Volume 6, No. 8

IS PERCEPTION REALITY? Once you visit Aggieland, most of the stereotypes disappear in a heartbeat By Homer Jacobs

If you’re a freshman at Texas A&M in late August, ’tis the season for map-reading, boot-chasing and Chicken-locating.

Get ready to whip out, pledge to or march in.

Palestine, you realize, is just south of Paris and the third deck is good, the first deck bad.

It’s all part of being indoctrinated into Aggieland. But the first week of classes or two-a-days for Aggie football players also means perceptions of A&M are now torn away for good.

This is not the place you read about in a catalog, or digested in a media guide. It’s not what your high school friends said it was or Texas fans hoped it would be.

A&M is much more and much better.

"Before I got to A&M, I hated A&M with a passion," said junior linebacker Brian Gamble. "I don’t know what it was – their uniforms or their bland style of play. I just wasn’t a big A&M fan, and I always liked Texas. There was just something about Texas that made me like them.

"But once I came to A&M… you don’t even really have to talk to anybody. You just have to come to this campus and walk around, and there’s an aura there. It’s a small-town atmosphere locked in a big college of diversity. It was amazing."

It's a whole new experience for freshmen football players when they hit Aggieland... like knowing how to hump it at midfield.

The Aggie football team recently welcomed 22 true freshmen to this new world, and three assistant coaches (one of which rejoined the staff) signed on with R.C. Slocum’s program, as well.

All of them had their own ideas and notions about what A&M would be like. For the players, would it be the countrified, military-like school that was told to them during bogus living rooms visits by opposing coaches?

Would the new coaches – all of them African-American – assimilate into what is deemed as the most conservative, least-diverse town in Texas, according to those who have never set foot in the town of College Station?

The freshmen football players’ heads are still on a swivel, but the coaches (see related story on pages 14-19) have settled into their new home with ease.

"The reception of the people at A&M and in College Station… they’re so nice," said defensive line coach Buddy Wyatt, entering his second season on the big campus. "It’s been different being in the North and Midwest. People up there are going at such a fast pace and seem uptight all the time. The people here are so nice, and that’s the big difference to me."

Linebackers coach Alan Weddell was another of the early brainwashed, this time to the orange persuasion. Having played at Texas in its more conservative days, Weddell longed for a place that shared his values of loyalty, devotion and camaraderie.

It took just a few weeks of spring football meetings at A&M when he was the head coach at La Marque to turn his allegiances.

Aggie assistant coach Alan Weddell has seen both perspectives from the UT and A&M side, but now prefers the latter.

"Coming from the other place, I had been brainwashed that this was a country hick town with a bunch of cowboys and ugly girls," said Weddell, now in his fourth year as inside linebackers coach. "It didn’t take long to find out that was the very opposite. There is a lot of intelligent life around here having a good time. The scenery was very attractive, and the people were very friendly and well-versed in a lot of things of the world."

A&M is on track for one of its best recruiting hauls in recent years, and once the South End Zone Football Complex is in place, there will be very few negatives for opposing recruiters to harp on.

The idea that outside coaches try to tell recruits that A&M players have to march to class is as funny as it is ridiculous.

"You get here and realize there are more female students than men," said wide receivers coach Kevin Sumlin, who is making his first coaching stop in Texas. "I did not know that when I came here. That’s really our job in recruiting: You have to get the information to the prospect and let him decide. You have to tell him what is really going on here. People can tell him whatever they want, but here are the facts. Come visit us and see it for what it really is.

"This place is second to none for gameday atmosphere. The tradition, the beautiful stadium and the way things are done… there is no place like it. This is really a special deal."

Wyatt, who knows the state of Texas after graduating from TCU, has coached in some of America’s premier college football stadiums. He has seen them dot the I at Ohio State, sing "Hail to the Victors" at Michigan and run through the hedges at Georgia. He’s now seen the shine of the golden domes at Notre Dame, as well.

None of those places, he says, compare to what A&M brings to a college football Saturday.

"There can’t be another place to play in the country that on gameday is as exciting as it is out here," Wyatt said. "I’ve coached in the Big Ten, and I’ve been to Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan. I haven’t coached or played in anything like this.

"If kids can’t get ready to play out there, they’re not going to be ready. If you can get (recruits) to come to a game like Notre Dame, Kansas State or Oklahoma, it doesn’t get any better."

Once those players who have tuned out the anti-Aggie propaganda actually arrive on campus, most are blown away at all the learning that has to take place.

And that’s before school starts.

As important as it is to learn Belly 36, they have to understanding humping it at midfield.

"A lot of guys coming in don’t have a clue," the veteran Gamble said. "They’re definitely wide-eyed. As kind of an older guy, I try to settle them down and get them in the flow of things.

"You’ve got new things at every university, but you’ve got so many new things here, so many traditions going on. It’s a little overwhelming, but fun to watch."

There are some perceptions about A&M that are reality, such as the fact that many people do say "Howdy."

It was a term that took senior Jay Brooks by surprise five years ago.

"It’s weird that people you’ve never seen before say "Howdy," Brooks said. "At first, I thought I would never say that. Now you see yourself saying it after a while.

"I’ve been all over… I’ve been to the city, I’ve been to the country. It’s kind of in-between here. It has its own atmosphere. It’s not the real big city life where you can into trouble anytime. It’s got its own world here."

A&M will continue to battle perception and the uninformed, but with each passing year – and maybe with each passing episode of ESPN’s Sidelines – the myths and untruths told about Aggieland will fall by the wayside.

You really just have to visit the place and hopefully stay awhile (and going to Kyle Field for a football game and scurrying back to Austin hardly counts) to understand what you’ve been missing all along.

"Once I came that first time, I just fell in love with it," Gamble said.

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