What it was was football

Despite what many folks have assumed, I'm not in a bad mood today. Nor was I last night after the football game. I'll not go so far as to say I'm happy--that's just silly. I very much wanted the Aggies to upend the sips, and from the way the team played, they very much wanted the same thing. So a loss is a loss, and that stinks. No moral victories, etc.

But if there's such thing as an honorable loss, this was it. The Aggies, picked "Most Likely To Be Lambs At The Slaughter" by pretty much every sports pundit in the nation, traded haymakers with the no. 3-ranked sips all night long and refused to quit. That fumble by Christine Michael's second-half fumble turned into a 14-point swing, robbing the Ags of a potential touchdown while allowing the sips to score one of their own. A rare Jerrod Johnson endzone interception also hurt, as did the missed chip shot field goal near the end of the game. But those were all legitimate mistakes, as opposed to blown calls or other unsavory developments. And the Ags worked their way back into the game each time, except for the final minutes

But how about Jerrod Johnson? Wow! His numbers matched those of Heisman hopeful Colt McCoy, with one difference--as Colt was shredding A&M's young, slow and bottom-ranked defense, Johnson was picking apart one of the nation's most highly-touted. I woke up this morning to see national as well as state media mentioning Johnson as one of the top Heisman candidates for 2010 based on a losing performance. I don't know if I've ever seen that before.

So no, I'm not happy with the loss, but it came against an undeniably great team that may well end up national champions. But watching that game, I saw a lot more good stuff than bad from all those underclassmen Coach Mike Sherman threw out there on the field, and with another strong recruiting class coming in, for the first time in many years I believe the program is headed in the right direction, and eagerly look forward to A&M's bowl game and the start of next season.

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