Alabama win eases frustration
Aggies started 2021 season with hopes to make the playoffs
COLLEGE STATION — Texas A&M’s season that began with so much anticipation in August ended in November for the first time in 13 years.
At 8-4 the Aggies were good enough to make a decent bowl — in this case the Gator — but a COVID-19 outbreak before Christmas kept A&M at home for the first time since it finished 4-8 in 2008 under then-coach Mike Sherman.
Instead of hollers of “Whoop!” on New Year’s Eve at the Gator Bowl, subdued Aggies were left asking each other when does baseball start under new coach Jim Schlossnagle. More on that in a bit.
Despite an overall disappointing season considering A&M football started the year ranked No. 6, the No. 25 Aggies will always have Alabama. A&M’s 41-38 toppling of the Crimson Tide on Oct. 9 at Kyle Field serves as the highlight of coach Jimbo Fisher’s first four seasons in College Station.
“You can’t do it if you don’t believe,” A&M defensive end Tyree Johnson said. “… We just focused on believing and doing our job — nothing out of the ordinary.”
Except the Aggies’ victory was completely out of the ordinary, considering a former assistant of Nick Saban beat the iconic coach for the first time in 25 tries. A fiery Fisher at a Houston Touchdown Club speaking engagement in May had promised an A&M fan “we’re going to beat his ass” while Saban was still at Alabama.
Fisher kept his word — it was a handful of games around the Alabama upset that gave him fits. The Aggies lost to upstart Arkansas to open SEC play, and then A&M fans had awful flashbacks to another era when former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach rolled into Kyle Field and upended the Aggies, this time in his second season with Mississippi State.
“I’m glad you weren’t coaching,” Leach kidded afterward with former A&M and MSU coach Jackie Sherrill, who had stopped by the postgame press conference to offer congratulations.
A&M also dropped its final two SEC games, at Mississippi and at LSU, before the Aggies dropped their bowl appearance because of multiple COVID-19 cases.
Across the railroad tracks at Reed Arena, basketball coach Buzz Williams continued his prolonged rebuild following a 2-8 finish in SEC play last spring during the pandemic. The most excitement in some time on that side of the tracks occurred when A&M athletic director Ross Bjork hired Schlossnagle from TCU to try and get the Aggies back into the College World Series.
Schlossnagle had turned around TCU over his 18 seasons in Fort Worth, and has five times as many wins as A&M at the eightteam CWS (11 to two) since 1947, despite not making a CWS best-ofthree championship series over his time with the Horned Frogs.
“The foundation is here to win championships and make the 12th Man a regular visitor to Omaha,” Schlossnagle said.
One coach who has delivered a national title to A&M announced this fall he’s retiring after the season. Women’s basketball coach Gary Blair won a national championship in 2011, becoming only the second A&M coach since Homer Norton (football in 1939) to win a title in football, basketball or baseball.
And Athing Mu, who turned pro after her freshman year, won the gold medal in the 800 meters in Tokyo to become the first female in A&M history to win an individual medal and the first Aggie, male or female, to win an individual gold in track at the Olympics.