The Texas A&M Football team generally has one of the harder schedules in college football solely due to the conference that they are aligned with. More specifically, they’re in the same division as Alabama, which is amidst perhaps the greatest stretch of college sports in the history of the world.
They also play teams like LSU, Georgia, Mississippi State, and others during the regular season, automatically given them one of the toughest schedules in the game before non-conference games.
Even beyond conference games, the Aggies generally do a good job of scheduling tough non-conference opponents. In 2019, they played Clemson, the eventual College Football Playoff runner-up. They played the same Tigers team a year prior when Clemson went on to win a national championship.
The fact of the matter is this: the Aggies want all of the smoke. They’re not a team like UCF — which you can try to excuse all you want — that avoids playing tough teams. But somehow, 2021 slipped through the cracks for the Aggies.
Bleacher Report called Texas A&M Football’s non-conference schedule a “cream puff buffet”
I think I should start this out by saying that a cream puff buffet doesn’t even sound very appetizing. You have two or three of those things and you’ll be decommissioned for a few hours. So if Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report is reading this, I’d like to thank you for calling Texas A&M’s non-conference schedule challenging.
On a more serious note, calling the Aggies’ schedule a cream puff buffet is clearly meant as an insult. And in all honesty, he’s not wrong — at least on a surface level. Here is an excerpt of what Miller said about TAMU’s football schedule.
"“Haters love to harp on Alabama’s weak nonconference schedule every year, but Texas A&M has the biggest cream puff buffet of any 2021 CFP contender. Aside from this ‘neutral-site’ game against what is expected to be one of the worst teams in the Pac-12, the Aggies have home games against Kent State, New Mexico and Prairie View A&M.”"
In Bleacher Report’s defense, the Aggies do have a really weak non-conference schedule in 2021. But comparing it to Clemson’s schedule is where Miller made a fatal error.
You see, the Texas A&M Football team still ranks top 25 in ESPN FPI’s strength of schedule next season. Regardless of their non-conference opponents, they’re going to have a difficult schedule.
To find Clemson, you have to scroll all the way down to the 55th-ranked strength of schedule. There’s your cream puff buffet.
The difference between Texas A&M and Clemson is that the Aggies don’t need a tough non-conference schedule. Clemson, on the other hand, plays in the weakest conference of each Power 5 division. If you were to take out Clemson, they may change the name to Power 4.
In short, Kerry Miller — this was a really bad comparison.