AM as a national 'powerhouse'

Bo - that was a funny one. I'm actually worse than Aggy since I'm just stating facts. You've probably been that way your whole life - living in a bubble.
 
No Hollis, I live in a house...I've read your posts for awhile now and it's always gloom and doom with you...

Facts are one thing and pessimism is another...When someone says a program is a top five program, it means more than winning national championship every year...

It means great facilities, athletes, support staff, etc...Not just wins and losses...

You obviously haven't seen or been around lesser programs to know the difference, year in and year out...

I think this is considered living in your glass house.
 
Bo - I'm not asking for a national championship every year, but would it be too much to expect a conference title every so often? Championships are a measurement. If you don't win conference championships, then you always have to start your sentence with, "ya, but ...".

If having facilities, athletes, and support staff is your measuring device, I get that. You will always be satisfied because that's the result of money and alums.

Your glass house reference is an odd one. I can't make the connection. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones because they're pessimists... is that it? That's a good one.

As far as being around lesser programs, were you around when McWilliams and Mackovic were here? Route 66 and all? I have some perspective on it.
 
From what others have said and what I've read, you have a perspective on many things.....

I'm well aware of coach McWilliams and Mackovic but that has nothing to do with the programs as it is now...

If anything David McWilliams is a class act who has given most of his life to the Texas football program and the university and still does...

Just because he wasn't a great head coach doesn't diminish the football program as an elite one. JM on the other hand is a different dog all together. Once again, we're talking about right now, not 1989 or even 1995.
 
Bo - you and I have two different perspectives. Yours is that facilities and people make for an elite program. My perspective is what those people do with it. You think it's good enough just to have it, I think it's good enough when you do it.

P.S. Can you explain your glass house reference for me?
 
hollis and bo, take your discussion to pm for the glass houses and such, ty.

I disagree that Mack's legacy is incomplete. At least it is not as strong as it could have been with just a game or two being the deciding factors. But he has plenty to hang his hat on an go down as a legend, he already is.

How many more Conference Championships do we think he needs to have? (haha, besides every year) I am thinking 2 or 3 more. But would you rather have one more and then an MNC?

JM is indeed a scapegoat for people who forget the good things he did. To me his big sin was alienating Texas HS coaches. His good points include bringing in Ricky Williams, the win over Nebraska and others. The ugly: Route 66 and the K State game.

Mack, on the other hand fixed those relationships with the coaches. That was huge for our success and recruiting. Mack has a great list of highs to include a conference title, a national championship, a streak of 10 wins, one of the two most successful or winning teams in the entire country in the last ten years, etc...

But one thing I can't ever forgive him for nor forget are the two MASSIVE blowouts at the hands of oklahoma freakshow. We got dismantled, demolished and destroyed. As if you have forgotten, this was to OKLAHOMA. Disgusting. They all have highs, they all have lows.
 
First, National Championships are what matters most and that should always be our number 1 goal. I will not be happy if we have 30 conference championships during the next 30 years and 0 national titles. Conference championships are extremely important among the teams in the conference. Nationally they are not that important in determining whether your program is among the elite. In 2004 Pittsburgh won a Big East title at 8-4 and promptly lost 35-7 to Utah in the Fiesta Bowl. Was that title really meaningful? I would rather see Texas as an independent like Notre Dame with our own television contract and getting into a bcs bowl with ten wins every year. We would still play ou/aggy every year.
 
Good post, loop.

You're right, Mack is and will be a Texas coaching legend for the things he has done. I just meant that he probably has another 5-10 years to go, and his legacy could grow substantialy in that time.

Yes, I'd rather have one more CC/MNC year than three conference championships without a MNC to go with it. If only we really did get to pick and choose these sorts of things
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.

I have a hard time with the OU losses, too. I could stomach the 2000 blowout, mostly because they went on and won the MNC. Clearly that was a great team, and they annihilated us. I still can't believe that they did it to us again. It was humiliation on a grand scale, and that should never, ever happen given the level of talent we had on hand. I'm getting pissed off just thinking about it.

Mackovic was certainly a mixed bag here. JohnnyM's posts over the years have been very revealing in many ways, and I have grown a but more forgiving towards his dad as a result. The alienation of former players and HS coaches was definitely not good. I think it was a good thing to build some separation between former players and the program, but another man might have done it more tactfully than JM apparently did. OTOH, it was Mackovic who really dismantled the racist legacy that UT football carried, even into the 90s. He deserves a medal for that, and our recruiting has benefitted ever since. Mack has done a stellar job of building on that.
 
of course I would love another NC. But my point is ... unless you win the conference championship, you're not going to the big dance. Nebraska and OU have been exceptions and that was when the BCS really sucked worse than today.

So again, winning the Big 12 conference is first and foremost the goal. By virtue of doing that we might get a shot at an NC.
 
well chicken, you have gone to such lengths to prove me wrong - I am humbled by it. Your research was an unintended consequence and I stand corrected.

However, since my only valid point is conference championships ... I gotta stand by that one.
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Hollis... your point on conference championships is valid.. but it's even more rudimentary than that... for the most part.. it's Oklahoma.

If Texas consistently beat OU the last 8 years, the conference championships would have been more plentiful (and in fact, we would have played for the national championship after 2004 as well)

History has taught (For the most part).. win the RRS, and you win the conference.

After all, you can't complain about bowl wins.. or overall wins per year or running a clean program.
 
First post here, howdy anyway.

I wouldn't describe us as a football powerhouse at all. In fact, to be perfectly honest, it hurts every time I see the conference and national championship list on Kyle Field. We have been at best a tier 2 football school (although being an all military school until the 70s can give you a pretty large handicap as far as # of donating alumni, so I'm still proud of what we accomplished prior) and lately a tier 3 in my opinion. Hell, we haven't even beaten tech for a long while.

That said, maybe someone in here can take off the orange glasses and see that, while y'all are consistently more successful in the past 8 years or so than us (and yes, taken as a lump sum, the past 100 years) since Royal y'all haven't been a consistent national title contender. Yes, you are mentioned as an outside shot every other year, and you generally (with some exceptions, like the 1990s) are a lower end tier 1 team. But as far as the past decade goes, OU is the team to beat in the Big 12. OU, tOSU, USC, etc. are better than y'all, plain and simple.
 
ix, look no further than win/loss records of the teams you say are better in the last decade and get back to us. How is it that a USC team that was down for years is still considered a powerhouse then? I mean, only in the Pete Carroll era have they been making waves on a grand scale for some time.

We at least kept churning in some good wins and despite the doldrums we were in after Royal, before Mack Brown we are STILL the 3rd winningest team in all of college football since the beginning. We are on the cusp of passing Notre Dame for second. So imagine if our drought were a tad better?

If we ask a fan of the Ag's, of course we are not a powerhouse. But ask fans of other programs who follow college football and I think the answer will be quite different.

And the bitter aftertaste that an ag must taste when thinking about their only short lived glory days is that they cheated in a grand manner to achieve it and still did not win a national title. They could not even do it cheating. At least Bama and the Sooners could do that.
 
ix ag is a hoot.

First, the claim that aggy was a military school until the 1970s is patently false.

At least as the mid 1960s it went coed with the elimination of corp membership:
The Link

The excuse that it was hindered because it was a "military institution", again laughable, seeing as how a REAL miliitary institution, West Point has won 4 MNCs:
The Link


And comments regarding Texas not being in the MNC hunt post Royal and pre-Mack don't hold up.

Texas went 11-0 in 1977, ranked No. 1 most of the year, losing in essentially an MNC game to No. 5 Notre Dame. That was a title game, from the perspective that had Texas won, it would have been a consensus national champion.

Similarly, the 1983 season Texas was ranked #2 most of the season, went 11-0, beating #5 Auburn, #8 OU, and #9 SMU, before losing to #7 Georgia (had Texas won that Cotton Bowl it would have been MNC, since #1 NU lost later that day).

Texas HAS been in the MNC hunt more frequently than ix ag implies.

Certainly not as frequently as some others, but snapshots over a selected timefram don't give a good picture of the whole.

Over the long run, Texas is a national title contender.

Not every year.

Not every decade.

But certainly there off and on, and more frequently than most, save Alabama, Notre Dame, OU, and USC.

We're not THAT far off from those programs.

And without a doubt FAR above such bottom dwellers as aggy.

Hook 'em
 
Bringing up years we were in the hunt, McWilliams almost won the nc in 1990 (I hate miami). As for aggy, Notre Dame (who I hate more) was a small all-male school until 1972. That did not seem hurt them too much.
 
hollis,
I understand your argument to some degree, however I think it would carry more weight if you had said we were a Top 10 team instead of Top 20. I would sure love to see 10, muchless 20 programs with our accomplishments over the past decade. The obvious are USC, ou, tOSU & maybe Miami. After that, you aren't going to find much better. Even those schools are barely ahead of us.
 
Well here's a question for yall: Do tOSU, OU, etc. ever have people doubt that they are powerhouses? I already know what the response to that is going to be....

And the majority of Texas' great overall record (which I never disputed was good, I was talking specifically about the recent past, if I recall) took was during the SWC days, vs. teams like Baylor, SMU (who was only good while cheating, but I digress) Rice, A&M (who by the accounts here, always sucks) Houston, Tech, TCU etc. Y'all talk about how we're so bad, but the SWC championship was often as not between us and y'all. And if we were that bad, what does that say about your 'amazing' record?

If Texas had been in a real conference, like the SEC, your record wouldn't be nearly what it is. The way I see it, you are stuck in a dilemma: either admit your record was against terrible teams, or admit we (and SMU, Tech, etc.) were actually a worthy opponent.

In answer the the comment about Army: 2 of those national championships were during WW2, around the same time we got our only officially recognized NC. After the war, both schools suffered a dip in their athletics. We were also throwing as many people as we could through an accelerated program of only 2 years in order to get more officers into the war.

Not to mention during the 1910s-1930s we had many undefeated seasons, and were competitive for national titles. Good for Army if they did well too.

And yes, technically the Corps became optional in the 1960s, but the student body didn't even crest 14,000 until 1970. This is a handicap. Size of alumni determines donation amounts, and money is always the cornerstone issue of athletics. That is why smaller schools always have trouble against larger, more well funded programs.

And about us cheating: If you seriously think that the only people that break NCAA rules are the ones that get caught, there is no help for you. I can't defend what we did, but it strikes me as a bit naive to point the finger when virtually every team that is successful has some kind of rule breaking going on (whether they are ever caught or not). Texas included. I don't fault y'all for that (or the high number of Texas players that get in trouble with the law) because it is always going to be around, especially in high pressure areas, like our state.

I agree with the original poster on where A&M has been lately. Since RC, (and during some of his reign) we do fall into the Michigan State, UCLA category. We are the legitimate underdog of the Texas-Texas A&M matchup, and will most likely always be that way.

But we love our team, win or loss. Even in Fran's lowest points, we never had to remind our fans to 'be loud and stay late', because they do, did, and will. I read on a sports site a quote like 'Aggies are to football like a drunk frat boy on a lonely prom queen'. That's pretty close to the truth. Whether football wants to notice us or not, whether we do well or not, we are there. We get obsessed with it, we are loyal to it. We have 20,000 people show up to a yell practice, have the whole stadium yell together in such a way that even the OU QB admitted was 'crazy loud'.

And yes, none of the above paragraph has much to do with the topic, but its 130am and I've got some margaritas in me, so whatever.
 
You think you know the answer to your first question but nobody does. I would think somebody has or feels that way. Again, all of those teams have been hot lately. Read your history and pull your head out the sand. If all these other schools cheat so much, what does that make yours since they are the third most of all time?

Go away, you don't belong here. Stay in the middle tier.
 
You don't have to remind your fans to come to the game and be loud???? How many sell outs has aggy had in the last 2 - 3 years? Where was that great aggy crowd at the Ioway State debacle? aggy sell outs and capacity crowds are as mythical as aggy itself.

Oh.. and please... your entire identity is still attempted to be based on the corp. When aggy is shown on television, the cameras pan to the corp to see how they will embarrass your school next. You look back upon your proud traditions and history and hold it up as a beacon defining your uniqueness... so.. stop using it as an excuse for athletic mediocrity! For some reason known only to spam and Lucifer's left elbow, aggy elders decided to make the school all male with corp membership a requirement. Stop using it as a basis attempting to explain away your underwhelming athletic accomlishments.

As for cheating... only the cheaters say, "well, everyone does it, we were only unlucky enough to get caught." Besides, OU has a copyright on that mantra.
 
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