Water Mosaic echoes from home

pondering the mysteries, simplicity, and humor of life

Friday, October 22, 2004

Return of Greatness

Even though I claim MTSU as my Alma Mata, I am still a big fan of Texas A&M football. This is where I attended college for one and half years of my life. I have seen some great football played on Kyle Field back in 1998 and 1999. I witnessed players like Dat Nguyen, Dante Hall, Bethel Johnson, and Jamar Tooms make amazing and game-breaking plays. I saw A&M beat Nebraska, the number 5 ranked team in the nation at that time in front of over 80,000 fans.

Back then A&M was usually ranked in the top 10 of every preseason poll in the nation. For the last few years, they have slumped. R.C. Slocum finally retired and new head coach Dennis Franchione took the reins. In his first season, Franchione saw a team with potential fall to a teams such as Texas, Nebraska and Texas Tech by a margin of 30 plus point, not to mention the 77-point pounding Oklahoma displayed against the Aggies. They finished the season with a disappointing record of under .500, far below what many expected.

But that was last year. Behind a new offense (shotgun 'zone' read) and a dazzling quarterback named Reggie McNeal, the Aggies find themselves ranked 17 with a record of 5-1. So what happened to the struggling team a year ago? Franchione stressed the concept of team to the Aggies and implemented this by removing their names from every jersey - emphasizing that the name on the front is whats important. The coach will replace their names when he thinks they've earn it. Well done, Coach Franchione.

On a lighter note from David Letterman, here is one of the Top 10 Reasons the Boston Redsox Miraclouly Won their series against the Yankees down 3-0:
Number 2: What do you expect - when you have a guy on the team that looks like Jesus.