COLLEGE STATION, Texas — The 2024 college football season has been a storm of unexpected upsets, teams majorly falling off and others rising to stardom, and higher stakes with an expanded postseason for fans and players to look forward to.
However, in the case of Texas A&M after their upset loss to South Carolina in Columbia Saturday night, all hope isn't exactly lost like some online (over)reactions might make you think.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the emotional anguish of being upset of being upset by an unranked Gamecocks team is beneficial because it sobers up our outlook on the rest of the season, putting more emphasis on picking up wins where the team looks fundamentally sound on the field against two opponents which we are highly likely to be favored in.
Then comes the Lone Star Showdown, which is on track to be one of the best games of the year. That's despite the fact that Kyle Field was already electric with the blackout environment against LSU just a couple of weeks ago.
Do I want the Aggies to definitively beat Texas at the end of the season? Naturally. I was actually at Kyle Field during the last A&M-Texas game prior to the stadium renovations and move to the SEC, and the sting of that 27-25 loss in 2011 doesn't fully sit right even though our entire athletics program has benefitted a significant amount from leaving the Big 12 behind.
But that's an underlying theme with all of this: appreciate the work that head coach Mike Elko has done in his first year as our head coach is setting us up for a bright future that allows us to be looked at alongside the upper echelon programs in the conference is a lot better than being known for doing less with more like under our previous head coach.
I'm also not even going to mention how bleak things would look if we had gone through with hiring Mark Stoops, as is evident by how Kentucky is doing this year.
If the team was under similar or the same circumstances this year in 2023 with all of its injuries and close games, I'd be confident in saying we would not have a 7-2 record, top 25 ranking, or be anywhere near close to being a contender for any sort of conference title or making the expanded college football playoff.
While the above clip was from multiple weeks ago, one of the points made in the back half of the clip still holds true, even after a second loss.
"The Aggie fans are one of the most resilient groups of fans in all of college athletics, and they always get let down, right? And my hope is that they don't get let down this year. The team went out there and executed and did their part; it's only gonna be a cycle of more excitement, they're gonna show up and it's going to be louder and louder....The blue-collar mentality is becoming not only a persona that (head coach Mike) Elko has, but the team has taken that on with how they run the football and the way they play defense."
If A&M is able to win the rest of their games, it's highly likely the team will be making a trip to Atlanta to compete for the SEC championship and could be what shuts the Longhorns out of the expanded college football playoff. Even if that reality doesn't come fully true and the season ends with only three losses, it's a great place for the program to be in its first year under a new head coach.
Mike Elko has already proven that he's the right guy to lay the groundwork for making Texas A&M a legitimate powerhouse program, but this season is just a question of what the team's ceiling is and how close we can get to reaching that ceiling on a consistent basis.
Have your sunglasses ready, because the future is bright in Aggieland.