On October 16th of last year I had officially written Texas A&M off as well as their head coach, Mike Sherman. The Aggies, after starting 3-0 had just lost their 3rd game in a row, a 30-9 dismantling by my Missouri Tigers in College Station. If you know much about football in the state of Texas, then you know they have very little patience when it comes to losing. Especially when you're the Longwhorns little brother. It seemed inevitable that Sherman would be fired following the season if not before. But then something unexpected happened as A&M went on a 6 game winning streak, including victories over Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Baylor, Texas and Nebraska. They wound up 9-3 on the season and 6-2 in conference, finishing up in the 5 way tie at the top. The move that enabled them to make this turnaround was when they replaced the pre-season favorite of 1st team Big XII QB Jerrod Johnson with Ryan Tannehill.
But one thing you can count on is that what happened last year doesn't really matter this year. A&M is absolutely loaded, losing 1 starter from their offense and 3 from the defense. Their fan base is going to be expecting a BCS appearance and league championship and anything less will be considered a failure. And if you're familiar with their fan base, then you know they lean to the weird side, from the habit of squeezing their own testicles and from there, it just gets worse.
Once again the non conference schedule starts out easy enough with home games against SMU and Idaho, before Oklahoma State comes to town, and then a contest against Arkansas at Jerry World. If they manage to lose only one of those, they have a good chance to match last years record. A trip to Norman will certainly be a huge challenge, but otherwise they trip to Texas Tech, Kansas State and Iowa State. At home, contests against Baylor and kansas should be wins, but Mizzou comes to town on October 29th which should make their already weird fan base even weirder. They also close the season at home against cross state big brother Texas. I'm predicting a final record of 8-4 for A&M and 6-3 in conference. In the new Big XII that will be more than respectable, but I imagine the Sherman hot seat will be warming up again.
Next time we'll talk about the big dogs in the conference, the Oklahoma Sooners. If you'd like to look at some new Tiger gear, please stop by my
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