Aggies have more than revenge on their mind
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher expects clouds overhead tonight when the No. 5 Aggies host LSU — he just doesn’t want them to creep inside his players’ helmets.
“Anytime you get beat, you want to go back and play and compete well,” Fisher said of the Aggies’ 43-point loss at LSU a year ago. “(But) I don’t ever like the word ‘revenge’ — I think revenge clouds your thinking.”
This time around it’s the Aggies (5-1) with loads on the line, much like LSU (3-3) a year ago. The surging Tigers, in making no bones about seeking revenge on A&M last season, walloped the visitors 50-7 in Baton Rouge, La., tying Fisher’s worst loss in his 11 seasons as a head coach.
LSU cruised on to three more victories and a 15-0 record under coach Ed Orgeron in winning the program’s fourth national title.
Since A&M stopped playing Texas nearly a decade ago when the Aggies left the Big 12 for the SEC, LSU is the closest thing to a rivalry for A&M. That’s also why the two sides now meet on Thanksgiving weekend to typically close out a regular (nonpandemic) season.
“Whether it’s a rivalry or not, I don’t know,” Fisher said. “I just know that it’s a very important football game. For one, it’s the next game, and it’s also a team you have to play well against to reach your goals in the SEC West, to get to where you have to go in the national spotlight.”
Where the Aggies are
trying to go for the first time is the four-team College Football Playoff. They were behind Alabama, Notre Dame, Clemson and Ohio State entering this weekend’s action, with the next rankings released Tuesday.
A&M has won four consecutive games but has not played since Nov. 7, a 48-3 victory at South Carolina, after three positive COVID-19 tests and the resulting contact tracing.
The Aggies’ games at Tennessee and at home against Mississippi were postponed until Decem
ber, and remarkably considering A&M has been out of sight and out of mind for a couple of weeks, the Aggies have stayed at No. 5 in the Associated Press poll for nearly the entire month of November.
That’s also where they checked in Tuesday in the initial CFP rankings, with games against LSU, Auburn, Mississippi and Tennessee remaining.
“I imagine they’re going to have a great crowd,” Orgeron said of Kyle Field, despite a forecast for plenty of rain. “It’s probably the first time this year that crowd
noise will be a factor. We’re going to have to be able to handle it, and be able to handle our emotions.
“(The Aggies) are going to be sky high — they haven’t played in a while. But so will we.”
Tonight marks LSU’s first return to Kyle Field since the highest-scoring game in NCAA history — a 74-72 A&M win two years ago in seven overtimes.
That game was an instant classic, and an onfield melee afterward involving A&M receivers coach Dameyune Craig and LSU assistants Steve Krag
thorpe and Kevin Faulk further fueled the rivalry between programs that contend for Houston-area and East Texas recruits.
A year earlier, Fisher tried luring then-LSU defensive coordinator Dave Aranda, now Baylor’s firstyear head coach, from Baton Rouge.
Three years prior, thenA&M coach Kevin Sumlin hired defensive coordinator John Chavis away from LSU, but that union ultimately failed, and both were fired after the 2017 regular season.
In the spring of 2019, LSU swiped A&M athletic director Scott Woodward, for the same position, but that wasn’t considered as big a deal because Woodward is a Baton Rouge native and LSU graduate.
After A&M’s memorable win two years ago, LSU began openly talking about revenge. A year ago at Tiger Stadium, LSU pummeled the Aggies early and never let up, giving Fisher his worst setback since Lamar Jackson-led Louisville whipped Florida State 6320 in 2016.
This season has been a different story for the Aggies, whose lone loss was a 52-24 defeat at top-ranked Alabama on Oct. 3.
A&M has won its past three games by double digits, and it beat No. 6 Florida 41-38 at Kyle Field on Oct. 10, which is likely why the CFP committee nudged the Aggies ahead of the Gators despite Florida’s impressive wins of late.
Meantime the Tigers have faltered after their championship run. They haven’t been close to the same team after losing Aranda to Baylor and quarterback Joe Burrow and passing game coordinator Joe Brady to the NFL, not to mention 12 other draft picks.
LSU’s biggest embarrassment this year came in a 48-11 loss at Auburn on Halloween, although the Tigers rebounded with a 2724 victory at Arkansas a week ago.
“Hopefully this is a springboard for us to have a great end to the season,” Orgeron said, “starting with Texas A&M.”