Texas A&M Football: How SEC’s immediate eligibility rule impacts Aggies

As of nearly a decade ago, the Texas A&M Football team is in the Southeastern Conference, which is arguably the most competitive in college football.

This is evident by the fact that an SEC team has won the national championship in 12 of the last 20 seasons. Granted, six of those were Alabama, but my point stands. The SEC is the most dominant conference in college football right now.

And, in terrifying fashion, the SEC recently approved a rule that allows for immediate eligibility for transfers within the same conference, starting in 2021. The change will likely create a recruiting and transfer frenzy in its first year, but it’s not a shock that this happened. Here’s a quote from SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey on the benefits of this new rule:

"“this change will ensure that student-athletes who enroll at an SEC member institution will enjoy the flexibility afforded to other student-athletes across the nation.”"

Or, in simpler terms, “free agency has begun,” as described by CBS Sports.

For the Texas A&M Football team, this is something that will likely take a while to digest. We can only speculate the impact that this will have on the league, while time will tell the real impact that is forthcoming.

In the end, the Texas A&M Football team should benefit from the SEC’s new rule

To be safe, I’m going to take a look at this from both sides. First, I’m going to look at this in terms of how it could benefit the Aggies and how it could work against Jimbo Fisher and company. I’ll start with the latter.

As promised, here’s how this rule could benefit the Texas A&M Football team.

For starters, the Aggies don’t bring in many transfers. For the most part, this team is built from high school stars that Jimbo Fisher recruited and developed into bona fide college football standouts. The Aggies’ roster has good chemistry and is well-established, it’s hard to see this rule change doing anything to affect that.

Other schools like Alabama can’t say the same, and as a result, they may reach to pull in more intraconference players to help out their roster, but in turn, stunt the development of their team. If anything, this rule won’t really impact TAMU and could negatively impact other teams. There’s a level of uncertainty attached.

To add to this, the Aggies have had quite a few players transfer out, but very few have stayed within the conference. In fact, in 2021, none of the team’s transfer-outs joined an SEC team. Again, this rule could be a wash for the Aggies.

On the contrary, Jimbo Fisher’s unwillingness to bring in transfers could work against him. Depending on how successful teams are with their first-year transfers, the Aggies may be left in the dust, so to speak.

We’ll get a good idea of this by watching Alabama, who always has a few instant-impact transfer players on their squad.

At the end of the day though, nobody really knows how this rule will impact their team. The only thing that we can be confident about is that there will likely be more players entering the transfer portal on a year-to-year basis.