When the topic is college football, it is difficult to get fans from Texas and Texas A&M to agree on much of anything these days. You’d have better luck herding cats or attempting to nail Jell-O to the wall.
Since the teams’ last meeting as Big 12 rivals in 2011, the Aggies have moved on to the SEC and fired two head football coaches. The Longhorns, likewise, have made two coaching changes and posted three losing records. Neither team has won a conference title and, over the last five-plus seasons, both schools have very middling records for two of the nation’s best-funded Power 5 programs.
A&M is 40-25 during that stretch — a .615 winning percentage. Texas is even worse, with a 39-31 mark and .557 winning percentage. With no head-to-head meetings between the teams in the past seven seasons, the most rabid fans from the respective schools have devolved into Twitter trolls who stoke the rivalry by making fun of each other’s public misfortunes while arguing endlessly – and pointlessly – about which school plays in the better conference, makes more money, lands better recruiting classes or has a brighter future on the gridiron.
Naturally, the two sides disagree on each of those points. But everyone should agree on this: Fans from both schools need to root for one another in high-profile, non-conference games Saturday against two different groups of Tigers, if they want to improve the tarnished reputation of college football in the Lone Star State. Fans from the other 10 FBS football programs in the state should root for the Horns and Aggies as well.
It won’t happen, of course. Blind emotion will stop most fans from rooting for a longtime rival. But NOTHING would do more to restore the luster of major college football in the State of Texas than to have No. 12 Texas A&M (1-0) knock off top-ranked Clemson (1-0) on Saturday afternoon, followed by the ninth-ranked Longhorns (1-0) taking down No. 6 LSU (1-0) in an ABC doubleheader.
As we head into the sixth season of the College Football Playoff era, a team from Texas has yet to claim a berth in the annual postseason tournament despite having more FBS programs (12) than any other state. In 2016, Texas teams were shut out of the postseason Top 25 in the final AP poll for the first time in 49 years. Regardless of the color of your class ring, those are some disturbing trends that need to end.
It makes no sense that Texas, the state that is quick to proclaim itself as the mecca of high school football in the United States, should produce so many elite prospects while its college teams struggle. But the scorecard of AP Top 10 finishes by the flagship programs from Texas leaves a lot to be desired when compared to their counterparts in Florida, another high school football hotbed, since 1983. During that 36-year stretch, A&M and Texas have never finished in the Top 10 of the AP postseason rankings in the same season. In fact, they’ve done so just once in poll history: in 1941, when the Longhorns finished No. 4 and the Aggies checked in at No. 9.
By contrast, Florida’s “Big Three” of Florida, Florida State and Miami have all finished as Top 10 teams in the same season four times in the past 36 years (1991, 1992, 1994, 2000). The trio has combined for eight national championships in that stretch and, in 18 of the past 36 seasons, at least two Florida-based teams finished in the postseason Top 10 rankings.
Texas schools clearly have some catching up to do in terms of consistency at the national level. The only way to change that is with high-profile, on-field results. And to folks from the other 49 states in the nation, that requires victories by Texas and Texas A&M over legitimate national title contenders.
If that happens, there will be trickle-down good vibes that will benefit TCU, Baylor, Texas Tech and other schools within the state that have 2019 successful seasons. If not, reset your clocks for a possible 2020 playoff berth by a local school.
Saturday’s respective coaches, Texas’ Tom Herman and A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, understand what is at stake when it comes to fast-tracking their teams in the 2019 playoff chase. If both teams win, they will join the Cool Kids Club in which a late-season loss may be overlooked by CFP selection committee members because of an impressive early victory. Hey, it’s worked more than once for Alabama.
“We want to win national championships and we want to win them now,” Herman said earlier this summer during Big 12 media days. “But we were brought here to rebuild a program. And that takes time.”
Without question, Herman knows an upset of LSU would validate last year’s 28-21 victory over Georgia in the Sugar Bowl to cap a 10-4 season. Despite having eight first-year starters on defense, Herman insists the spotlight will not be too bright for his younger players when the ESPN College GameDay crew visits Austin for the contest.
“We train for games like this,” Herman said. “It’s OK to be nervous. Just don’t let that nervous energy confuse you into not doing your job.”
Fisher is preaching a similar gospel to the Aggies, who narrowly fell to Clemson, 28-26, in last year’s meeting in College Station. The Tigers went on to win the national title, but the Aggies insist they have what it takes to spring the upset as an 18 1/2-point underdog in Saturday’s rematch in Clemson, S.C.
In fact, A&M left guard Jared Hocker made his expectations clear during Monday’s news conference in College Station.
“There will be an upset,” Hocker said. “I like being the underdog. You always have something to prove. I’m looking forward to the opportunity.”
A year ago, A&M receiver Kendrick Rogers said the Aggies “didn’t fully believe that we could do it” against Clemson, but that mindset has changed.
“This year, we have all the confidence and we know exactly what we need to do to win this game,” Rogers said.
The optimism caused Fisher to chuckle when told of his players’ comments, although he stressed that “Jared better play well” after predicting an upset. He also added a cautionary caveat during Wednesday’s conference call with SEC coaches.
“They are very dynamic on offense,” Fisher said of the Tigers. “Not only do they have the ability to make you miss, but they are strong. Even when you do tackle them, you have to get multiple guys to the ball. Their speed and agility make it tougher. Their receivers are huge. Their backs are big. We will have our hands full.”
So will Texas, which faces an LSU team that allowed only 98 total yards and one third-down conversion in last week’s 55-3 rout of Georgia Southern. Tigers quarterback Joe Burrow threw for five touchdowns, completing 23-of-27 attempts for 278 yards. But the Longhorns, unlike the Aggies, will be playing at home in quest of a statement win. They’ll also be facing an LSU program with an 0-11 record in road games against non-conference opponents ranked in the Top 10.
For Texas and LSU, this is the first regular season meeting between the schools since 1954. The teams have split a pair of Cotton Bowls in the past 65 years – LSU won 13-0 in 1963 and Texas prevailed 35-20 in 2003 – but this is the first scheduled matchup since the schools met 10 times in a 20-season stretch from 1935-54. Beginning in 1960, LSU featured A&M as its annual non-conference opponent from the Lone Star State for 13 consecutive seasons while Texas built a heated non-conference rivalry with Oklahoma. Ironically, today’s LSU-A&M matchups and Texas-OU contests are now conference games for the competitors.
But today’s challenge, for both the Longhorns and Aggies, is simple and shared: beat the Tigers and become relevant once again on the national landscape.
