The worst decade in Aggie Football history

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again - Kurt Vonnegut

I know we are all excited about how we have rebounded from that "Apocalypse Now" week to handing down that ass-whooping in Lubbock that has been 14 years too late but the loss to Kansas St a few weekends before had me ruminating on how tough this decade has been for Aggies. It seems every time we start to get excited about a season, we find a way to bulldoze a hole and lay a big pile of dung on the season and it led me to wonder if this could possibly be the worst decade in our illustrious history. So I took the time out and compiled our record decade by decade starting from the 1900s and the results surprised me. I am sure some of the older and more knowledgeable Aggies already  suspect if not know this but the worst decade in Aggie football history jumps out of this table right away:

Decade	W	L	Winning %
1900's	50	20	71.43%
1910's	67	14	82.72%
1920's	53	22	70.67%
1930's	52	40	56.52%
1940's	50	47	51.55%
1950's	51	45	53.13%
1960's	31	64	32.63%
1970's	65	49	57.02%
1980's	71	44	61.74%
1990's	94	28	77.05%
2000	57	51	52.78%

 

Our record for this decade, not including this season, currently sits at a barely respectable 53% winning percentage but I can only imagine the anguish of the Aggies who went through the trifecta of hell that were the decades of the 40's, 50's and 60's. They must have plumbed the depths of abject misery in the 60's, when we eventually hit the rock bottom "winning" percentage of any decade in Aggie Football history at 33%. One could stop right here, take a deep breath and say "Thank God, we aren't that bad!" and move on- but hold on to your horses buddy.

 

It may seem crazy to some that I can even think of comparing this decade to the 60's, but unfortunately a little digging shows that there is at least one glaring similarity between this decade and those 10 nightmarish years - the precipitous drop-off in the winning percentage from the previous decade. While the winning percentage in the 60's dropped a gaudy 22% from the 50's, this season has marked the single biggest drop in winning percentage from any previous season for the Aggies - a mind-boggling 25%. Also, as bad as we were in the 60's, that decade still had at least one bright spot when we won the Southwest Conference in 1967 and even beat a Bear Bryant led 'Bama team in the Cotton Bowl, our lone bowl game in that decade. Unfortunately this decade has been an exercise in futility and a never-ending project of rebuilding for us and consequently we have nothing to tout about this decade except for a Galleryfurniture.com Bowl in 2001 and losses in three other bowl appearances.

 

Year	Overall		Conference		Bowl
	W	L	W	L
2000	7	5	5	3	Independence-L
2001	8	4	4	4	GalleryFurniture-W
2002	6	6	3	5
2003	4	8	2	6
2004	7	5	5	3	Cotton Bowl- L
2005	5	6	3	5
2006	9	4	5	3	Holiday Bowl-L
2007	7	5	4	4	Alamo Bowl- L
2008	4	8	2	6
Total	57	51	33	39
Winning %	52.77778		45.83333

 

One reason Aggies have felt the pain so severely is perhaps because this decade has unravelled on the heels of one of our most successful decades ever in the 90's. The misery in the 60's was gradually alleviated when Emory Bellard took over from Gene Stallings in 1972, and the good work was continued by Jackie Sherrill through the 80's and then the program was elevated to an elite status by R.C. Slocum in the 90's. We won one conference title in the 70's, then 3 in the 80's, and finally 4 in the 90's including one Big XII and three Southwest conference titles. This is not including the unbeaten year in 1994 when A&M was ineligible for the bowl.

 

Year	Overall			Conference			Bowl
	W	L	T	W	L	T
Southwest
1990	9	3	1	5	2	1	Holiday-W
1991	10	2	0	8	0	0	Cotton-L
1992	12	1	0	7	0	0	Cotton-L
1993	10	2	0	7	0	0	Cotton-L
1994	10	0	1	6	0	1
1995	9	3	0	5	2	0	Alamo-W
Total	60	11	2	38	4	2
Winning %	85			90
BIG XII
1996	6	6	0	4	4	0
1997	9	4	0	6	2	0	Cotton-L
1998	11	3	0	7	1	0	Sugar-L
1999	8	4	0	5	3	0	Alamo-L
Total	34	17	0	27	13	0
Winning %	67			77
Overall	94	28	2	60	14	2
Winning %	77			81

Of course, everything wasn't hunky-dory during this era- NCAA sanctions and perennial bowl losses to name a few examples- but the improvement from decade to decade is striking until of course this one. As glorious as the nineties were, it serves to highlight how far we have fallen off the tracks to remain an elite football program. We have gone from a ninth-best winning percentage in the nation in the last decade to a pedestrian 57th thus far in this decade and even worse we have dropped from a dominating 81% to a sub-50 46% in conference play.

Interestingly, during our ascension into the upper echelons of college football programs  from the 70's through the 90's, our rivals have had a markedly different cycle:

Decade	Winning Percent
	Texas	Oklahoma	Nebraska
70's	77	87	82
80's	64	78	84
90's	62	54	87
00's	84	84	65

 

As we gained ascendancy into the 90's bothTexas and Oklahoma had really bad decades and then rebounded handily again while we fell off the precipice. They both have won National Championships this decade and have dominated the conference. I included Nebraska as an aberration of an elite football program whose fortunes have resembled ours in the sense that they experienced a similar precipitous drop-off like we did in this decade.

 

To end on a more positive note, going forward I think we will have a winning season this year and may finish as high as 8-4 with a win over at least one of the big two. It took 3 seasons into the mid-70's, after Bellard took over, that we started winning on a consistent basis and began the rise back into the College Football elite programs. I think we are at least 2 good seasons away from becoming a dominating team again, provided Sherman keeps turning up the team like he did last Saturday regularly.