aggieband

Florida may not have a QB... according to the Sagarin computer, Tennessee should be favored by 3.5 even if Florida's QB plays. Sagarin also has A&M (at a neutral site) as 7 better than Arkansas. So Carolina should be about 3.5 better than Kentucky... even without an offense... Kentucky is in the bottom ten in the country in every defensive category. Ole Miss ought to be two touchdowns over Georgia.

None of the present Auburn QBs are good enough to start at EMCC...

There is no question that Etling gives them a dimension that they have lacked for years... but that defense has problems if they let a pretty weak Miss State offense back into the game last night.

"The natural order of things" is that hogs are good only for making bacon, sausage, ham and pulled-pork BarBQ...

Auburn fans were so excited to have routed a candy-ass Arkansas State team last week... tonight, Utah State, not exactly SEC caliber, is leading Arkansas State 24-0 midway through the second quarter...

It's obvious this story was written by an Auburn grad... in the opening he states that Auburn has an all-time 4-2 record against A&M, then he proceeds to list all six games and show that A&M won three of them! A&M won the Bo Jackson Cotton Bowl match-up, the Manziel game in 2012 and the Kyle Allen game in 2014. Auburn won in 1911 and at Kyle Field in 2013 and 2015. I don't compute 4-2 AU out of those. As for the actual game, Auburn does run the ball very well, but all the hype about last week's game is ridiculous... it was against a Sun Belt opponent, plus one that had thirteen players, many of them starters, in the hospital with a virus that decimated the team to the point that the schools actually briefly discussed cancelling the game.

We have real burger joints... that use BEEF for their burgers instead of 50% oatmeal.

Ags and Hogs got screwed on the kickoff time... people will have to tailgate for twelve hours in the damn Dallas sun... should be a great game, but half the fans will be too drunk to notice.

Let's see... A&M played then #10 ranked team in the country and led by two TDs for most of the second half before winning in OT... then routed a SWAC team (as expected) in week two... Then #7 Old Mrs. blew a huge halftime lead against #4 Free Shoes U, with a ridiculous second half collapse that saw them have SEVEN second half possessions which led to 4 first downs, 9 rushes for MINUS 30 yards, 7 pass completions on 16 attempts for 98 yards & one TD, 5 sacks for minus 38 yds., 3 punts, 2 INTs, 1 lost fumble. Total Time of Possession in the 2nd half of 7:09... outscored 36-6. Then in Week Two, against mighty Wofford (rated #174 by Sagarin's computer), the outgained them 416 - 305 and Wofford had a TEN MINUTE edge in time of possession. Yet, Old Mrs. is ranked #11... and A&M is over-rated? Please... let's see how things go this weekend against someone slightly tougher than Wofford...

Lot of talk for a team that thought they had a great defense after holding down Clemson... only to have the BEST team in east Alabama (Troy) lose to them by the same number of points... hopefully, the Barners have at least found a QB... just ONE on the field at a time.

Love seeing OU fans get what's coming to 'em... and when will LSU fans realize that as long as Less Miles is their coach, they will NEVER have a decent quarterback or an offense? Kentucky ought to be used to this... their football team hasn't been any good since Bear Bryant left to coach at Texas A&M in 1954. Only bad thing about the first week of the season is that Texas won... but at least Neuter Dumb was the loser.

If Tennessee gets rid of allk their "Pig"s, what will they do for cheerleaders?

Well, well... the #2 QB, the #1 AND #5 receiver, and the #4 running back... not a bad week for the Aggies. Alabama and Auburn combined have ... the #5 running back! No other team has a player listed in every category.

Bielema only wishes he was as svelte and good looking as the guy in that Beavis and Butthead photo... calling bhim a Butthead is being far too polite.

Class act, Mark Richt... never understood the way so many 'Dog fans treat him... the rest of the conference (especially that east Alabama reform school) is filled with players Richt ran off because they couldn't act like men... he sets high standards and lives by them himself. It's a privilege to be part of the same conference as Mark Richt.

I was a football (and basketball and baseball) official at the high school and college level in Texas for more than thirty years. I never once heard any other official make a racist remark during a game to anyone; fellow officials, players, coaches, or fans. We rarely, if ever, spoke to the players other than the normal, 'preventive officiating' comments between plays such as "#65, keep your hands inside", or "Guys, stop on the whistle", or those types of things. Blatant things are flagged when they occur... minor things that can be stopped with a simple, "I'm watching you" type of remark are handled that way. We frequently would let the head coach know if one of his players was consistently holding or bending the rules in some way... it is far easier to allow the coach to handle things and keep the flag in your pocket... that is how officials are trained to deal with many things. Sometimes you get a mouthy player who constantly runs his mouth at the opponents or even at officials. We never said anything back to them... we reported it to the Coach. If he dealt with the problem, fine... if not, we would flag it and assess the penalty if the coach refused to do his job. This appears to me to be a case of a young, inexpereinced coach with a chip on his shoulder who bcame frustrated that his undisciplined team was drawing an excessive amount of penalties (probably because they weren't coached properly) and he decide direct retaliation was in order... rather than doing the right thing and getting control of his players. The aoch should be fired and have his teaching credentials revoked permanently... he has no business being around kids. The irony of the allegations of racisl coments being the reason behind the attack on the official is that the coach who ordered 'the hit' is black, but the two players who carried out the hit are Hispanic.

The four schools that weren't at home this week are: Florida 88,548, Auburn 87,451, So Carolina 80,250, & Ole Miss 60,580. Brewjoea had valid figures, most are the same as mine... I went off what the school's state on their websites, so there are a few differences in his numbers and mine. For example, A&M was just under 107,000 last year after the first part of the expansion, but they are 102,733 this year due to more suites and boxes, plus wider seats throughout the new west side (people have larger butts these days). The 102,500 he uses was the schools official estimate based off the design drawings, but after the renovation was completed, they did an actual count of the number of seats actually in the stadium after construction was over... it identified about 250 additional seats, so officially, they are at 102,733 now. His number for Ole Miss is probably more accurate than mine... I heard they lost about 2,000 seats due to a minor renovation that will add about 4,500 more seats by next year. Auburn has a planned expansion, but they had better play better than the first three games if they want to sell the extra tickets. He lists Vandy at 40,350; I've got them at 39,790 based on what they say they sell. I doubt it matters since they barely outdraw most Texas high schools. They only sell out when playing Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia or one of the opponents that bring 30,000 fans to buy the seats the Vandy alumni leave empty. A&M drew 45,000 last Friday night for Midnight Yell Practice... more than Vanderbilt can hold for an actual game... of course, Vanderbilt hasn't played an actual football game since Jay Cutler graduated.

It was Lane Kiffin who engineered the comback that almost led to a miracle win... Saban didn't leave LSU for ALabama... he left LSU for the Miami Dolphins. Kiffin wasn't a very good head coach because he was too young and immature... he won't have that problem when gets the next chance. As for Saban, no serious Alabama fan wants to see him leave. There aren't five schools in the country among those with the resources to hire a top notch coach who wouldn't kill to get Nick Saban... ask those folks in Austin who tried everything under the sun to convince him to come there... before settling for sorry Charlie Strong and his band of clowns. Hugh Freeze is an outstanding young coach and I take nothing away from what Ole Miss did Saturday night. But anyone who saw the game knows that if those teams played ten times, Bama would undoubtedly win seven or eight of those. Go back and look at the entire game objectively... two fumbled kickoffs, three interceptions, a miracle TD on a deflected pass that should never have been thrown. Alabama torched the vaunted Ole Miss defense for more than 500 yards of total offense, recovered an on-side kick that the whole world knew was coming... Ole Miss never stopped Alabama... Bama stopped themselves with poor QB play and dumb mistakes. Enjoy the victory... it is the first time in the 120 year history of the series Mississippi ever beat Alabama in consecutive years. But if Ole Miss doesn't play better than they did Saturday night, they will not beat LSU, A&M or Miss State.

I agree about the late starts... those asinine commercial breaks really stretch a game out... I remember when I had season tickets to Texas A&M games, we would have games with a lot less scoring than the Ole Miss-Bama game had that would still go for over four hours. Games with scores like 24-21 would last that long due to the commercial breaks before and after every kickoff, every score, every injury. Those damn commericals completely destroy a team's momentum. You get a turnover and rather than going out and throwing a bomb right away to take advantage of the opponent being down, you have to wait three or four minutes to run the first play. By then, they've calmed down and gathered themselves emotionally. It's a load of crap that they force these late starts and elongated games.

I grew up here, but moved away for fifty years. Since I've been back, I've noticed that most truly avid Bama fans have absolutely no connection to the school... they either never went to college, or they attended one of the smaller schools like South Alabama, Troy, Spring Hill, or similar. People all over the Florida panhandle have Alabama stickers on their cars, as do people all over south Mississippi. People want to be identified with a winner, even though they have no real connection to the place other than their Wal Mart tee shirt. Funniest thing I've seen since I moved back here? Many states offer college logo license plates to raise extra funds for the state... usually, all major schools in a given state can be purchased and often, the school shares in the extra revenue generated. But in Mississippi, you can buy logo license plates for Auburn, Alabama, LSU and other out-of-state schools! I'm not sure whether this is a sign that more people in Mississippi are fans of the other states' schools or whether there are just too few college graduates in Mississippi to make such a program viable!

Here you go... % of capacity as of this year's figures... A&M 99.86% LSU 100% Tenn 99.69% Bama 100% UGA 100% Ark 101.85% Mizz 98.47% Kenty 93.25% Miss St 100.39% Vandy 79.75%

How is Andre Ware going to call the Aggies game in College Station at 11:00 and the Mississippi State game in Starkville at 3:00? The first game might not even be over yet when the second one starts... is Sumlin going to loan him the chopper? This isn't rocket science, guys... get it right.

Regardless of where the various Qbs are ranked, a lot of the statistics are not yet very meaningful. A&M's Allen has been held back because A&M hasn't yet really run most of their offense. They haven't needed to show their hand, so they are avoiding showing the whole playbook until they need to. They won't show much this week, either. Once they start conference play, things will open up. The biggest surprise to me isn't Johnson's absence, but Brandon Allen's productivity. He was supposed to be nothing but a game manager, but because they lost a running back and have trailed often this season, he is throwing more than anyone expected and doing it very well. Kelly is very good and we all knew what Prescott can do. Mauk is a known quantity (which probably hurts him because he doesn't have a stellar reputation in big games). Coker was a big unknown, Allen only had five starts under this belt, Dobbs was mostly hype and potential until he showed something because like Allen, he didn't have a lot of starts. The Florida guys were unknown as well, so much of this is based on performance to date against less than top notch opposition.

First game Allen took about 75% of the snaps, last week he only took about 40%... he was done early in the second quarter and A&M played backups at QB and RB the final 40 minutes.

5 INTs and almost cost his team both games? He shouldn't be in the top 14, since several teams (including Texas A&M and Alabama) have backups who are better than Johnson!

Won-Loss records in some sources do not count games against non-FBS opponents... but in this case, since Auburn's game against Jacksonville State is counted, I think it's just an error.

He ATTENDED Missouri... as well as Washington U in St Louis, but graduated from Iowa. He lived in Mississippi until he was eight, at which time he moved to St Louis, so where he was 'raised' is open to debate... he undoubtedly became homosexual while living in Missouri. A few other folks from Mississippi who could write a little include William Attaway, Jimmy Buffett, Shelby Foote, and Eudora Welty. Morgan Freeman and James Earl Jones are also from Mississippi.

Most likely it's because most of the really uneducated folks are too poor to have computers or be using the Internet. Here in Alabama, the truly uneducated are all in Montgomery and are members of the state legislature.

I was also in the band on September 19, 1970 when a bad A&M team (2-9 that year) went to Baton Rouge and upset a far superior LSU squad, ranked #12 in the nation, on a fluke 79 yard TD pass with 13 seconds to play. LSU fans still consider that to be the most inexplicable loss in program history. A few days before the season started (September 7), LSU QB Butch Duhe died of a brain hemorrhage in the university infirmary. Duhe, one of the greatest high school quarterbacks in Louisiana history, was to be the starter in 1970. Duhe was a well-conditioned athlete and ran four miles daily, despite being bothered by severe headaches. He complained of headaches on a Monday while standing on the sidelines at practice. The next day, as the headaches persisted, he was hospitalized. Three hours later, he died of a brain hemorrhage. The funeral was a few days before the game. It is reported that the team remained in the cemetery for more than two hours after the funeral. LSU and Texas A&M were huge rivals in those days and LSU had not lost to A&M since Bear Bryant was the Aggie coach in 1956. Head Coach Charlie McClendon (Chollie Mac) had never lost a season-opener in his eight years at LSU and the Tigers were a fifteen-point favorite. LSU held A&M to a minus 42 yards rushing that night, mostly due to quarterback sacks. But, A&M sophomore QB Lex James managed to throw for 314 yards. LSU completely dominated most of the game, but was held to field goals nearly every time they drove deep into A&M territory. Nearly all of LSU’s defensive backs were injured during the game (including two-way All-American Tommy Casanova) and they were playing reserves and backups most of the second half. It looked as though the game was decided when LSU stopped A&M on downs deep in Aggie territory with a 1:30 to go and LSU leading 15-13, but A&M held them to another field goal for an 18-13 lead. A&M used all of their time outs during that last defensive stand and there was less than one minute to play when A&M took over on its own 20 after the kickoff went for a touchback. On third and nine from the 21 yard line, James went back to pass and found no one open and as he scrambled, he saw tiny little Hugh McElroy (5’7”, 170 lbs.) on the sideline. McElroy, the first African-American to ever play at A&M, caught the pass after young substitute cornerback Paul Lyons (who spent his career as a very good QB for the Tigers) inexplicably went for the interception and missed. McElroy then turned and outran everyone on a 79 yard sprint to the end zone, reaching pay dirt with just 13 seconds remaining on the clock. You never heard 80,000 drunks get so quiet in your life! I can tell you there were very few Aggies in attendance that night… the Aggie Band, 291 members strong that year, plus the Yell Leaders and a small handful of other students, possibly 400 total Aggies were there, seated on the goal line where McElroy scored. The rest of the 80,000 people there were avid Tiger boosters, and few of them were sober. It has long been legal to bring bottles of liquor into the stands at LSU and most of them do. As the Aggie Band was filing out of the stadium after the game, we were attacked several times by drunken slobs, a few of them armed with empty bottles and when we finally got to our buses to leave Baton Rouge, the mob tried to tip the buses over. Baton Rouge and campus police officers were in plain sight and made no attempt to intervene and in fact, laughed at the fear on the faces of the Aggies who were not sure we would make it out of there alive. LSU went on to have a great season, losing only to Notre Dame (3-0) and in the Orange Bowl to National Champion Nebraska. They won the SEC title that year for the only time under Coach McClendon and went undefeated in the SEC for the only time other than 2011. Charlie McClendon played at Kentucky under Bear Bryant and was SEC Coach of the Year in 1969 and 1970, and National Coach of the Year in 1970. 1970 was the only year in which he beat both Ole Miss and Alabama in the same season. Another irony about that season was that A&M had opened its season the week before with a 41-14 rout of Wichita State, whose team was decimated later that year by a plane crash which killed several team members and injured so many more that the rest of their season was cancelled.

I hate to admit how old I am, but back in the early days of the polls (1950-60s) and even before that, before the internet or ESPN, most of the influential sportswriters were in the East... and overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. Notre Dame was their school... they would vote for Notre Dame with several losses over anyone else with a clean record. No one ever saw the games because there was only one or two televised games on Saturday. None of the west coast scores ever made it into the Sunday papers because of early deadlines. It was always Notre Dame and the Big 10 then everyone else. Plus, the final polls came out BEFORE the bowl games and in some years, before the last game of the season for some of the schools was even played. Notre Dame did not play in bowl games back then... they only started playing in bowl games in 1969. To give you an idea of how bad the Notre Dame bias was, in 1952, ND went 7-2-1 and was ranked 3rd in the final poll. They tied Penn (an Ivy League team who went 4-3-2) and lost to Pittsburgh and Michigan State (21-3). The next highest rated schools with at least two losses were Alabama and Texas, ranked #9 & #10. Alabama lost to Tennessee and undefeated and #2 ranked Georgia Tech before routing eastern power Syracuse (7-3) 61-6 in the Orange Bowl. Wisconsin played a similar schedule and went 6-2-1 and was ranked 12th. In 1959, ND went 5-5 and was ranked 17th! And No, it wasn’t because of strength of schedule… their losses were to Purdue (5-2-2 by 21 points), Michigan State (5-4 by 19 points), Northwestern (6-3), Georgia Tech (6-5) and Pitt (6-4). Their wins were over North Carolina (5-5), California (2-8), Navy (5-4-1), Iowa (5-4) and USC (8-2). One quality win all season and several weak losses plus they were outscored 180-171 for the season… yet they were ranked in the Top Twenty. In 1964, Notre Dame blew a 17-0 halftime lead to USC in the final game and lost 20-17, their only loss of the season, but was named the national champion by the National Football Foundation and won the MacArthur Bowl trophy. Only one of Notre Dame’s nine wins came against a team with a winning record (Purdue 6-3). The combined record of their ten opponents was 42-50-4, yet they were ranked #1 all season. Alabama won the AP and UPI titles (which came out before the bowls and Bama’s loss to Texas in the Orange Bowl) and Arkansas won the Football Writers title (after the bowls). Then in 1966, the worst of all came when #1 and #2 Michigan State and Notre Dame played to an infamous 10-10 tie where Notre Dame spent the entire fourth quarter trying to run out the clock rather than attempt to win the game and wound up co-champions with Michigan State. Notre Dame had four wins against teams with a winning record. Michigan State beat just two teams with winning records! Alabama went 11-0 and finished THIRD! Alabama outscored its opponents 301-44 and destroyed a 9-1 Nebraska team in the Orange Bowl 34-7. Alabama beat SIX teams with winning records, including Big 8 champion Nebraska, whose only blemish was a 10-9 loss to arch-rival Oklahoma. In 1967, Notre Dame was 8-2, beat only two teams with winning records, and finished ranked #5… Purdue, also 8-2 and WITH A 28-21 WIN over Notre Dame, finished ranked 9th! 1968 was more of the same; ND went 7-2-1 with ONE win over a team over .500 and they were ranked 5th; ahead of 10-1 Arkansas, 8-1-2 Georgia and 8-2 Purdue who was ranked 10th, despite having beaten ND for the second straight year, 37-22 in SOUTH BEND! In 1969, ND beat only Air Force with a winning record (6-4) while tying USC and losing to Purdue for the third straight year. They played Texas in the Cotton Bowl and lost, but finished ranked 5th at 8-2-1. Purdue finished 8-2 again, beat ND, and was ranked 18th! Are we starting to see a bit of bias in any of this?