If any of you think A&M hasn't always been a bunch of pathetic cheating eggheads whom everybody loves to laugh at then read this SI article from 1968: Sing Sing on the Brazos
I think that is the point of the article. It was 1968 and the atmosphere, despite our revisions, was decidedly leaning toward conservatism in Texas. Texas was not an urban state by an stretch of the imagination. A&M was an anomaly to most eastern and west coast press. The attempt was to show that this strange state school existed. However, Mississippi State, Va Tech and countless others would have presented the same strangely conservative atmosphere. That being said, the legacy of asshattery presented by aggy has never been in doubt on this end. They are ridiculous to say the least. However they are Texans. Several of us have close friends and family that have attended the school. aggy is not thought of in most cases unless the Horns are playing them. However, not to hijack the thread, my unabashed hatred of everything ousucks, is undeniable. As I have told my children, to the horror of my wife (an Ohio University grad), they will be disowned for even considering the penal colony north of the Red River. aggy is amusing in a the same way seeing a 500lb. naked man or woman would be: Grotesque and intriguing but never to be dwelled upon.
This is the same Myron Cope who wrote this in a Pittsburgh newpaper in 1963 : "Texas is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the football public...take a close look at the Texas linemen. They do not look like linemen. They have skinny legs like centipedes or girls and high rear ends". That's all Darrell Royal needed to have Texas ready to put it to Roger Staubach, Navy, and the Eastern Establishment in the Cotton Bowl. He died recently.
I have a high school teammate buddy who lettered three years under Gene Stallings and thought so little of him that he refused to shake his hand last year at the fortieth anniversary reunion of the 1967 Southwest Conference champions.
They may be aggy, but they're our aggy dammit. If aggy's gonna be made fun of, we can do it quite well without the help of some dead eastern writer who obviously doesn't get Texas in general. Damn...I never thought I'd find myself defending aggy in any way, shape, or form.
In reply to: "Texas humor pictures an Aggie—and the term is used as a general heading for both students and alumni—as being awkward, unkempt, inept at sex, devoid of humor and, above all, dimwitted." Funny, some things NEVER change... but you could add overall wearin', nose pickin' and list eatin' to those noted above
My older brother actually considered a&m after getting out of the marines in '69. I was in the 6th grade when he took me on a trip to college station to check out the campus. At the end of the day I asked my brother his impressions and he said something didn't seem quite right about it. We left just as it was getting dark to head back to Austin and stopped to get gas near campus. Down the hill behind the gas station we could see cadets loading what looked like large seed pods into the back of several trucks. I'm just thankful we didn't doze off before making it back to Austin. Two of those pods could have been us.
