[There are, dear reader, at least six reasons that you should discount my opinion on the whole A&M/SEC situation:
1) I came to Texas A&M from out of state.
2) I like college basketball more than college football.
3) Having moved to SEC territory in middle school with established sports ties, I don't particularly care for the SEC.
4) I would heartily support the creation of a functioning football minor league for football players who are not interested in being college students, even if it would significantly erode the quality of the talent pool in college football.
5) I hate superconferences. For the SEC, moving from 12 teams to 14 teams will make it 16.67% worse. And a 12-team conference is already 50% worse than an 8-team conference, which is the Platonic ideal for sports conferences.
6) I've been accused of liking too many teams. I suppose part of this comes from having lived in seven different states. About a decade ago I made a list of my 50 favorite college sports teams, and every single Big 12 team was represented. (As an amendment to #3 above, Tennessee, Arkansas, LSU, Mississippi St., and Vanderbilt came in at #24, 25, 34, 35, and 40, respectively.) I realize that I'm breaking a rule here. But since the rule involves, essentially, the requisite amount of animus you should have toward teams that play against your favorite team, you would think that breaking it would not offend people. But it does.]
A couple weeks ago, I was at my sister's wedding, and I was sitting at a table with several former family friends. One couple was from Fayetteville, Arkansas. One was originally from Florida, but I knew them in Memphis. Someone else I knew from both Memphis and Fayetteville, and currently lives in Florida. In other words, SEC country was well represented. Still, I had no problem announcing that I "despise" the SEC. I feel fine saying that, partially because I respect the heck out of everyone at that table--I've lived in two different SEC towns, and I like the people there a lot. If Texas A&M goes to the SEC, I will be very, very disappointed, but I'll get over it. I get the feeling that something different is going on between Texas A&M and Texas.
Since moving to the SEC involves potentially cutting ties with almost 300 years worth of Texas-based rivals, you would expect there to be, at the very least, some bittersweet feeling about making this kind of move. Instead, the overwhelming feeling I get from the Aggie community is unrestrained glee. I wouldn't expect a whole lot of tears to be shed over Baylor and Tech, but it disappoints me the extent to which people are willing to discard our rivalry with Texas.
There seems to be a lot of very real-world negative emotion directed at Texas considering that sports is, all things considered, not exactly the most consequential thing in the world. Coming to Texas A&M from out of state, I was not at all surprised at the bad blood that existed between the schools on the playing field. But I was a little bit disappointed at how much of that spilled over into everyday life. I thought that these Aggies had lots of high school friends who went to Texas and that many Aggies were considering going to Texas. Up to a point that's true, but there are a lot of Aggies who genuinely hate UT. I don't know how it compares to other big rivalries (especially ones that have a power imbalance), but I know it's too many people who feel this way.
Rivalries exist on a sort of delicate balance--too much animosity and you get incidents like the one between the Giants and Dodgers fans on opening day; too little and you get things like Brett Favre lying down for Michael Strahan. The Texas/Texas A&M rivalry, at its best, has intense moments on the field and moments of unity off, like the 1999 Bonfire game. At its worst, it devolves into two very different fan communities: one is cocky and willing to alienate rivals as long as they get theirs; the other is bitter and so eager to prove it's not the little brother that it's willing to blow up the rivalry. Kind of a shame, really.
Some people view college football as a way to unwind from a world that has too many pressing issues. These people will probably be happy wherever Texas A&M ends up playing. But this process has highlighted a number of people who really seem to believe that the University of Texas is not just holding back the fortunes of their favorite football team or even their favorite university; it's holding them back. Reading the message boards and listening to the people driving public (Aggie) perception on this, I get the distinct impression that lots of people think that moving to the SEC will solve something for them. These people are likely to be very disappointed--this whole time they thought their problem was Texas; they're about to learn that their problem is living vicariously through sports teams.
I guess what I'm saying is that a little perspective is in order. Sports is great, but since the start of the BCS, we've spent billions of person hours discussing something that is, by my count, three levels removed from sports*. And if A&M goes to the SEC, everything will get ramped up to a level we've never seen. We'll likely form four 16-team superconferences, devise a playoff system designed around platitudes like "Settle it on the field**", and get state legislatures involved in college sports conference alignment when they're having trouble funding basic services.
Serenity now.
*Watching sports is one level removed from participating in sports. Talking about sporting events is two levels removed, and discussing the organization of sports leagues and the determination of a champion is three levels removed.
**Every kind of championship includes objective elements and subjective elements. There is no perfect way to determine a champion.
Showing posts with label Texas Aamp;M. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Texas Aamp;M. Show all posts
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A Decade Without Bonfire
Is being against the return of Bonfire as much an act of Aggie heresy as it was ten years ago?
It's entirely possible that socialization is as much of a core competency at Texas A&M as education. It all starts at Fish Camp, which almost every incoming freshman attends and learns all the Aggie traditions and terminology. It continues at the solemn remembrances of fallen Aggies at Silver Taps and Muster. It even includes the numerous extracurricular activities, which are referred to as "The Other Education." Traditions are so ingrained at A&M that the on-campus bus routes are named after various traditions. One route is even called "Traditions" (is it a tradition to have traditions?). The biggest tradition of all, and the event that symbolized better than anything the group identity of the Aggies, was Bonfire.
I didn't ever participate in Bonfire, not that I had a strong opinion about it either way when I was at A&M. Like everyone, I thought it was just about the coolest thing ever when I was in attendance. And during the actual cutting and building, well, it wasn't really my thing. When I was a freshman, I attended cut class, which was the mandatory safety class that everyone who wanted to go out into the woods and cut down trees for Bonfire had to take. It was ostensibly about safety, but the bulk of the half hour was spent reciting the (unprintable) dorm yells. I also experienced “wake up” as a freshman. The cars that went out to the woods for cut left at about six in the morning, so the upperclassmen would go around the hall at around five on Saturday morning and bang on every door as hard as they could, yelling all sorts of things and kicking on the door so hard you thought they were going to kick it in. As an out of state kid, I didn't come in with a real love of Bonfire, so I didn't really participate in it.
Like everyone, I knew that Bonfire had a reputation for a lot of alcohol on the job and for hostility toward the international students who walked past the Polo Fields on their way home from class. And yet, for at least a week after Bonfire fell, I was adamant that Bonfire was a crucial part of Texas A&M and absolutely could not be taken away.
I arrived outside the old basketball arena at about 5:00 a.m. on November 18, 1999, and heard the news that Bonfire had fallen. I was in line to camp out for tickets to the next week's Texas game. The mood at that point was this odd mix of gloominess and normalcy. We all knew something was wrong, but we couldn't really go anywhere or follow the story, so poeple were chatting and playing cards. Later, as I started going to classes and more information started flowing in, it got really, really awful. The moment that it really hit me was when I went into the library annex to read for a class and a sign on the door said, "Be sure to call your parents and let them know you're OK."
After Bonfire fell, I heard its necessity compared to that of breathing and driving cars. I didn’t go that far, but I certainly didn’t believe that "they" (whoever they were) had any place telling us what we could do with one of our proudest traditions. I believed that the twelve who lost their lives were doing something they loved and that the best way to memorialize them was to keep Bonfire going. Though I hadn't participated in its construction, I thought it was a necessary part of this university that I had come to identify with.
At some point that winter, I changed my tune. I thought about myself as someone who had been recruited from out of state and had very little previous knowledge of A&M before arriving there. I thought about how it would be to attract similar candidates in the future if Bonfire stayed around and those candidates knew essentially two things about A&M: 1) they have this thing that killed a bunch of people, and 2) they kept it going despite most of the country calling for it to be ended. I thought about how silly it was that we had so much of our identity tied up in this stack of logs, and how strange it had been for me to be so supportive of it.
The one moment that really soured me on Bonfire was the next spring, when the investigation into the causes of the collapse was completed. The findings were announced at the basketball arena, and students were allowed to attend the press conference. The chairman announced how poorly the operation had been supervised and how little actual engineering knowledge went into the construction. The findings were focused primarily on the physical reasons for the fall (ground conditions, the integrity of the center pole, etc.) and paid less attention to the social aspects of Bonfire. During the presentation, a reporter asked why the commission did not address the issue of hazing at the Bonfire site. The commissioner said that he did not feel it was necessary to discuss something that had nothing to do with the fall of Bonfire. At that moment, a giant cheer went up from the 3000 or so students in attendance, a cheer like you would hear at a sporting event. I don't suppose I really know what they were cheering (I guess it was the commissioner's resistance to the media's trying to frame Bonfire as a bunch of drunk kids running around unsupervised), but it really seemed to me like they all missed the point.
And I think they're still missing the point. It appears that most Aggies, including Governor Perry, are in favor of bringing Bonfire back on campus. This is despite the fact that it has been deemed uninsurable and another death or serious accident could mean the end of the university. I've heard several times now that the campus is noticeably different without Bonfire---people are less friendly and the campus doesn't have the unity it once did. That, in addition to being the most egregious case of Good Old Days Syndrome I've ever heard in my life, is complete and utter garbage. If the people who support this idea had spent more time in logic class and less time at cut, they might have been introduced to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. And besides, I just found out that Howdy Ags (http://howdyags.tamu.edu), whose purpose is to reverse the decline of the popular Aggie greeting (no kidding), was formed in 1997, two years before Bonfire fell.
Texas A&M University is better now than it was ten years ago. That would have been the case had Bonfire never collapsed, too. Just because that's what one generation of Aggies used to bond with one another doesn't mean that's the only way it can be done. Neva Hand, the mother of one of the 12 Bonfire victims, said it best: "A&M has to be more than bonfire. It has to be bigger than the tradition itself. If the students of A&M cannot come up with something better to form camaraderie and strive together to build and work for something really big, then they're not the students that I think A&M students are."
Forget academics, which by any objective measure are improving across the board. Students are as engaged as ever in extracurricular activities that don't involve giant burning piles of wood. A few years ago I got to visit with some of the student leaders from the Memorial Student Center who had made a trip to Austin, and their love of Aggieland was unaffected by the lack of a 60-foot-tall symbolic fire before Thanksgiving. My sisters had an experience at A&M that was not that different from mine. Football games are still football games, and basketball games are, well, now they actually resemble basketball games. (By the way, where are we on that Jerald Brown statue?)
The institutional memory of Texas A&M is such that many current students are arguing for the necessity of an on-campus Bonfire, even though they were in elementary school when it last burned. Several successsive A&M administrations have been criticized for saying Bonfire can't return, but I think they're making the right choice. Bonfire should never come back---the brand has been forever tarnished, it's not financially viable, and it runs counter to the direction the university needs to go. Bringing it back would mean choosing between a safe version built with little student input or a student-led giant liability waiting to happen, and neither option is worthwhile.
The return of Bonfire is likely to remain a contentious topic, with both sides trying to honor the memory of our twelve fellow Aggies who gave their lives. Say a prayer for those kids and their families. So much has happened in my own life in the past ten years that it's hard to believe---I feel so sorry that their lives were cut so short.
It's entirely possible that socialization is as much of a core competency at Texas A&M as education. It all starts at Fish Camp, which almost every incoming freshman attends and learns all the Aggie traditions and terminology. It continues at the solemn remembrances of fallen Aggies at Silver Taps and Muster. It even includes the numerous extracurricular activities, which are referred to as "The Other Education." Traditions are so ingrained at A&M that the on-campus bus routes are named after various traditions. One route is even called "Traditions" (is it a tradition to have traditions?). The biggest tradition of all, and the event that symbolized better than anything the group identity of the Aggies, was Bonfire.
I didn't ever participate in Bonfire, not that I had a strong opinion about it either way when I was at A&M. Like everyone, I thought it was just about the coolest thing ever when I was in attendance. And during the actual cutting and building, well, it wasn't really my thing. When I was a freshman, I attended cut class, which was the mandatory safety class that everyone who wanted to go out into the woods and cut down trees for Bonfire had to take. It was ostensibly about safety, but the bulk of the half hour was spent reciting the (unprintable) dorm yells. I also experienced “wake up” as a freshman. The cars that went out to the woods for cut left at about six in the morning, so the upperclassmen would go around the hall at around five on Saturday morning and bang on every door as hard as they could, yelling all sorts of things and kicking on the door so hard you thought they were going to kick it in. As an out of state kid, I didn't come in with a real love of Bonfire, so I didn't really participate in it.
Like everyone, I knew that Bonfire had a reputation for a lot of alcohol on the job and for hostility toward the international students who walked past the Polo Fields on their way home from class. And yet, for at least a week after Bonfire fell, I was adamant that Bonfire was a crucial part of Texas A&M and absolutely could not be taken away.
I arrived outside the old basketball arena at about 5:00 a.m. on November 18, 1999, and heard the news that Bonfire had fallen. I was in line to camp out for tickets to the next week's Texas game. The mood at that point was this odd mix of gloominess and normalcy. We all knew something was wrong, but we couldn't really go anywhere or follow the story, so poeple were chatting and playing cards. Later, as I started going to classes and more information started flowing in, it got really, really awful. The moment that it really hit me was when I went into the library annex to read for a class and a sign on the door said, "Be sure to call your parents and let them know you're OK."
After Bonfire fell, I heard its necessity compared to that of breathing and driving cars. I didn’t go that far, but I certainly didn’t believe that "they" (whoever they were) had any place telling us what we could do with one of our proudest traditions. I believed that the twelve who lost their lives were doing something they loved and that the best way to memorialize them was to keep Bonfire going. Though I hadn't participated in its construction, I thought it was a necessary part of this university that I had come to identify with.
At some point that winter, I changed my tune. I thought about myself as someone who had been recruited from out of state and had very little previous knowledge of A&M before arriving there. I thought about how it would be to attract similar candidates in the future if Bonfire stayed around and those candidates knew essentially two things about A&M: 1) they have this thing that killed a bunch of people, and 2) they kept it going despite most of the country calling for it to be ended. I thought about how silly it was that we had so much of our identity tied up in this stack of logs, and how strange it had been for me to be so supportive of it.
The one moment that really soured me on Bonfire was the next spring, when the investigation into the causes of the collapse was completed. The findings were announced at the basketball arena, and students were allowed to attend the press conference. The chairman announced how poorly the operation had been supervised and how little actual engineering knowledge went into the construction. The findings were focused primarily on the physical reasons for the fall (ground conditions, the integrity of the center pole, etc.) and paid less attention to the social aspects of Bonfire. During the presentation, a reporter asked why the commission did not address the issue of hazing at the Bonfire site. The commissioner said that he did not feel it was necessary to discuss something that had nothing to do with the fall of Bonfire. At that moment, a giant cheer went up from the 3000 or so students in attendance, a cheer like you would hear at a sporting event. I don't suppose I really know what they were cheering (I guess it was the commissioner's resistance to the media's trying to frame Bonfire as a bunch of drunk kids running around unsupervised), but it really seemed to me like they all missed the point.
And I think they're still missing the point. It appears that most Aggies, including Governor Perry, are in favor of bringing Bonfire back on campus. This is despite the fact that it has been deemed uninsurable and another death or serious accident could mean the end of the university. I've heard several times now that the campus is noticeably different without Bonfire---people are less friendly and the campus doesn't have the unity it once did. That, in addition to being the most egregious case of Good Old Days Syndrome I've ever heard in my life, is complete and utter garbage. If the people who support this idea had spent more time in logic class and less time at cut, they might have been introduced to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. And besides, I just found out that Howdy Ags (http://howdyags.tamu.edu), whose purpose is to reverse the decline of the popular Aggie greeting (no kidding), was formed in 1997, two years before Bonfire fell.
Texas A&M University is better now than it was ten years ago. That would have been the case had Bonfire never collapsed, too. Just because that's what one generation of Aggies used to bond with one another doesn't mean that's the only way it can be done. Neva Hand, the mother of one of the 12 Bonfire victims, said it best: "A&M has to be more than bonfire. It has to be bigger than the tradition itself. If the students of A&M cannot come up with something better to form camaraderie and strive together to build and work for something really big, then they're not the students that I think A&M students are."
Forget academics, which by any objective measure are improving across the board. Students are as engaged as ever in extracurricular activities that don't involve giant burning piles of wood. A few years ago I got to visit with some of the student leaders from the Memorial Student Center who had made a trip to Austin, and their love of Aggieland was unaffected by the lack of a 60-foot-tall symbolic fire before Thanksgiving. My sisters had an experience at A&M that was not that different from mine. Football games are still football games, and basketball games are, well, now they actually resemble basketball games. (By the way, where are we on that Jerald Brown statue?)
The institutional memory of Texas A&M is such that many current students are arguing for the necessity of an on-campus Bonfire, even though they were in elementary school when it last burned. Several successsive A&M administrations have been criticized for saying Bonfire can't return, but I think they're making the right choice. Bonfire should never come back---the brand has been forever tarnished, it's not financially viable, and it runs counter to the direction the university needs to go. Bringing it back would mean choosing between a safe version built with little student input or a student-led giant liability waiting to happen, and neither option is worthwhile.
The return of Bonfire is likely to remain a contentious topic, with both sides trying to honor the memory of our twelve fellow Aggies who gave their lives. Say a prayer for those kids and their families. So much has happened in my own life in the past ten years that it's hard to believe---I feel so sorry that their lives were cut so short.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
This State Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us
Remarkably, this is first time in three-plus years of blogging that I have ever made a post devoted entirely to Texas A&M football. And it comes after perhaps the worst loss of my being a Texas Aggie football fan. Twenty-point losses to the Baylor Bears are a good time to get philosophical about the fortunes of a football team, which is where this post has its genesis. I started thinking about the likelihood that, after a certifiably abysmal start, Mike Sherman will end up being a good Aggie football coach. I then started thinking about the fact that, according to the Aggie faithful, R. C. Slocum became a bad coach at roughly the same time that Mack Brown started coaching at Texas, or at least at the time when his recruits started playing at Texas.
Which raises an interesting question: which coaching change would most benefit Texas A&M, replacing an underperforming coach in College Station or replacing a legend-in-the-making in Austin? Does Texas being good make it less likely that A&M will be good?
I compiled the yearly winning percentages for A&M and Texas over the last 100 years. The correlation coefficient between those two sets of data is -0.262. (First off, a couple caveats. Doing any kind of statistical analysis using only correlation is dubious at best. Thankfully, none of the two people who read this blog are statisticians. And all of the correlations mentioned in this post are what scientists call "weak". The strongest correlation you can have is 1 or -1, and nothing mentioned here gets close to that. Still, I think some of the relationiships I am about to describe are real; it's just that there are far too many factors that affect a team's success, most of them internal.)
This negative correlation means that when Texas has a relatively high winning percentage, Texas A&M is more likely to have a relatively low winning percentage. In other words, it's more likely that Texas is good and A&M is bad (or vice versa) than that both of them are good. In 2004, when the two teams played the day after Thanksgiving in Austin, it was only something like the fifth time that both had been ranked. Kind of surprising until you consider that the teams have been good at different times.
But of course there is going to be a not very strong negative correlation between the two teams' success---they play each other once a year, right? So for each team, roughly 8% of its games will be played in a zero-sum environment---only one can win. To test that, I took a couple other teams that A&M has played every year. A&M and Baylor have a correlation of 0.066. That's a much weaker correlation, and it's not even negative. The next team I looked at was TCU. (Texas Tech, the only remaining team that has been in both the Southwest Conference and Big 12, started playing football in 1925, so TCU has actually played more against the Aggies in the last century.) TCU's correlation with A&M is -0.058, another near-zero correlation.
What about other rivalries? It would make sense that when one rival starts winning, he would get access to better recruits and more money, fostering an imbalance of power, at least for a little while. Michigan and Ohio State have a correlation of -0.073, another remarkably weak correlation. Army and Navy have a correlation of positive 0.294. This sort of makes sense. Both were good in the first half of the century and bad in the second half, when superconferences took over from Notre Dame, the Ivy League, and the military academies.
If access to recruits is a factor in the relative fortunes of two rivals, then you would expect in-state rivals to have a stronger inverse relationship than other rivals because there is a bigger overlap in recruiting territory. Auburn and Alabama have a correlation of -0.175, which is getting there. UCLA and Southern Cal, who have met fewer than 90 times, have a correlation of -.104. Now we're getting somewhere, perhaps.
So maybe there is something to the idea that it's tough for rivals to be good at the same time, especially when they are in close proximity. If that's the case, then it's probably the case that the historically dominant school has an upper hand in determining who will be successful. Darrel Royal coached for 20 years, and Texas A&M had a winning record in just 5 of those years (4 of which were his first year and his final three). The Aggies started the Mack Brown era by twice finishing the year in the top 25. Since then--you guessed it, zero times in nine tries (I'm counting us outside the top 25 in 2008, which is not going out on too much of a limb). So as the boosters are passing the hat around to buy out Mike Sherman, they might think they're doing some good. And they might actually be. But it could be that the key to success at A&M lies more than we realize in waiting out the situation in Austin.
Which raises an interesting question: which coaching change would most benefit Texas A&M, replacing an underperforming coach in College Station or replacing a legend-in-the-making in Austin? Does Texas being good make it less likely that A&M will be good?
I compiled the yearly winning percentages for A&M and Texas over the last 100 years. The correlation coefficient between those two sets of data is -0.262. (First off, a couple caveats. Doing any kind of statistical analysis using only correlation is dubious at best. Thankfully, none of the two people who read this blog are statisticians. And all of the correlations mentioned in this post are what scientists call "weak". The strongest correlation you can have is 1 or -1, and nothing mentioned here gets close to that. Still, I think some of the relationiships I am about to describe are real; it's just that there are far too many factors that affect a team's success, most of them internal.)
This negative correlation means that when Texas has a relatively high winning percentage, Texas A&M is more likely to have a relatively low winning percentage. In other words, it's more likely that Texas is good and A&M is bad (or vice versa) than that both of them are good. In 2004, when the two teams played the day after Thanksgiving in Austin, it was only something like the fifth time that both had been ranked. Kind of surprising until you consider that the teams have been good at different times.
But of course there is going to be a not very strong negative correlation between the two teams' success---they play each other once a year, right? So for each team, roughly 8% of its games will be played in a zero-sum environment---only one can win. To test that, I took a couple other teams that A&M has played every year. A&M and Baylor have a correlation of 0.066. That's a much weaker correlation, and it's not even negative. The next team I looked at was TCU. (Texas Tech, the only remaining team that has been in both the Southwest Conference and Big 12, started playing football in 1925, so TCU has actually played more against the Aggies in the last century.) TCU's correlation with A&M is -0.058, another near-zero correlation.
What about other rivalries? It would make sense that when one rival starts winning, he would get access to better recruits and more money, fostering an imbalance of power, at least for a little while. Michigan and Ohio State have a correlation of -0.073, another remarkably weak correlation. Army and Navy have a correlation of positive 0.294. This sort of makes sense. Both were good in the first half of the century and bad in the second half, when superconferences took over from Notre Dame, the Ivy League, and the military academies.
If access to recruits is a factor in the relative fortunes of two rivals, then you would expect in-state rivals to have a stronger inverse relationship than other rivals because there is a bigger overlap in recruiting territory. Auburn and Alabama have a correlation of -0.175, which is getting there. UCLA and Southern Cal, who have met fewer than 90 times, have a correlation of -.104. Now we're getting somewhere, perhaps.
So maybe there is something to the idea that it's tough for rivals to be good at the same time, especially when they are in close proximity. If that's the case, then it's probably the case that the historically dominant school has an upper hand in determining who will be successful. Darrel Royal coached for 20 years, and Texas A&M had a winning record in just 5 of those years (4 of which were his first year and his final three). The Aggies started the Mack Brown era by twice finishing the year in the top 25. Since then--you guessed it, zero times in nine tries (I'm counting us outside the top 25 in 2008, which is not going out on too much of a limb). So as the boosters are passing the hat around to buy out Mike Sherman, they might think they're doing some good. And they might actually be. But it could be that the key to success at A&M lies more than we realize in waiting out the situation in Austin.
Friday, November 2, 2007
A Sports Silver Taps
Let's face it, Aggies. That cute little 113-year experiment we like to call the football program has come to a sad end. It's time to lay it to rest and come to terms with what we really are: a basketball school.
If I had known there would be this much excitement to be had watching the basketball team right now, I would have deferred my enrollment by a decade. Before I started at Texas A&M, I had run as many March Madness pools (2) as I had attended college football games. But I quickly bought into the prospect of Aggie football.
The A&M teams of the 1990s were definitely cool, in a slightly uncool (running and defense) sort of way. Head coach R.C. Slocum was so boring that his secret e-mail newsletter was cancelled after three weeks because, as it turns out, boosters were not interested in finding out whether R.C. would be having oatmeal or cream of wheat for his pregame breakfast. But as predictable and conservative as he and his teams were, they won, especially at home and especially in November. Players like Dat Nguyen and Dante Hall brought their own brand of excitement, as well as conference championships in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1998. Fittingly, the last time the Aggies have finished in the top 25 in a final AP poll was 1999.
Since then, the team has been plagued by poor play, substandard recruiting, and secret newsletters. Most importantly, they've had to face some real competition. Not from Texas Tech or Oklahoma or even Texas, but from a little sports team just a couple blocks down the street. We're talking about a team that doesn't wear cleats, doesn't play for sixty minutes, and whose field the Aggie band can't even fit on! And they don't even really play on a field!
I'm speaking, of course, about the juggernaut that is the Fightin' Texas Aggie Basketball Team. Once the doormats of the Big 12, the 2007 Ags came from out of nowhere to capture their first Sweet 16 in twenty-five years. What's more remarkable is that over this (one-year) stretch of Sweet 16 berths, the Aggie basketball factory has produced more NBA lottery picks (1) than Duke, UCLA, UConn, Arizona, and Kentucky combined.
The 2007/2008 basketball team, ranked #14 in the preseason, rolled past Emporia State in its preseason opener. It should be another exciting year for the basketball team, further cementing the sea change at the once football-crazed school. Yes, the experiment we call "Texas A&M as a football school" has clearly run its course. It's time to bury the Aggie football program--don't worry, we'll make sure that wherever we put it, it'll have a good view of the Reed Arena scoreboard.
If I had known there would be this much excitement to be had watching the basketball team right now, I would have deferred my enrollment by a decade. Before I started at Texas A&M, I had run as many March Madness pools (2) as I had attended college football games. But I quickly bought into the prospect of Aggie football.
The A&M teams of the 1990s were definitely cool, in a slightly uncool (running and defense) sort of way. Head coach R.C. Slocum was so boring that his secret e-mail newsletter was cancelled after three weeks because, as it turns out, boosters were not interested in finding out whether R.C. would be having oatmeal or cream of wheat for his pregame breakfast. But as predictable and conservative as he and his teams were, they won, especially at home and especially in November. Players like Dat Nguyen and Dante Hall brought their own brand of excitement, as well as conference championships in 1991, 1992, 1993, and 1998. Fittingly, the last time the Aggies have finished in the top 25 in a final AP poll was 1999.
Since then, the team has been plagued by poor play, substandard recruiting, and secret newsletters. Most importantly, they've had to face some real competition. Not from Texas Tech or Oklahoma or even Texas, but from a little sports team just a couple blocks down the street. We're talking about a team that doesn't wear cleats, doesn't play for sixty minutes, and whose field the Aggie band can't even fit on! And they don't even really play on a field!
I'm speaking, of course, about the juggernaut that is the Fightin' Texas Aggie Basketball Team. Once the doormats of the Big 12, the 2007 Ags came from out of nowhere to capture their first Sweet 16 in twenty-five years. What's more remarkable is that over this (one-year) stretch of Sweet 16 berths, the Aggie basketball factory has produced more NBA lottery picks (1) than Duke, UCLA, UConn, Arizona, and Kentucky combined.
The 2007/2008 basketball team, ranked #14 in the preseason, rolled past Emporia State in its preseason opener. It should be another exciting year for the basketball team, further cementing the sea change at the once football-crazed school. Yes, the experiment we call "Texas A&M as a football school" has clearly run its course. It's time to bury the Aggie football program--don't worry, we'll make sure that wherever we put it, it'll have a good view of the Reed Arena scoreboard.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Let’s Talk Loyalty
News of Billy Gillespie's departure hit me like a kick to the stomach. I guess I should know better--I thought that A&M's announcement of an agreement on a new contract was meaningful, but I've seen this movie too many times before, and I should have known that when a bigger program comes calling, that takes precedence over whatever niceties have been said on behalf of the current program. Not that the niceties are insincere, it's just that money tends to have more of an effect than you would think. At least that's what I would think happens, because big time coaches and athletes have proven themselves time and time again to be mercenaries, talking over and over again about how they want to stay put, and leaving at the drop of a hat when a little more money comes calling.
It seems, however, that loyalty is a one-way street nowadays. For 80% of the Aggie basketball fans, the philosophy has been, Put a winning team on the court and I'll show up. I think that's natural, up to a point, but it always sounded a little contradictory from a student body that considers itself the greatest, classiest, most loyal sports (read: football) fans in the country. It's easy to talk loyalty when there's no cost involved, when you're talking about how loyal someone else should be to you.
All of a sudden we have an opportunity to show some real loyalty. So A&M is not a basketball program that can outattract the most successful college basketball program of all time--that's not exactly a shock. But I still have no idea how good a program we have; that will be demonstrated over the next few years. Because all we've had so far is a coach who decided to use the program as a stepping stone, and a group of fans who decided to ride the wave of success. The school is committed, I believe, to building a winner. But it's going to take more than that to have a consistently successful program.
It seems, however, that loyalty is a one-way street nowadays. For 80% of the Aggie basketball fans, the philosophy has been, Put a winning team on the court and I'll show up. I think that's natural, up to a point, but it always sounded a little contradictory from a student body that considers itself the greatest, classiest, most loyal sports (read: football) fans in the country. It's easy to talk loyalty when there's no cost involved, when you're talking about how loyal someone else should be to you.
All of a sudden we have an opportunity to show some real loyalty. So A&M is not a basketball program that can outattract the most successful college basketball program of all time--that's not exactly a shock. But I still have no idea how good a program we have; that will be demonstrated over the next few years. Because all we've had so far is a coach who decided to use the program as a stepping stone, and a group of fans who decided to ride the wave of success. The school is committed, I believe, to building a winner. But it's going to take more than that to have a consistently successful program.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Sweet Sixteen…anything else is gravy
I think one of the most regrettable things to witness in sports is the level of expectation we have for the teams we support and, much too often, live vicariously through. Once this year's crop of New York Yankees fails to win the World Series, as they almost certainly will, a couple million fans will whine and complain, talk about how they've been let down, and phone up sports talk stations to call for the head of Joe Torre. It's even more unfortunate to see a team that's been down on its luck for some time enjoy some success, and all of a sudden the fans, who once begged for just a winning season, now view a championship as a birthright. Think of the Dallas Mavericks pre- and post-Mark Cuban: fans used to hope not to finish last, then for a playoff spot, then for an NBA Finals appearance. This year fans will be very disappointed if the team falls short of winnning a championship.
So let me get this out there before What Have You Done For Me Lately Syndrome sets in among the Aggie basketball fans: the first Sweet 16 appearance in 27 years is an absolute joy, and if it ends here, then that's fine by me.
This Aggie team is really something to behold. Today they played Louisville in a pretty hostile environment, in a game marred by foul trouble on both sides. They gutted out a victory, erasing a late 6-point deficit and executing down the stretch to win maybe the most tense game I've ever seen. Of course that's nothing new for this team, which always seems to do whatever is needed to win. Saying that Acie Law leads this team is true but also an oversimplification. Law is great, and he was once again clutch down the stretch, but the Aggies also get often underappreciated contributions from Jones, Carter, Kavaliauskas, Kirk, and others. (p.s. Dominique Kirk is now officially my second favorite Aggie basketball player of all time, after Mr. Jerald Brown.)
This is kind of a funny year for me as an Aggie basketball fan--the most successful year by far of the last 12 years, but the only year in which I haven't been to a game. Even if I had tried to get tickets, there's a good chance I wouldn't have been able to--the tickets for every home game were sold out starting just after the Kansas game. That's a far cry from the Reed Arena I knew as a student, in which you could get your ticket a couple minutes before tip time and sit pretty much wherever you want. Those days, the basketball team ranked below the football team's band (oh wait, it still does), and it was a commonly believed (though ludicrous) legend that the basketball team would sometimes go play at the student Rec Center...and lose.
Ten years ago, things like Selection Sunday and March Madness didn't get much attention in College Station. I was a college basketball fan before I was an A&M basketball fan, and it was always a little weird for me to have to celebrate the two separately. For the four years I was at A&M, the Aggies simply were not part of the college basketball universe. They never won a Big 12 Tournament game between 1996 and 2005, and they were often ranked last in the league. At that time, anyone who followed the team would have given an arm and a leg for a tournament appearance. I kept thinking, maybe they play well in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament, then they get lucky in the second round, then a couple of the favorites fall and somehow they could end up with an automatic bid. Enter the tournament as a 14 seed and get clobbered on the first day, but at least you're there. Instead, the Ags are one of a handful of teams considered capable of winning it all, which unfortunately brings with it the possibility that anything less will be considered disappointing.
I really hate to admit this, but this sudden basketball windfall is sort of bittersweet. I've enjoyed all of the success of the team, and it's been fun seeing the campus raise its basketball IQ, but at the same time I wonder how much of a decline it would take for the university to forget once again that basketball exists. This has been an amazing year, but I think that building an elite program requires having fans that show up and give you a home court advantage even when you're not necessarily headed for a title. I hope that Aggies have become the type of basketball fans who will fill the arena even if the team's not getting tons of national coverage. If not, at least I'll have a place to sit.
Now, where are we on that Jerald Brown statue?
So let me get this out there before What Have You Done For Me Lately Syndrome sets in among the Aggie basketball fans: the first Sweet 16 appearance in 27 years is an absolute joy, and if it ends here, then that's fine by me.
This Aggie team is really something to behold. Today they played Louisville in a pretty hostile environment, in a game marred by foul trouble on both sides. They gutted out a victory, erasing a late 6-point deficit and executing down the stretch to win maybe the most tense game I've ever seen. Of course that's nothing new for this team, which always seems to do whatever is needed to win. Saying that Acie Law leads this team is true but also an oversimplification. Law is great, and he was once again clutch down the stretch, but the Aggies also get often underappreciated contributions from Jones, Carter, Kavaliauskas, Kirk, and others. (p.s. Dominique Kirk is now officially my second favorite Aggie basketball player of all time, after Mr. Jerald Brown.)
This is kind of a funny year for me as an Aggie basketball fan--the most successful year by far of the last 12 years, but the only year in which I haven't been to a game. Even if I had tried to get tickets, there's a good chance I wouldn't have been able to--the tickets for every home game were sold out starting just after the Kansas game. That's a far cry from the Reed Arena I knew as a student, in which you could get your ticket a couple minutes before tip time and sit pretty much wherever you want. Those days, the basketball team ranked below the football team's band (oh wait, it still does), and it was a commonly believed (though ludicrous) legend that the basketball team would sometimes go play at the student Rec Center...and lose.
Ten years ago, things like Selection Sunday and March Madness didn't get much attention in College Station. I was a college basketball fan before I was an A&M basketball fan, and it was always a little weird for me to have to celebrate the two separately. For the four years I was at A&M, the Aggies simply were not part of the college basketball universe. They never won a Big 12 Tournament game between 1996 and 2005, and they were often ranked last in the league. At that time, anyone who followed the team would have given an arm and a leg for a tournament appearance. I kept thinking, maybe they play well in the first round of the Big 12 Tournament, then they get lucky in the second round, then a couple of the favorites fall and somehow they could end up with an automatic bid. Enter the tournament as a 14 seed and get clobbered on the first day, but at least you're there. Instead, the Ags are one of a handful of teams considered capable of winning it all, which unfortunately brings with it the possibility that anything less will be considered disappointing.
I really hate to admit this, but this sudden basketball windfall is sort of bittersweet. I've enjoyed all of the success of the team, and it's been fun seeing the campus raise its basketball IQ, but at the same time I wonder how much of a decline it would take for the university to forget once again that basketball exists. This has been an amazing year, but I think that building an elite program requires having fans that show up and give you a home court advantage even when you're not necessarily headed for a title. I hope that Aggies have become the type of basketball fans who will fill the arena even if the team's not getting tons of national coverage. If not, at least I'll have a place to sit.
Now, where are we on that Jerald Brown statue?
Saturday, March 4, 2006
Where Have You Gone, Number Fifty-Two?
On Wednesday night, the Aggies defeated the University of Texas in what is one of their two or three biggest victories of all time. Unless something funny happens, they should be headed to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1987. I wasn't able to watch the game, but my sister immediately called me to tell me what had happened. I thought about what it must have been like to see Acie Law hit that shot in a packed Reed Arena, and I thought once again about how far the program has come. Then I thought about what this must be like for the man I'll always consider the face of the Texas A&M basketball program.
The Fightin' Texas Aggie basketball team is my second favorite team of all time, but it hasn't always been that way. The first A&M basketball game I attended was during my freshman year there, and before that I didn't know any of the players or coaches. Before the 1996-97 basketball season began, I checked out one of the preseason publications to see how the Aggies might fare in the innaugural season of the Big 12. They were picked toward, if not at, the bottom, the lone bright spot being the potential of a freshman named Jerald Brown.
Jerald Brown came in as Mr. Basketball in the state of Texas, and he had an interesting college career. He had a great freshman year, earning Freshman of the Year honors in the Big 12 and setting an A&M record for three-pointers. Things went kinda wrong his sophomore year--the team went 1-15 in conference play, and Brown was mired in a shooting slump. It was an awful year that resulted in the end of the Tony Barone era, but the image that sticks with me from that year is from the lone conference win against Baylor. When I opened up the school newspaper the next day, the picture was of Jerald celebrating after the final horn by doing the hand gesture that sophomores do as part of Aggie yells. It's the sort of thing you would expect to see out of a zealous Corps sophomore but not out of an impromptu celebration by an athlete. I took it to mean that Jerald had really taken to A&M as a home, even though, given the support he had received, I wouldn't have faulted him for transferring somewhere else.
Brown's final two years were better but not great. Under head coach Melvin Watkins, Brown was no superstar, but he was a solid contributor and a much happier player. During his junior year he tipped in the winning basket to defeat an Oklahoma team that would eventually go to the Sweet 16, and the next year he had a couple of the greatest interior passes I've ever seen in a huge upset victory over #12 Oklahoma State.
When I was researching for this, I found an article from Brown's senior year claiming that "he had scholarship offers from major powers such as Kansas, North Carolina and Duke, but selected A&M because he wanted to be a part of a remarkable turnaround." I wonder what his reaction is to this overdue resurgence of the basketball program. In a sense, he is the ultimate forefather for this team: Brown's senior year was Bernard King's freshman year, King's senior year was Antoine Wright's freshman year, and Wright's final year was Joseph Jones's freshman year. But in another sense, it's hard to say that somebody who started ten years and two coaches ago can have much of a connection to the current team.
Which is unfortunate, because when you have a drought as long as A&M has had between tournament appearances, you're bound to have a lot of people who contributed in some important way to the team's current situation who will likely be forgotten. That's why I think Jerald Brown is the face of the Texas A&M basketball program. The players and the coach who will be credited with this turnaround are being rewarded with huge crowds and glowing press. The crowd that saw A&M take down Texas was about 4 times the average crowd Brown played in front of, and I'd be surprised if more than a handful of the current fans have even heard of him.
I hope that Jerald Brown can see the current team's success as, at least partially, the result of his own hard work, dedication, and loyalty. When I was in school, the football team was contending for conference championships, and there was a lot of talk about guys like Dat Nguyen and Dan Campbell as the embodiment of the Aggie Spirit. Losing teams don't often get the benefit of having fans identify with them, but I always thought that Jerald was every bit the Aggie anyone else was. He had to be. Between being in the Tony Barone doghouse and playing in front of empty arenas, he had to have something substantial on the inside sustaining him, the same kind of thing that now allows a more talented group of players to thrive at A&M. I hope all the new guys recognize the foundation that people like him have laid.
The Fightin' Texas Aggie basketball team is my second favorite team of all time, but it hasn't always been that way. The first A&M basketball game I attended was during my freshman year there, and before that I didn't know any of the players or coaches. Before the 1996-97 basketball season began, I checked out one of the preseason publications to see how the Aggies might fare in the innaugural season of the Big 12. They were picked toward, if not at, the bottom, the lone bright spot being the potential of a freshman named Jerald Brown.
Jerald Brown came in as Mr. Basketball in the state of Texas, and he had an interesting college career. He had a great freshman year, earning Freshman of the Year honors in the Big 12 and setting an A&M record for three-pointers. Things went kinda wrong his sophomore year--the team went 1-15 in conference play, and Brown was mired in a shooting slump. It was an awful year that resulted in the end of the Tony Barone era, but the image that sticks with me from that year is from the lone conference win against Baylor. When I opened up the school newspaper the next day, the picture was of Jerald celebrating after the final horn by doing the hand gesture that sophomores do as part of Aggie yells. It's the sort of thing you would expect to see out of a zealous Corps sophomore but not out of an impromptu celebration by an athlete. I took it to mean that Jerald had really taken to A&M as a home, even though, given the support he had received, I wouldn't have faulted him for transferring somewhere else.
Brown's final two years were better but not great. Under head coach Melvin Watkins, Brown was no superstar, but he was a solid contributor and a much happier player. During his junior year he tipped in the winning basket to defeat an Oklahoma team that would eventually go to the Sweet 16, and the next year he had a couple of the greatest interior passes I've ever seen in a huge upset victory over #12 Oklahoma State.
When I was researching for this, I found an article from Brown's senior year claiming that "he had scholarship offers from major powers such as Kansas, North Carolina and Duke, but selected A&M because he wanted to be a part of a remarkable turnaround." I wonder what his reaction is to this overdue resurgence of the basketball program. In a sense, he is the ultimate forefather for this team: Brown's senior year was Bernard King's freshman year, King's senior year was Antoine Wright's freshman year, and Wright's final year was Joseph Jones's freshman year. But in another sense, it's hard to say that somebody who started ten years and two coaches ago can have much of a connection to the current team.
Which is unfortunate, because when you have a drought as long as A&M has had between tournament appearances, you're bound to have a lot of people who contributed in some important way to the team's current situation who will likely be forgotten. That's why I think Jerald Brown is the face of the Texas A&M basketball program. The players and the coach who will be credited with this turnaround are being rewarded with huge crowds and glowing press. The crowd that saw A&M take down Texas was about 4 times the average crowd Brown played in front of, and I'd be surprised if more than a handful of the current fans have even heard of him.
I hope that Jerald Brown can see the current team's success as, at least partially, the result of his own hard work, dedication, and loyalty. When I was in school, the football team was contending for conference championships, and there was a lot of talk about guys like Dat Nguyen and Dan Campbell as the embodiment of the Aggie Spirit. Losing teams don't often get the benefit of having fans identify with them, but I always thought that Jerald was every bit the Aggie anyone else was. He had to be. Between being in the Tony Barone doghouse and playing in front of empty arenas, he had to have something substantial on the inside sustaining him, the same kind of thing that now allows a more talented group of players to thrive at A&M. I hope all the new guys recognize the foundation that people like him have laid.
Saturday, February 4, 2006
Coming of Age
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.
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.
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