In all my 21 years as a Texas A&M sports fan, I’ve seen my fair share of blown leads and apparent self-implosions. In the 2017 football season, for example, we let up 35 unanswered points in a loss to UCLA. In the 2022 basketball season, we lost by one point to Xavier in the National Invitation Tournament. And that’s just the individual games. Goodness knows about the seemingly annual skids, such as the late-season collapse of the 2016 football team, and don’t get me started on this year’s October stretch in football.
Therefore, I live by the same painfully recurring mantra: “Don’t get too comfortable. It’s only downhill from here.” In light of recent events, let me break this down for you.
I know what you’re thinking. “Wait a minute, I always assume we’re going to lose, too. Is there any hope for me?” I’m afraid not, kid. You are experiencing the first stages of early-onset Battered Aggie Syndrome — BAS. Your grandparents had it, your parents had it and now you do.
Statistics junior Hector Carrillo, a friend I happened to meet in line for a baseball game, defined BAS best: “The feelings of frustration, anger, and disappointment that are the result of many years where fan involvement in and support of Texas A&M athletics greatly outperforms on-field results.”
He hits the nail on the head. But is there a way to solve this predicament?
Unfortunately, no — there is no cure. It’ll get worse and worse until the very first down or play of every game has you believing the game is over before it started and the season is lost. This ailment hits the A&M faithful in different ways, each a branch from the same tree of disappointment.
This feeling is a great equalizer in the quest for a championship or conference title, it seems. Those present at the games will tell you they are desperate for ears to hear their pleas.
“Aggie sports are a living example of why you should never, ever get your hopes up,” economics junior Brody Smith said. “You know you’re going to be let down. BAS truly is inevitable. It always wins.”
Many a night, you’ll lie in bed staring at the ceiling fan and reliving the moment it all went wrong. The dropped flyout, the final strike, the condemning penalty — they all bring the same fate, and you feel trapped in the fandom with which you so willingly chose to spend the rest of your life.
Sure, you’re here now in College Station, free to drown your sorrows in the dim light of the Dixie Chicken, but what happens when you’re all alone in the Aggie-hating world post-college? Your Maroon and White pride becomes a target for those who don’t understand your pain, and your only solace is that you attend the top-rated Texas university, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Your spiral into madness makes you numb before too long. Loss after loss makes you anticipate defeat in everything. School seems more difficult, cooking is a pain. Sooner or later, even the sight of your oven mitt — the one you got for 100 points using the 12th Man Rewards app — makes you drop to your knees midway through grabbing your last frozen pizza.
But then, something odd happens. You run-rule Rice, 14-4. There’s hope again! Albritton Tower shines in the glistening wintry night of victory. You remember what life was like before the descent: The flowers are blooming, the bats are hot!
But now you fear another skid, another reason to doubt. Something to convince you that the current situation is just a ruse to make you believe again in what surely will cause further pain.
I implore you: not this time. Do not let yourself give up on the hard work and effort put into representing A&M on the big stage, win or lose.
“It does suck that when we’re on top, we slide back down again, but we can always hope for redemption,” Lawrence Ruiz ‘91 said. “Aggies stay until the end and Aggies never give up.”
With that advice, maybe, just maybe, we can all get to the end of the season and see the boys that show the real old fight hoist the big trophy.
If not, well, it’s back to square one. Gig ‘em.
