The horror.
Despite a sparky year one with Jimbo Fisher, fresh off the first win over hated LSU in a generation and a blowout victory against a 9-win ACC team in the Gator Bowl, the Aggies came up short where it really matters most: financial rankings.
The Wall Street Journal this week released their final 2018 list of college football programs sorted by net worth (it costs $ to access more than the first couple paragraphs, so of course we did not read it), and at the top of the list? You guessed it: the Texas Longhorns.
Financial superiority and the stability and independence associated with it have long been the rallying cry of the “we don’t need Texas why would we help them they need us more than them we’ve moved on to much greater things” crowd any time the age-old question of whether or not these two fierce in-state historical rivals should resume their annual football game, which has lain dormant since 2011 after being played almost every year since 1894.
Where is your fluffy security blanket made of cash now, heroes?
No, this major setback could be just the thing needed to reboot this rivalry, as the tens and hundreds of vociferous fans online who clamor for avoiding Texas due to A&M’s financial superiority are now questioning the very fiduciary principles that drove them to follow college football in the first place: without monetary superiority, what other way could anyone know which football program is better?
Of course, there are alternate means of measuring: online polls, recruiting rankings, coaching quirks, off-field blunders, attendance figures, and social media presence, to name a few. All very noble pursuits, to be sure, but none of them with enough clout to shift a nationwide perspective.
No, in the end, Texas A&M will be left with a very difficult decision: play Texas again in football, or find a way to extract yet more cash from hundreds of thousands of rabid Aggies. I think we know which path the suits and the regents would prefer to lead us down.