Drinking up the Aggie Kool-Aid

 

For most of my life I did not know or care that Texas A&M University existed.

Born and raised in Colorado, anything related to Texas was irrelevant to me. I lived 11 miles from Folsom Field at the University of Colorado, and the Buffs were the only college football team I remotely cared about. Most of the time while I lived there the Buffaloes stunk. They pretty much lived in the middle or back of the Big 8 pack. Oklahoma and Nebraska dominated the conference.

When it came time for me to go to college, I chose Adams State College in the Southern Colorado town of Alamosa. I played intermural flag football but trolled the sidelines of every home football game with my Pentax K1000 camera to take photos for the South Coloradan, the student newspaper.

Adams State, now a university, has never been known as a football powerhouse. The team, known then as the Indians, went 16-22 during my four years there, and those were good years for Adams State. In the last five years the Grizzlies, as they are now known, have gone 6-49. They have not won a game since 2023 and have been outscored 1,081-269 in the last two years. Adams State is known for its cross country teams, which have won numerous NAIA and NCAA Division II national championships under the guidance of the late coach Joe I. Vigil.

The Colorado Buffaloes didn’t really get good until after I moved out of state in the late 1980s. Under Coach Bill McCartney the Buffs won the 1990 national championship. That was the last time I had an interest in the NCAA championship game until I moved to Amarillo in 2005 when Texas won the national title. Back then, I was just beginning to learn about the Texas schools.

We moved to Rosenberg southwest of Houston in 2008. I still didn’t care much about the Texas college teams until the medical clinic my wife worked for got purchased by UTHealth. If anything, that got us leaning a little toward Austin. Sandy, however, earned her master’s degree in 2017 from Texas Women’s University, a former sister school to Texas A&M.

It wasn’t until our youngest son Colton received his acceptance letter to Texas A&M in the fall of 2020 that we really started paying attention to TAMU. He was accepted into the engineering school and the Corps of Cadets. We very closely followed his journey as he proudly enrolled in the fall of 2021. Sandy joined the Aggie Moms and the Quad Moms. We came up for football games and really started getting into all things A&M.

Then, the week before Thanksgiving, Colton punched from the Corps. That hit us hard, as we were living gung-ho vicariously through him, learning Aggie traditions and guzzling the Aggie Kool-Aid. As we were battling through our depression, Colton was coming out of his. That spring he switched majors to psychology and his countenance brightened considerably.

We made the move to Brazos County in the summer of 2023. After making several visits here, we found that we loved the area. It also let Colton live from home his last two years in college. Since moving here, we have become big-time Aggie fans. Sandy became an officer in the local Aggie Moms group and is still active with the Quad Moms. I worked the football games in 2024 as a security guard and then spent this season as a photographer on the sidelines with Image of Sport.

Of course, I’ve met a lot of people and written numerous stories about A&M since joining The Eagle over a year ago. This year, however, we really got excited about the Aggies as the football team went 11-0 going into the Lone Star Showdown game against t.u. We watched the game with some friends and came away feeling though as if someone had peed burnt orange juice into our Aggie Kool-Aid.

Still, the playoffs are coming, and it looks like we’ll get a home game. We may have lost the perfect season and a chance to play for the Southeast Conference championship, but we still have a shot at the national title. At least that’s more than we can say for the team from Austin.

Gig ’em, Aggies!