Hey Texas A&M Football plays next week

We’re distracted. We are all distracted. There’s a $75 million man strutting about the recruiting scene, some kind of dang-fangled new signing period going on, and all of a sudden the basketball team is in the top ten. People are sure MAD ONLINE about what other people think about Jimbo Fisher. It sure as hell feels like the offseason.

But it’s not. We eased on into bowl season this past weekend, and it was a relief. Sun Belt and C-USA teams slugging it out on brightly-lit turf. Lots of lower-tier ESPN reporters eating regional fare on camera. Andre Ware says “NO DOUBT” for the fourteen millionth time. Good fun all around, really.

The Aggies get to join in that fun a week from Friday at noon on ESPN. It almost feels like there is a collective wish that this season was over already. To wipe the slate and plow forward with all the intangibles on our side, the heady whiff of “victory” in the coaching carousel fresh on our nostrils. But there is this pesky bowl game. That part of college football that actually involves the football. This is a purgatory matchup: prime for ample gloating if we prevail; easily written off as a transitional anomaly if we lose.

This could be a challenging outing. Wake has a wily quarterback and is capable of playing solid defense. They are by no means “beneath us” as a bowl opponent. It could take some significant individual heroics from players like Christian Kirk or Armani Watts in their farewell game to help lift the Ags to a much-needed postseason win. It’s also an audition for the younger players: Nick Starkel and others could be making their first case as potential starters in a brand-new scheme.

This game falls into a murky no-man’s-land of blurred borders between two eras of Aggie Football. That doesn’t mean it can’t be a standalone gem worthy of remembering all by itself. This game is primed for a swift injection of inspired emotion. It could remind us that football is really fun.