Texas A&M vs. Ole Miss: just a plain old football game

This is not meaningful football.

The outcome of this game will not impact the CFB Playoff in any way, nor will it have any tangential relation to the SEC West crown that will be slugged out over next weekend at Jordan-Hare. The details of this game might have tiny rippling effects on which lower-mid-tier bowl the Aggies get invited to. This is a showcase of disappointment, led by two (probably) lame duck coaches with a whole gallery of backup and injured QBs on both sides.

But because it’s not meaningful does not mean it’s meaningless, despite the rigid binary tendencies of internet categorization. Most of these A&M seniors have never beaten Ole Miss, after watching a pair of incredible Aggie wins under Johnny Manziel in 2012-2013. They’ve been snakebit, underwhelming, frustrating, exasperating, unlucky, and not a little bit bad at times. Ole Miss has been a key catalyst in making each of our last three seasons considerably more miserable: at first because they were a good team, but more recently because they were not. If you think that beating Ole Miss is meaningless to those players, congratulations: you’ve successfully jettisoned yourself from any human emotional aspect of this sport.

The complete absence of hype, distraction, speculation, and just attention on this game makes it ripe for a purity not seen as often because sometimes you’re at your best when no one’s watching. With players on both sides fired up and still wanting to play a couple of tough football games before the interminable offseason hits us again far too soon. This could be a pair of offenses unleashed in an exciting, back-and-forth tilt for a good 3.5 hours.

Or the game may be flat-out awful. We’ll find out soon enough.