The game Texas A&M desperately didn’t want is now the one the Aggies desperately need
Every Aggie will gladly tithe not 10 but closer to 50 percent of their salary to fund a Jimbo-sized contract extension for Texas A&M coach Mike Elko, if the Aggies beat Texas on Saturday in College Station.
Elko could potentially go 0-for-2025 and maybe even 2026 and the Aggies will forgive him if he beats Texas in this famous feuding couple’s first football game since 2011.
The game that the Aggies publicly swore they didn’t want is now the one on their calendar they cannot wait to play. The price of one ticket for a seat just south of Pluto at Kyle Field is going for $791 on StubHub; a good seat will cost you $2,161.
According to Tick Pick, a site the tracks the prices of concerts and sporting events, the average ticket price of this game is $1,000 in a venue that seats 102,733. The site says this is the highest ticket price ever for a college, or NFL, regular season game.
Texas at Texas A&M at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday in College Station is a dangerous cocktail that guarantees drunken idiocy, parking lot fights, student section fights, club section fights, suite fights, and a night of chaotic TV; fingers crossed a member of the Aggie corps will draw his sword at a Horns cheerleader. On behalf of every Texan, we need this back in our lives.
Like most things in life, Texas and Texas A&M getting back together is driven by cash, and to allow the mighty and powerful in college sports to practice the hallowed American tradition of hoarding money.
As excited as the Aggies are to play the Longhorns in football for the first time since 2011, this is the one game that scares the fluids and foods out of their bodies. Texas already stole A&M’s baseball coach this season, and now the winner of this meeting goes to the SEC title game, to play Georgia, and a likely spot in the 12-team postseason invitational.
When Texas A&M left the Big 12 to join the SEC, in 2012, all Aggie administrators and the loyal fans were aligned in this break up from the league, and Texas. Since their last game in football, a UT win at Kyle Field in 2011, the Aggies wanted us to believe they didn’t want to play UT with cries of, “They need us! We don’t need them!”
Texas needs no one but themselves, and they are only too drunk on their own Dallas Cowboys-like arrogance to share this detail with all living creatures, including a certain cute full-blooded Rough Collie.
After every Aggie proudly proclaimed they don’t need the University of Texas, they sang their beloved War Hymn, their fight song that is about ... the University of Texas. If you don’t need them, change the song.
As entertaining as it is to enjoy this latest round of hypocrisy, the Aggies need Texas. The Aggies need Texas to prove they are what they think they are, even if the trend, history, record and tradition say otherwise.
Without Texas as their in-state conference “buddy,” the Aggies solo act in the SEC didn’t work in proving much of anything we didn’t already know. A&M has yet to reach an SEC title game, or make this fake playoff. (Of the schools in this state, only Texas and TCU have made the tournament; TCU has this state’s one win playoff win.)
A&M, you want to go to the SEC title game for the first time? All ya’ gotta do is beat Texas.
You want to go to the college football postseason invite for the first time? Just beat Texas.
UT is a 6-point favorite against A&M, and even if the Horns lose they may yet wind up in the 12-team postseason tournament. The Aggies will be afforded no such luxuries, because exceptions in college football are only reserved for Texas, ‘Bama, Michigan, Ohio State and Notre Dame.
After ripping off an impressive seven-game winning streak this season, the Aggies are now dangerously close to pulling another “Jimbo Sumlin.” Losing by 24 at South Carolina on Nov. 2 was not a good look, but the overtime loss against an Auburn team that was under .500 on Saturday is the type of game that has defined this program for decades.
A&M has lost two of their last three, and there is still that chance Elko could post one of those 8-5 records that previous Aggie coaches Kevin Sumlin and Jimbo Fisher made fashionable, and themselves exceptionally wealthy.
Since 2000, A&M has posted at least five losses in a season 16 times. The consistency of it all is quite is impressive, even if it is on the border of sad.
In its first SEC season, Texas is already in position to do what A&M has not despite playing in this league for 11 years: Make a conference title game. An A&M loss on Saturday is a reminder of this state’s hierarchy, a demoralizing bomb to the end of a season that had so much promise, and progress.
An Aggie loss and this team will be checked out as it prepares to play in the OnlyFans Bowl.
A win on Saturday night does not change the past, but it would allow A&M to stay just ahead of the school it lives to loathe.
Everything A&M wants is available to be had, this season. All the Aggies have to do is beat Texas.
This story was originally published November 26, 2024 at 9:11 AM.
