COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — No. 3 Texas A&M is on the verge of reaching heights the Aggies often tease but usually squander. They are undefeated. They could reach the Southeastern Conference title game and the College Football Playoff for the first time.
Quarterback Marcel Reed is a Heisman Trophy contender and the school has rewarded coach Mike Elko with a blockbuster contract extension. Aggies faithful are hopeful that their program has finally taken a great leap forward.
“It feels amazing,” Reed said. “It feels like I’m giving back to a lot of these fans for what they haven’t had.”
Perhaps the most impressive thing about this rise of the Aggies is that they’ve done it so soon after the firing of Jimbo Fisher when he came up woefully short in his promise to deliver their first national championship since 1939.
Elko, who took over at Texas A&M (11-0, 7-0 SEC, No. 3 CFP) after going 16-9 in two years at Duke in what was his first head coaching job, was hired two years ago this Thursday. On the day he was introduced in an event that was more pep rally than news conference, he told hundreds of hyped-up fans that the years and years of talking about winning a national title were over.
“We are not going to talk about it anymore,” he said then. “We are gonna be about it.”
So how did he get the Aggies to “be about it” in such a short time?
“A lot of coaches come in and they say a lot of things. That doesn’t mean that people follow,” he said. “So, I’ve given a lot of the credit to the players in the locker room because they’re the ones that believed in this. They believed in this vision. They believed in what we were preaching. They believed in the culture. Before they ever had results, they just did the things we asked them to do to build this thing. And now to be where we are, I think it’s a reward for everything that they put into this thing long ago.”
Texas A&M has come close to reaching the next level many times in the past only to fall short, including last season when it opened the season 7-1 only to drop three of the next four games to fall out of playoff contention.
It’s happened so often that the team’s fans have half-jokingly coined the term “Battered Aggies Syndrome.” To long-suffering Aggie fans, it means that they’ve been let down so many times that they can’t even enjoy Texas A&M’s success anymore.
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It’s a notion that Elko and his team have no time for. They’re focused only on now, a thought evidenced by the letters G-R-I-N-D that take up an entire wall in a team meeting room on campus. It’s an acronym that stands for Grit, Relentless effort, Integrity, Now and Dependability.
“Now — he talks about that all the time,” Reed said of Elko. “It’s one of the bigger words we talked about in the offseason and going in this season. So, we focus on the now. I wasn’t here years back when A&M wasn’t necessarily winning all the time. But I’m here now and I’m doing my best to make these fans happy and keep wins on the board.”
And the quarterback has a message for those still suffering from “Battered Aggies Syndrome.”
“If you want to think about the past and go back to ‘Battered Aggies Syndrome,’ that’s not my fault. That’s yours,” he said. “You can have your own opinions, but … if you focus on the past, you’re not going to get anywhere in life. You got to have hope. You got to have faith. You believe in God, you have to have hope and faith. So, believe in the Aggies for once.”
The Aggies have won 10 games for the first time since Johnny Manziel helped them to an 11-2 mark in his Heisman-winning season in 2012. It’s the first time they’ve opened a season 11-0 since coach R.C. Slocum, powered by his famed Wrecking Crew defense, went 12-0 in 1992. That season they beat archrival Texas 34-13 in Austin on Thanksgiving to cap their perfect regular season.
This year they’ll have to vanquish the 16th-ranked Longhorns (No. 17 CFP) in Austin on Friday to remain perfect after falling to them at home last season in their first meeting since 2011. A win will punch their ticket to the SEC title game on Dec. 6 in Atlanta. They could still get in if they lose but would need losses by both Alabama and Mississippi.
“I think the beauty of the next one for us is it kind of hammers itself home,” Elko said. “I think that’s the nice thing about having that rivalry at the end of the season. I’m not sure that there’s anything for Texas A&M football to look (at) other than that game Friday night. We know what that game means. We know what it’s all about. We know we didn’t get it done last year. We know how important it is for us to go out there and play our best football Friday night.”
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