Football Part 1: The Independence Bowl

(Blogsplosion Post #5)

Since I last posted on the topic, three important things happened for the Fightin' Texas Aggie Football Team. First, they beat Baylor/achieved bowl eligibility. Whoop.

Rawr.

Second, they played respectably against t.u. I will also give a whoop to that. (Whoop.) They didn't win, but they did look good on national TV, which is the second-most important thing to do. I think it made up for the Arkansas game. Going into the game, I thought there were three possible outcomes--in order of probability: 1) get just destroyed, a la the Oklahoma game; 2) lose but look good doing it, whilst making Colt McCoy look bad and torpedoing his Heisman chances, a la the 2005 game where Stevie McGee and the Ags took away Vince's Heisman; 3) win! I turned out to be wrong, because if McCoy doesn't get his career-reward Heisman, it will be because of the Nebraska game (although I think the close game against the Aggies has looked worse for him in retrospect since the Nebraska embarrassment). Anyway, this was probably my second-favorite t.u. game since I've been an Aggie. It's behind 2007's 38-30 victory, of course, but ahead of the 2006 12-7 Aggie win, because I really disliked that game. That one featured the worst late hit I've ever seen (an Aggie tackling Colt McCoy as Colt was taking his chinstrap off); this one featured everybody realizing, "Hey, that Jerrod Johnson is pretty good, huh?"

That guy is pretty good.

Third, the Aggies got invited to the Independence Bowl to play against Georgia. I'm excited about this. Georgia is not just a name school, but one from the best conference in college football. That means it won't look super bad if we lose (depending, of course, on how badly that hypothetical loss is) and it will look pretty darn good if we win. Because the even better thing about Georgia is that they can be beaten. If Kentucky did it, we can do it. Plus, when Kentucky did it, they hadn't just fired their defensive coordinator. Georgia is coming off a disappointing season while the Ags are finishing up a season of improvement. I doubt Georgia will be as motivated to win as Texas A&M will be. (If this columnist is representative of Georgia fans, they aren't excited.) If the Aggies can turn the game into a shootout, I like our chances. Whoop.