A bye-week couldn’t come at a better time for the No. 22 Texas A&M football team. After playing in four consecutive games that came down to the last play, the Aggies could use the rest – both physically and emotionally.
“If we had to play Saturday, we’d find a way, but I could tell the last week or ten days that we could use a little physical healing and an emotional time to get away,” said head coach Dennis Franchione. “I think it will help us to have a day or two for the guys to get away from practice and the regiment of practice and refresh a little bit.”
The time off will also give the Aggies extra time to prepare for archrival The University of Texas.
Rivalry still intense – While some believe the A&M-UT in-state rivalry has lost some of its intensity over the years, the Aggie players and coaches still view the upcoming matchup as their most important game.
“Any team that you sing about in your fight song is an important game. I’ve watched this rivalry from outside in and saw the intensity and the desire for both sides to win,” Franchione said. “They write books about this game. These games stay with you for a long time. There are probably 10 or 12 traditional rival games that you can write about in a college football season, and this is definitely one of them.”
And while this game holds important bowl implications for the Aggies for the first time in several years, senior wide receiver Terrence Murphy believes that the rivalry is bigger than records or bowl appearances.
“When you play Texas, you can throw records out the door. It’s not about records,” Murphy said. “It’s a rivalry, and you go out and play it like it’s your last game. The things about the bowls and all really don’t matter. If we were both undefeated or if we were both 0-9, it would still be a hard game.”