In 2003, K-State annihilated OU in Kansas City for the Big 12 title, and the Sooners still went to the national title game, where they lost by a touchdown to LSU. Did a four-touchdown loss really mean the Sooners didn’t belong on the national stage? No, it merely confirmed how good K-State was that season, and how good they could have been if Ell Roberson hadn’t been injured early on.

Actually, I thought that win by K-State was pretty much a fluke, as an overconfident, undefeated Oklahoma team ran into a buzzsaw of a Kansas State team playing in Kansas City. Kansas State came back to Earth, and were dominated in their bowl loss to Ohio State.

Hell no, it meant they were demoralized after a heartbreaking loss in the conference title game and then a railroading for the ages that resulted in a national title contender relegated to the freaking Alamo Bowl.

I will agree that y’all got railroaded, in that you belonged in a better bowl game than the Alamo, but you didn’t lose to Purdue b/c your team was heartbroken, you lost b/c your defensive braintrust (Mike Stoops?) decided to keep Jeff Kelly off the field as much as possible. Your coaches took the best defensive player on the team, and kept him on the sidelines for the majority of the game. That, and your use of the prevent defense on Purdue’s winning drive were why you lost.

Tech’s loss in Dallas proves nothing to me because that team’s goal was at least a BCS bowl, and maybe even a national title game, and playing in the Cotton Bowl for, what, the second or third time in recent years, was a disappointment.

If you think playing in the Cotton Bowl was a disappointment for Tech, you don’t follow Tech very much. They were THRILLED to be in the Cotton Bowl, b/c they haven’t been there very often in their program’s history.

I don’t expect you to be able to think rationally about Tech because you, like most other Aggies I know, hate them so much. I have plenty of Aggie friends who can find it within themselves to say something nice about UT occasionally, but have said (literally, I heard a guy say this) that he would disown his own children if they went to Tech.

I don’t hate Tech, hate is much too strong of a word for what I feel for them. I hate texas; there is no question about that. The reason most Aggies can usually find something nice to say about texas is because, despite our hatred, we can recoginize thart texas has some good academic programs. texas does have an outstanding graduate school for accounting, best in the nation, I believe. I have pointed many people who were interested in grad school for accounting towards Austin for that reason. I can’t really say the same for Tech, because well, they’re pretty much a black hole academically. I think their Ag school is supposed to be okay, but if you want to go to college to study Ag in this state, you go to A&M. They have a good library for studying Vietnam history, but other than that, there isn’t much to say for their academics. They are a third teir academic institution, at best, which puts them on level with some of A&M’s satellite campuses.

I don’t think I’d disown my kid if he went to Tech, but I’d sure wondered where I failed if I raised a kid who wasn’t smart enough to get into A&M, or even texas. I don’t know if you understand this, because I don’t think there is a counterpart to Tech in Kansas, but in Texas, Tech is seen as the school you go to if you can’t get in anywhere else. Of courese, I have no plans of having kids anytime soon, so this isn’t a concern for me.

Regarding Tech, it isn’t so much that there is a “mystical ceiling” as much as it is that their current situation precludes them from winning the division, much less a conference or national title. You do realize that in order to win their division, Tech has to hope that OU, texas, A&M, and Oklahoma State are all down enough that Tech can beat all of them? The simple fact of the matter is, this has never happened, and most likely will never happen. Tech never won an outright conference title in the old days of the SWC for the same reason; there was never a season where everyone else was down enough so that Tech could rise to the top. The closest they came was a BS five-way tie for the conference championship in 1994, when A&M went undefeated in conference play, but was ineligible to play in a bowl b/c of NCAA probation, so jealous SWC coaches decided to declare us ineligible for the SWC title that year.

Your comparison of A&M as a “have” with all the resources to win a national title ignores the fact that we were an all-male, military school for almost all of the first century of our existence. Football recruits wanted to go to schools with girls, which is why we weren’t always a strong program in many seasons.

If I was going to point to a “have-not” in the state of Florida who became a “have”, I would use Miami as the example, b/c as a small private school with no football tradition to speak of prior to the 1980s, their rise is certainly demonstrative of what a school can do if they commit themselves to a program, AND they find the right coach. Miami has been fortunate enough to find several great coaches to lead their program and continue their tradition. Florida State began winning when they hired Bobby Bowden; the success of both Florida State and Miami coincided with a population explosion in Florida, a population growth that led to more impoverished minorities, which was a breeding ground for great athletes. The ability to recruit and retain these athletes is what made these two sleeping giants wake up. Saying Florida State didn’t win a single conference title from 1950-1992 is somewhat disingenuous, b/c from 1951-1991, Florida State wasn’t IN a conference, they competed as an independent in football.

Sorry, but I had to laugh when you called Florida a “have-not”. Despite the fact that they had never won an outright conference title in the SEC until Spurrier arrived in 1990, Florida defines the term “have”. You need to look at their athletic budget and booster programs, b/c even before they became the 800 lb gorilla in college athletics that they are today. Florida was THE program to go to in the state of Florida, and they were able to recruit well. They just couldn’t knock off the other monster programs in the SEC, like Alabama or Georgia. However, Florida is the furthest thing from a “have-not” you will ever see, and it has always been that way.

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