I entered Texas A&M in the fall of 1996 as a big basketball fan. I left in the spring of 2000 and, miraculously, I was still a big basketball fan.
I came to A&M from a pretty good basketball town in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The hometown Razorbacks played in a big, modern arena that was always filled with screaming fans. I arrived in Texas to find a culture that either ignored basketball completely or tried to squish it into a football-shaped hole. Advertisements for a game my freshman year said, "We want to have the 12th Man in basketball, too!" And that thing that every college football crowd does at kickoff, with their voices rising to a crescendo that culminates in the kick, we used to do that in basketball, with the tipoff, and what's worse, we even did it to "kick off" the second half, when all that happens is an in-bounds pass. But by far the worst was the band. Now, the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band is stodgy even by college football standards, but a marching military band works well in a football environment. What doesn't work is plopping the Aggie band in the middle of a basketball arena, where the sounds of a giant bass drum clash with the pace of a basketball game.
Oh yeah, the arena. G. Rollie White Coliseum, in its day, was a pretty decent place to watch a ballgame. But by 1996, it was pretty run down, and the thing I noticed about it was that on the court you could see the lane lines for the side basketball goals, a callback to YMCA gyms but not anything befitting a basketball arena.
Nobody deserves to have to watch a basketball game in G. Rollie White with a military band and a team whose standout is a Spanish import named Dario Quesada, but the Aggie basketball fans came close. At every game were a hundred or so interested fans, but at most games the rest of the crowd just sat on their hands, occasionally hissing a call that may or may not have been incorrect. In what may be a first, then-coach Tony Barone threw the A&M fans under the bus after a home loss to Kansas (that occurred before students had returned from winter break), wondering aloud to a television reporter how his team can win when there's nobody there to support him. He was 100% correct, but he was understandably let go not too long after. Whenever I told people I was going to a basketball game, the most common response was "Why?"
Fast forward to today. The Aggies lost in Austin, 83-70. What's most impressive is the way in which they lost and the following they now enjoy. Early in the second half, the Ags were down by 18 points to a team that's probably one of the top five in the nation. They fought back to pull within 6, making a real game of it until Brad "Sweep the Leg Johnny" Buckman drew a questionable charge that represented Joseph Jones's fifth foul. Since Billy Gillispie has taken over, this team has shown a remarkable amount of heart, and it seems to be increasing with every game. But what has really amazed me is the change in the fans. At today's game I sat by a section of A&M students who were more spirited than any entire crowd I was a part of during my time as a student. They did yells, they stayed behind the team, and, especially in the second half, they got really loud. They had such a presence at the game that at times I thought I was in a neutral arena.
I hope that the recent gains the basketball program has made are a sign of things to come. After the first NIT appearance in a decade, the Aggies have responded well to the departure of Antoine Wright and, though they're currently 3-6 in conference, could still make a legitimate run at the tournament given the schedule they have remaining. Whatever happens, I hope they hang onto an environment that is not nearly as inhospitable toward basketball as it was just a few years ago. In fact, Reed Arena is now a really good place to watch a ballgame.
