good discussion on longhorn network/aggies

Texas is like bama.
Texas a&m is like auburn

Texas a& m feels second best in with Texas just as auburn feels second best with bama.
It's like when little brother wants to go out on his own , away from the shadow of big brother. The lhn was just the last straw, even if the straw was nothing. Texas a& m is just tired of being forced to climb on the top bunk I guess.

Just for note: only one in fifty on this board wanted the sec to expand. We sort of liked things as they were. Hell, the sec west is hard enough now. It's like the NFL jr. We really don't need another team like Texas a&m. Most of our problems with them is they are from Texas, our recruiting area.

 

I replied to your assertion that it's "not that great a rivalry" because of the 75-37 overall record. My view is that it's a great rivalry because of a lot of reasons, including the 15-15 split over the last 30. That's not some arbitrary time window. It's basically my entire life of keeping up with college football.

I've lived in the Houston area for about a decade now. I generally only pull for the Aggies when they're playing the Horns (underdog factor). I would've preferred to keep the SEC as it was with 12 teams. In trying to look on the bright side, there will be even more talk about LSU in the Houston area now and short road trips to College Station (football, basketball, baseball, etc.).

I do have a decent understanding of the extreme wackiness of the Aggies. Just one quick story (of many that I've seen/heard), one of my friends is a Horn (married to an Aggie). He attended a "groundbreaking" event that involved a large donation from a UT donor (maybe a wing of a hospital or something). As they were in the middle of the speech that thanked the huge donation from the UT donor, a couple of Aggies did their little "pssssssssss" sound that they are brainwashed to do everytime a UT alum is mentioned.

Out of all the universities in the United States, the one I would really hate for my kids to attend would be Texas A&M.

 

part of the reason i say it is not that great a rivalry is not so much about the lopsided overall series, it's the fact that the game tends to have no impact on the national landscape...that is to say, it is rarely played for anything on the line other than one team playing spoiler. There has only been one big 12 south division title decided by that game in the entire big 12. it hasn't been two top ten teams playing for a very, very, very long time. in the ten years tamu was at the top, texas was absolutely horrible and for most of the rest of the time, texas has handled tamu while tamu was fighting off mediocrity. that's what i meant...yeah, it's gets exclusive billing on thanksgiving but from most texas fans' perspective, the game has become a lose-lose situation. if we beat tamu, it's "eh, they suck and we're supposed to kick their ass" and if we lose, it's hell dealing with those goofy bastards and an embarrassment. they consistently play up against us and we tend to play down. it sucks.

conversely, the texas-ou game is a GREAT rivalry game that has meant something for most of history. there is legitimate hate in that game from both sides and both teams have spent a lot of time in the top ten together...which ratchets it up a great deal. think of it as lsu and bama/auburn over the last five years vs. lsu and arkansas.

 

i get the parallel but auburn is 34-40 against bammer. that's a lot more equitable than 37-75.

 

did you know A&M is 15-12 against the shorthorns the last 27 games? You'd swear they had never lost to the aggies given the way they act.

 

It wouldve been great to get ou instead of texas a& m in one way. It would have really strengthend the sec even more. On the other hand, the sec west is too top heavy now. We would beat each other up so bad it would allow lesser teams to have better records, thus giving them the chance to play in the bcscg for basically beating a bunch or Oregon states, nevada's, Baylor 's and Texas tech's.

 

I think this was all planned by the other conferences ... a conspiracy to weaken the SEC's stranglehold on the crystal football

 

As long as the kids from sec states stay home in the sec, we will always be dominant. Like Kelly , the duck's coach, said" they have a diffrent kind of athlete running around out there". The risk we run is a coordinated effort by those in other conferences to pump up non sec schools. For example, Boise state. They are ranked top five. They played a mid tier sec school and won. Then they played schools that lsu can beat if they left every starter at home. Some teams they play our practice team could most likely beat. Still they are ranked highly by idiots that rank them highly because of their prejudice aginst sec dominance. There is no way that some of the teams that they rank highly could compete in the sec. When a team like Clemson beats a rebuilding au, the media dieing to dethrone the sec uses the win to say "see, I told you the sec was overrated". They fail to see that the barners have lost their entire o-line, qb, best defensive player and more. When you match a powerhouse sec team aginst the best the rest has to offer, the sec team wins.

 

The solution that makes the most sense for all parties involved is for the SEC to add Texas, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma St. to finalize the league at 16 teams. Texas gets to keep their rivalry with OU while also eliminating the chance of A&M getting "SEC" recruiting advantages in the future (and not having to hear Aggies brag about how finishing 4th in the SEC west is better than 1st in the 'little 9'). OU and Ok St. would get to stay together as they have a "want" to do.

No other conference would ever be able to debate they are better with the addition of these four schools to the SEC. The geography makes sense. There would also be no worries about a school like South Carolina (Clemson) or Florida (Florida St.) trying to block another in-state school from joining.

If the third tier revenue (which I don't fully understand) is structured the exact same in the Big 12 and SEC, then that shouldn't be a deal breaker. I personally would probably be against this idea since it may involve losing annual games to Bama & Auburn but honestly think it makes the most sense.

 

as i said earlier, i just hate this idea for a number of reasons but not the least of which is the fact that by adding oklahoma and texas to the sec, you're really concentrating too much power in one conference. as i said earlier in the thread, the sec has definitely elevated itself up to a dominant position among conferences and the predominant counter-balances to that are ohio state, usc, oklahoma, texas, etc... if you add texas and oklahoma to the sec, you might as well just call the sec championship game the national championship game.