Texas A&M Loses Its Traditional Edge By VIV BERNSTEIN COLLEGE STATION, Tex., Nov. 8 — At midnight on Fridays before every home football game, thousands of Texas A&M students and fans gather at Kyle Field for yell practice. Aggies fans don't cheer, they yell. It is one of the many traditions at Texas A&M, a university of 45,000 students that finds unity in tradition. The fans wear maroon. They stand ready as the "12th man" throughout every home game. They recite the same yells at the same time. They lock together shoulder to shoulder and sway side to side while singing the fight song, more than 80,000 people creating a blurring zigzag around the stadium. But not all traditions can go on forever, including the tradition of victory at home. The Kyle Field advantage that has led to a 71-11-1 home record in 14 seasons under Coach R. C. Slocum is suddenly gone. The Aggies are 2-3 at Kyle Field this season, and on Saturday they will be visited by Oklahoma, the newly anointed No. 1 team in the New York Times computer ranking and the Associated Press news media poll. The lack of success at home and a 5-4 overall record have led to another tradition at Texas A&M: bashing Slocum. His job could be in jeopardy if the Aggies finish at .500 or below. One former student — they do not like to call themselves alumni — has offered $1 million to go to the salary of a new coach. All of Texas, it seems, has weighed in on the merits and faults of Slocum, who has the most victories in the football team's history with a 122-45-2 record and is sixth in winning percentage (.728) among active Division I-A coaches. The university president, Robert M. Gates, went so far as to issue a vote of confidence to Slocum this week, with one significant caveat: the new athletic director, when hired, will make the final call. Slocum could probably secure his future with victories against Oklahoma and then the blood rival Texas in the final game of the season. But those teams are in the top six in the Times ranking and in the news media poll, and losses could leave the Aggies at or below .500 for the season. Finishing with a record that poor has happened only once during Slocum's tenure. Nobody wants to think about the possibility of the Aggies losing their final three games (they will also face Missouri). "I'm not going to end my senior year with a losing season," linebacker Jarrod Penright said. "We shouldn't lose another game. Oklahoma is not good enough to beat us. Texas is not good enough to beat us. We just need to go out and win." In any other year, Penright and the Aggies' defense might be counted on to secure those victories. But injuries have depleted the secondary, and defense has been the Aggies' sore point. Nebraska proved that on Oct. 26 by rallying with 24 second-half points to pull out a 38-31 victory at Kyle Field. Cornhuskers fans were so thrilled that they rushed the field after the game, stepping on yet another Texas A&M tradition. A Corps of Cadets member — Texas A&M is a former military school and still has as many as 2,000 cadets every year — slugged a Nebraska fan for walking on Kyle Field's sacred ground. Oklahoma, which is 2-8 at Texas A&M, is apparently not worried about Kyle Field or the Aggies' traditions. "Their quest for another title becomes a little easier now," the Sooners' weekly press notes read, "as Oklahoma is finished with the difficult portion of its schedule." Kyle Field may be viewed as an easy stop for the Sooners, although the Aggies have one potential good luck charm. Former President George Bush could be in attendance Saturday; the university houses the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, and he is a frequent visitor to the campus. Of course, Bush cannot tackle Oklahoma running back Quentin Griffin, and there is some question whether the Texas A&M defense can either. But the Aggies can take some measure of confidence from a 35-31 loss to Oklahoma in 2000, the season the Sooners won the national title. Texas A&M led that game until the final quarter, when an interception was returned for a touchdown to rally Oklahoma to the victory. "Most people would say that O.U. is certainly the odds-on favorite to win the game," Slocum said. "We know that, but we also know how football works. You get into games and things start going your way. We'll fire our best shot and who knows, we might hit something." The disappointment of their record may be enough to inspire the Aggies against Oklahoma, but there has never been a great rivalry between the programs. So even though Oklahoma arrives with a No. 1 ranking, it is considered the second most important game of the season for Texas A&M. For Aggies fans, beating Texas is the ultimate goal every season. They will meet Nov. 29 in Austin. "If they were the worst team on the face of the planet, it would still be the big game," said John Hoyle, 65, a professor of educational administration who has written three books about Aggies lore. That is why students used to build a bonfire before every Texas game to signify, as Hoyle said, "the eternal desire to beat the hell out of the University of Texas." There are no more bonfires, though. The tradition of building a nearly 60-foot bonfire before the Texas game ended Nov. 18, 1999, when the tower of logs collapsed while under construction. Eleven students and one former student were killed. Lawsuits resulting from the accident are still unresolved. "For a while, it broke us," said Zac Coventry, a fifth-year senior who is the student body president and was a sophomore that year. "When we lost those students, we felt it. The student body has been going through those stages of grief." One stage is a memorial that is under construction and is scheduled to be unveiled in 2004. In the meantime, Hoyle said students were working on finding a new ritual to mark the Texas game. Whatever they come up with, this seems guaranteed: It will become a tradition.
