In first College Football Playoff Top 25, the ‘wronged’ team is Texas A&M
Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram 6 hrs ago
FORT WORTH, Texas — Texas A&M is behind Indiana University in football, which under normal circumstances should mean everyone who receives a paycheck from A&M should be fired, and banned for life from higher education and college athletics.
These are not normal times; both the Hoosiers and Aggies are at the top of the college football rankings. The Aggies are No. 3 in the first college football invitational Top 25, one spot behind the undefeated Hoosiers in the CFP and AP polls.
Defending national champion Ohio State is No. 1.
This is the highest Texas A&M has been ranked in the AP poll since it reached No. 3 in 1995, under coach R.C. Slocum, the last year of the Southwest Conference.
The Aggies are the best team in the nation that somehow remains mostly unnoticed. Unnoticed because their quarterback is not related to a Manning.
Unnoticed because they have one win that generated national attention, 41-40 at No. 8 Notre Dame. That was Sept. 13.
Unnoticed because three of A&M’s eight opponents have winning records. A&M has defeated four teams this season that have fired their head coach: Auburn, Florida, LSU, and Arkansas. The combined SEC records of A&M’s conference opponents so far is 6-20.
After the college football playoff rankings were released on Monday night, every SEC coach should be howling at A&M’s No. 3 spot. Where is the furor? Where are the accusations of unfairness? Of it all being rigged for Indiana, and the overrated Big 10?
“In the SEC, it’s any given Saturday,” South Carolina coach Shane Beamer said Wednesday on the SEC coaches’ conference call. “Anybody can beat anybody.”
They can? Explain that to the fans at Arkansas. Or Auburn. Florida. Mississippi State. Kentucky. South Carolina. The teams that aren’t beating anybody. They’re in the SEC.
No league in America markets itself as the gauntlet of death better than the SEC. It’s like every other league; it has some great teams, some good teams, some meh teams, and a handful that are neither.
The real reason A&M is No. 3 rather than No. 2 is that the Aggies have committed the crime of being boring. This is 2025, and what the Aggies sell does not create the attention it deserves. Not even in the SEC.
When it comes to rankings, you can have more numbers than a computer and no combination of data will beat the eyeball test, and the innate bias of a selection committee that can’t help but be human, and swayed by what they see on their TVs, or phones.
It’s why Notre Dame is in the hunt for a national title.
If you take the Aggies record, and name them the Alabama Crimson Tide, that is the No. 1 team in the nation. If the SEC is the best league in college football, its best team should be No. 1.
It’s 2025. If your team doesn’t have a story, become the darling of ESPN’s College Game Day crew, some hook, break Instagram, or create 9.1 billion views on TikTok, it’s not enough.
Ohio State is Ohio State, the football love child of Wal-Mart and Goldman Sachs. Indiana, with coach Curt Cignetti, is a story.
A&M has an awesome dog, some pre-game traditions that generate more derision and laughter than the Aggies want to admit, and a history that screams, “Prepare to be disappointed.”
This is the best A&M team has had in decades. Better than its first season in the SEC, with quarterback Johnny Manziel, when the Aggies finished 11-2, and fifth in the nation in 2012.
It has taken tens of millions of dollars, and plenty of misses, but the Aggies finally have a team that can compete to win an SEC title. Doesn’t mean they will, but they’re talented enough, and deep enough, to do it.
“That team last year whipped our butt,” Missouri coach Eliah Drinkwitz said Wednesday on that coaches conference call. A&M defeated Missouri last season, 41-10. The Tigers host A&M at 2:30 p.m. Saturday.
“Are they better? Yeah. They have a quarterback with another year in the system with full control. There is skill on the outside. ... Defensively it’s another year in the system. Any time you have another year in the system with as many returning players, they’re more comfortable and more complete. As a staff, you can tell there is continuity and more comfort and organized in how they plan to win.”
With remaining games against Missouri, South Carolina, Samford and Texas, everything is lined up for A&Ms first double-digit win season since 2012, first appearance in the SEC title game, and first spot in the playoffs.
Maybe then the Aggies will be ranked ahead of Indiana.
(Of course, considering A&M’s history, don’t rule out this team finishes 9-4 with a loss in the Hungover Classic Bowl.)
