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Volume 5, No.7
From the inside looking out, you can't explain it. From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. The mantra to describe the spirit of Aggieland? Sure. But the often-used expression might as well be thrown about when analyzing this year's Texas A&M football team, as well. How do you explain to a pollster from the New York Daily News that the Aggies will find a quarterback who can lead this team? How do you explain to an ESPN College Gameday staffer that Sammy Davis is alive and well? And, finally, how do you describe junior college transfer Robert Ferguson to the masses when only those in the Tyler area have seen him play college football? Well, as the preseason polls apparently have indicated, there needs more explanation. "Obviously, you want to be respected and people to look at you and say, 'Hey, they're a Top 25 team,'" A&M offensive lineman Chris Valletta said. "But we can use that advantage and say they're underestimating us. We can go out there and totally use the ignorance of people to our advantage." The Aggies will begin the season ranked 24th in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll and 26th in the Associated Press poll. Coming off an 8-4 season and backed by a 16-year run of consistency, it would seem the A&M program would have earned the benefit of a doubt on a national scale. After all, 6-6 teams like USC and Ohio State in 1999 both reappeared in this year's preseason polls.
Yet, the Aggies are left to contemplate a familiar feeling around the big campus: It's us against the world once again. "That last game didn't help us any at all," linebacker Brian Gamble said of the 24-0 loss to Penn State in the Alamo Bowl. "I believe we're a Top 25 team. It takes a lot of the pressure off for us to be unranked and us to come into the season as a darkhorse. I think it motivates us to get ourselves back where we want to be, which is back in the Top 10 and Top 5." What makes this season loom as one of the more intriguing in recent memory is the underdog status the Aggies will take into the season, the notion of opening the season at Notre Dame and the fact that Texas Tech, Colorado, Kansas State and Oklahoma all must visit the crazy confines of Kyle Field. Yes, the Aggies must answer the obvious questions at quarterback, defensive back and tight end. The special teams remain a mystery, as well. But a defensive front seven that includes players like linebackers Jason Glenn and Roylin Bradley and a potential star in the defensive line in Ty Warren suggests the 2000 Aggies will be able keep themselves in every ballgame this fall. "You could make it a front 30 with all the backups we have," Gamble added. "We're deep at every position. That (lineup) is pretty deep, and it's pretty good. I think you can take any of those backups and put them anywhere else in the nation, and they'll probably start." And offensively, potential game-breakers like Richard Whitaker and Joe Weber at tailback and wideouts like Chris Taylor, Bethel Johnson and Ferguson suggest the Aggies could win most of their games this fall. For a relatively inexperienced A&M team, the season-opener with Notre Dame is a critical game that could bolster confidence for an entire season or develop more doubt about a team that suffered three blowout losses in 1999. Either way, the A&M players have pointed to the Notre Dame game for months now. For some, the wait to play the Irish has spanned years. "I remember when I was a freshman, my dad and I were looking through the schedules of the future, and he said you're playing Notre Dame your senior year," said Valletta, a fifth-year senior. "And here it is. All summer, every time we break a huddle, it was, 'Beat Notre Dame!' We're looking forward to it just like we did with Florida State (in 1998). It's a huge game." Notre Dame is unranked heading into the fall, but the clout the Irish carry remains clear. From its NBC television contract, to the ghosts of Heismans and Theismans past, a game with Notre Dame still allows for great theater and opportunity. "They just have that aura about them," Gamble said. "When you go into South Bend, they have Knute Rockne, the Four Horsemen and Touchdown Jesus. I think that intimidates a lot of teams. Our mentality is that we're going to go up there and enjoy the atmosphere. That's almost an unmatched atmosphere. We have it here in College Station, and Michigan and Tennessee might have it. Ten years down the road, you can say, 'Man, we played at Notre Dame, and we won.' That's something pretty big." The atmosphere at Kyle Field remains unparalleled, and three new head coaches in the Big 12 are about to discover up close the difficulty of winning in College Station. The Aggies are riding a 19-game home winning streak and will welcome Mike Leach's Texas Tech team, Gary Barnett's Colorado Buffaloes and Bob Stoops' Oklahoma Sooners. Bill Snyder and Kansas State return to Kyle Field after a four-year absence and two years removed from the epic Big 12 title game with the Aggies. Talk about good theater in 2000. "There's no better place to play a great football team than at Kyle Field," Valletta said. "The fans realize, like we do, that we don't lose at home. We'll do whatever it takes. If it means the fans have to get louder, they have to get louder. If it means us taking care of something else, then we take care of it. But we don't lose at Kyle Field." The Aggies will play two revenge games at home this year, as Tech and OU both beat A&M last fall. And it has been the Sooners' 51-6 humbling of the Aggies last season that has fueled intense summer workouts. In fact, strength and conditioning coach Mike Clark said this year's offseason program may have gone as well as any in his 10 years on the A&M campus. The Tech and Oklahoma games, in particular, should test Kyle Field's noise extremes. In fact, both teams ride into College Station with fancy and farcical passing offenses much in the mold of the Houston Cougar teams of the run-and-shoot era. Could Kyle Field rock like it did in 1989, when pass-happy and swashbuckling UH came into town averaging over 50 points a game? And could these Big 12 passing teams go the way of the once-mighty Cougars, tails dragging between their legs? "With the atmosphere that we have, and on the defensive side of the ball with the noise that is generated out there, and the type of offenses Tech and Oklahoma are going to run, I'm just kind of waiting for them," Gamble said. "I just want to see how they react. I think there should be some big problems for them. There's definitely a change in game plan when you look on your schedule and see that you're going to Kyle Field." There will be several unproven Aggies when the ball is kicked off in South Bend. But should some of the roster questions be answered definitively and should A&M win that Notre Dame game, suddenly the Aggies are back in the polls, back in the headlines and back in the conference championship chase. Obviously, from the outside looking in, it would be difficult to understand.
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