

“nobis60 said:

October 19th, 2011 at 12:32 pm
As though it’s a Bugs Bunny changeup, he manages multiple swings and misses at a single target "

ONE, TWO, THREE, STRIKES YOUR OUT…ONE, TWO, THREE, STRIKES, YOUR OUT…ONE, TWO, THREE, STRIKES YOUR OUT..

Aggie logic flow chart:
Form opinion rooted in indoctrinated belief that A&M = good and Texas = bad in all matters -> seek out any evidence that even weekly supports preconceived notion of superiority -> conveniently ignore all contrary evidence -> ready, aim, fire!! -> celebrate assumed victory with SEC chant ->
Repeat ad infinitum

"TaylorT – I am loath to contradict you, but did you say SEC Bound had a ‘decent reply’?

TaylorT was just saying that to SEC Bound to keep him in the bar long enough to give Nobis60 time to go drop off his girlfriend and make it back for the Billy Batts Bloody Beatdown.

Nobis60 = Tommie

It’s a big reason we’re leaving and we’re doing it at a time when we’re best poised to capitalize on it, we’re entering an upswing cycle and you’re on the downswing.

Actually, this year would’ve been the year to start in the SEC. You may be on the upswing compared to your terrible previous decade, but I’m not sure that 2011 isn’t your high-water mark, at least for a while. You’re losing at least 11 starters this offseason, including basically all of your real difference-makers. A&M’s improved recruiting is largely theoretical at this point; the class of 2011 was an abortion and 2012, while much improved, points to fourth place in the SEC West more than it points to a conference title.

How do back-to-back seasons with a 7 or 8 win ceiling factor into your “upswing”?

Ricky said:

“October 19th, 2011 at 12:55 pm

This is basically a hail mary by the Ags. They are selling out their tickets and getting big bucks from their delusional donors in the hype of leaving the Big 12 and moving into the SEC. If they are successful in the near term then there is a chance for some continued momentum both for recruiting and for donations. But ‘SEC! SEC!’ won’t open the pocket books of the donors if the Ags barely keep up with their record here in the Big 12. Those donors will instead save their pennies so they can fire another coach and hope they win the lottery on the next guy.