HookEm
11-21-2004, 10:15 AM
Interesting article from an Ag, written in 2K3:
A&M vs. UT is sibling rivalry personified, Stratton writes:
“ The schools and their partisans are not unlike brothers who squabble at just about every opportunity that avails itself to squabbling. UT can be seen as the son Mom always liked best, the one who got the new bike, the better clothes, and a larger allowance — and who gloated about it. A&M can be seen as the son with the chip on his shoulder who got the hand-me-downs and leftovers — and who stewed about it.”
I mentioned this to an Aggie buddy of mine and he nodded.
“ It’s like Cliff Barnes and J.R. Ewing,” he said, recalling the old “Dallas” television series. “Cliff was successful in his own right, but he was obsessed with trying to beat J.R. In the long run, that held him back.”
The way I see it, that’s A&M vs. UT in a nutshell. Stratton, who’ll sign his book at the MSC Bookstore from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, delves into the psyches of Aggies and t-sips as perceptively as any author I’ve read. Another example:
“ The 90-mile drive from College Station to Austin is a short one, by Texas standards. But it involves moving from one distinctive place to another, from the South to the edge of the West, from small town to urban area. And the psychic distance between them is vast. The Bryan-College Station area prides itself on bedrock conservatism, small-town values: God, home and the Republican Party. Austin, on the other hand, is, well, Austin ...To the Aggie mind, College Station is a place to be revered: ‘Mecca’ is how I’ve seen it described on different Internet discussion boards. Inevitably, those same boards refer to Austin as ‘Sodom.’”
Despite old Ags’ claim that non-Aggies can’t possibly understand the Spirit of Aggieland, Stratton shows a firm grasp of it. To explain it, he harkens back to A&M’s days as an all-male, military-oriented institution:
“ The sons and daughters of Texas’ best and brightest were heading to Austin to the prestige university in those days, so what did that leave for A&M? The also-rans? The hicks from the sticks? I was talking about the Aggies to a friend who lives on the Gulf Coast, and she, a diehard Longhorn, said, ‘They want to be like us so bad they can taste it. But they aren’t and they never will be.’ Maybe that was so for a lot of years. It was apparent to everyone who looked at the situation that the smaller, poorly funded A&M wasn’t in a league with UT. So how were the Ags supposed to compete on the football field and elsewhere? The Spirit of Aggieland was the answer. Behind it is the belief that the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts — and that whole can achieve phenomenal things. Whenever you start looking at Aggie Spirit, you always see that it emphasizes solidarity in some form or another.
“ As much as anything, it is e pluribus unum taken to the fullest — one out of many ...”
A&M, of course, has come a long way from its days as an all-male, military-oriented institution. It’s now one of the largest and, arguably, one of the best public universities in the country. A&M is competitive with Texas in many academic disciplines and even ranks higher than Texas in some.
Nevertheless, a chronic case of stepchild mentality still runs deep in Aggieland, mainly because of Texas’ decades of athletic dominance.
A&M is the only institution I know of that derides its archrival by name throughout its fight song. Some old Ags are so full of venom that they raise a ruckus whenever a story about Longhorn football runs on the front of the sports section. “If I wanted to read about t-sips, I’d subscribe to the Austin paper!” one of them said when Ricky Williams was on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy.
I’m neither an Aggie nor a t-sip, but I’ve lived here eight years — long enough to have graduated from A&M twice — and have become as big an Aggie fan as my two Aggie children. It seems to me the only way A&M will ever truly catch up to Texas in terms of prominence is to grow out of this ridiculous and self-perpetuating inferiority complex, both on and off the football field.
When that happens — if it happens — then maybe the A&M/Texas game will finally fall into proper perspective. Maybe then we Aggie fans can relax and enjoy the game, even in a rebuilding year.
Donnis Baggett is publisher and editor of The Bryan-College Station Eagle.
http://www.theeagle.com/columnists/...12303donnis.htm
A&M vs. UT is sibling rivalry personified, Stratton writes:
“ The schools and their partisans are not unlike brothers who squabble at just about every opportunity that avails itself to squabbling. UT can be seen as the son Mom always liked best, the one who got the new bike, the better clothes, and a larger allowance — and who gloated about it. A&M can be seen as the son with the chip on his shoulder who got the hand-me-downs and leftovers — and who stewed about it.”
I mentioned this to an Aggie buddy of mine and he nodded.
“ It’s like Cliff Barnes and J.R. Ewing,” he said, recalling the old “Dallas” television series. “Cliff was successful in his own right, but he was obsessed with trying to beat J.R. In the long run, that held him back.”
The way I see it, that’s A&M vs. UT in a nutshell. Stratton, who’ll sign his book at the MSC Bookstore from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday, delves into the psyches of Aggies and t-sips as perceptively as any author I’ve read. Another example:
“ The 90-mile drive from College Station to Austin is a short one, by Texas standards. But it involves moving from one distinctive place to another, from the South to the edge of the West, from small town to urban area. And the psychic distance between them is vast. The Bryan-College Station area prides itself on bedrock conservatism, small-town values: God, home and the Republican Party. Austin, on the other hand, is, well, Austin ...To the Aggie mind, College Station is a place to be revered: ‘Mecca’ is how I’ve seen it described on different Internet discussion boards. Inevitably, those same boards refer to Austin as ‘Sodom.’”
Despite old Ags’ claim that non-Aggies can’t possibly understand the Spirit of Aggieland, Stratton shows a firm grasp of it. To explain it, he harkens back to A&M’s days as an all-male, military-oriented institution:
“ The sons and daughters of Texas’ best and brightest were heading to Austin to the prestige university in those days, so what did that leave for A&M? The also-rans? The hicks from the sticks? I was talking about the Aggies to a friend who lives on the Gulf Coast, and she, a diehard Longhorn, said, ‘They want to be like us so bad they can taste it. But they aren’t and they never will be.’ Maybe that was so for a lot of years. It was apparent to everyone who looked at the situation that the smaller, poorly funded A&M wasn’t in a league with UT. So how were the Ags supposed to compete on the football field and elsewhere? The Spirit of Aggieland was the answer. Behind it is the belief that the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts — and that whole can achieve phenomenal things. Whenever you start looking at Aggie Spirit, you always see that it emphasizes solidarity in some form or another.
“ As much as anything, it is e pluribus unum taken to the fullest — one out of many ...”
A&M, of course, has come a long way from its days as an all-male, military-oriented institution. It’s now one of the largest and, arguably, one of the best public universities in the country. A&M is competitive with Texas in many academic disciplines and even ranks higher than Texas in some.
Nevertheless, a chronic case of stepchild mentality still runs deep in Aggieland, mainly because of Texas’ decades of athletic dominance.
A&M is the only institution I know of that derides its archrival by name throughout its fight song. Some old Ags are so full of venom that they raise a ruckus whenever a story about Longhorn football runs on the front of the sports section. “If I wanted to read about t-sips, I’d subscribe to the Austin paper!” one of them said when Ricky Williams was on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy.
I’m neither an Aggie nor a t-sip, but I’ve lived here eight years — long enough to have graduated from A&M twice — and have become as big an Aggie fan as my two Aggie children. It seems to me the only way A&M will ever truly catch up to Texas in terms of prominence is to grow out of this ridiculous and self-perpetuating inferiority complex, both on and off the football field.
When that happens — if it happens — then maybe the A&M/Texas game will finally fall into proper perspective. Maybe then we Aggie fans can relax and enjoy the game, even in a rebuilding year.
Donnis Baggett is publisher and editor of The Bryan-College Station Eagle.
http://www.theeagle.com/columnists/...12303donnis.htm