A Clockwork Maroon

(In this picture...Texas A&M is to Dim as Fate is to Alex)

Heartbreak is nothing new.  Remember that moment in your life when something you thought you trusted, something you thought was undeniably true, ended up coming back to bite you like a rabies-enraged collie dog?  I know you've been there before.  Whether it's your unrealistic idealization of that girl/guy crashing down to reality or your favorite show jumping the shark, it's a moment that makes your heart drop into your stomach like an anvil.

The students and alumni at Texas A&M have a unique aspect to this moment, for heartbreak is an old friend to the Aggies.

Let me start with the all-too-familiar disclaimer of "don't get me wrong, I still love my school."  Then let me follow that cliche by saying that as a former UTSA Roadrunner and Oklahoma Sooner who was raised in a heavily Longhorn-influenced family, my journey to Texas A&M is atypical to many of my peers.  I will be the first to admit I don't know most of the Aggie yells and I still have a soft spot for OU; I understand my opinion may not be shared by all.  But Texas A&M is my school, and my collegiate saga gives me a uniquely level-headed view of the Aggies.

Basketball will always be my sport.  I didn't play football in high school (although I did play one hilariously ineffective season in 8th grade), but I've watched enough Friday Night Lights episodes and played enough games of Madden to know one indisputable fact: when you play too conservative and don't play to win, you're more than likely going to lose.  However, that statement seems to go against every conservative bone in Texas A&M's hypothetical body lately.  After making eerily Nostradamus-like predictions to Rob and Ty during the Aggie-Razorbacks game on Saturday (I knew we lost the game almost immediately in the third quarter and was willing to make outrageous bets after punting near midfield on 4th and short leading 35-20), I was once again left wondering where our school went wrong, all while reading predictably brutal Facebook statuses.  (Most of them unoriginal..."Welcome to the SEC"?  Thank you.)  Bottom line, A&M has been foolish these past few weeks (and the coaching staff might need to man up...not to mention a certain guy who has an affection for bow-ties).

Judging from my half-joking attempts to be a hipster, it's pretty easy to not be in favor of what is becoming all things Longhorn.  How can anyone defend the Longhorn network?  Congrats to the university for being able to pull that behemoth deal off, but are Longhorn fans (or as I've been recently told, "t-shirt t-sips") really that surprised that the rest of the nation is less-than-thrilled whenever "Longhorns" is an ESPN bottom line squished between "NCAA Football" and "NFL"?  I'd love to believe in conspiracies about ESPN painting A&M in a negative light now that they are in bed with UT (although we're doing a great job of doing that ourselves lately), but I could really care less.  It's pretty telling when most of my friends and family refuse to buy the Network anyway. At the end of the day Red, the most diehard Longhorn fan I know, sums everything up best (and worst) when he legitimately boasted, "It's good to be King."  (My dad gets better with age.)

I am fairly excited about the move to the SEC.  I'm glad that we are being proactive and not waiting around to see what Texas and Oklahoma do.  I'm grateful that even if we have it rough in the SEC (which at this point seems inevitable), we are a prominent enough university to be invited to the best football conference in the nation.  And who knows, maybe someday the students will break away from the inferiority complex with UT.  (I can hope, right?)

One thing that gets lost in the mix is just how great Texas A&M University is as a whole.  You'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a campus full of more genuinely gracious people.  Heartbreak or not, the Aggies are in it together.

And I'm not talking about football.

(For the record, Reveille does not have rabies.)

-PB