As the offseason gets into full swing, all the brands are putting out their takes for the upcoming season. A big part of the “take machine” is putting teams in your top 10. Most of the teams are the usual suspects: Ohio State, Texas, Oregon, Penn State, Georgia, Alabama, Notre Dame, etc. Some variations have Ole Miss, Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Michigan (bleh). All fine (not you, Michigan). Ultimately, there are no wrong answers…
WELL THAT’S NOT ENTIRELY TRUE. For the past decade, college football personalities everywhere have told us “Texas A&M is a top 10 team and they’re ready to show it.” Every single year (except the COVID year) they do what Paul Pierce did in Game 1 of the 2008 Finals.
[Credit: New York Post]
Tonight, the 27th of January, 2025 of our Lord, PFF tweeted out that it believed Texas A&M was a “Top 10 Team.”
To Aggies’ credit, they ratioed the tweet and asserted that they were absolutely not a top 10 team and that they, like all of us, have seen this story before. The college football world has seen this story with what LSU fans call the “Goobs,” over and over and over again.
A&M has talent, resources, top-notch facilities, a big stadium, and a great speaker system to pump in crowd noise, but none of that has translated to actual success. The 8-4 bandits are who they are: every year we hear about how they have so much talent and this is the year they put it together, they go 7-1 for the first 9 weeks, everyone says “this is the year, they’ve finally put it together” (Dave and Chris did it), then, like clockwork, the Hindenburg goes up in flames.
A&M goes on the road and gets blown out, then wins an FCS game, then loses a game they shouldn’t, then they lose a game they should.
I don’t have anything against the PFF guys, Cole vouched for them. I’m sure they’re great guys, I would love to go on their show *shameless plug* BUT, Einstein is famously credited with the saying on insanity: “the definition of insanity is doing the same experiment and expecting different results” (Joshy Manning, Esq.’s paraphrase). That it to say, it is utter insanity to expect A&M, who has produced the same variation of 8-4 and 7-5 for well over a decade now, to be any different than they have been.
A cardinal rule of economics is that the best predictor of future outlook is past performance: I think that applies here. Until A&M is more than they’ve been, they simply are who they are:
Texas 8-4 University.