Recruiting Fallout from Week 2 for Texas A&M Football?

Could there be recruiting fallout from week 2 for Texas A&M football?

A painful loss to the Miami Hurricanes served to sour a formerly fascinating slate of games for Texas A&M football fans in week 2 of college football. That loss dropped the SEC to 1-3 against the ACC this year, much to the delight of east coasters and midwesterners who make crowing about how the SEC isn’t really that good part of their personalities.

The elephant in the room—or, perhaps, the elephant who did not show up—is the Alabama Crimson Tide’s loss to Texas. This is, for some Aggies, the Worst Case Scenario That Could Ever Happen Ever. Listen, I understand the impulse. I get it. The structure of college football is such that results like this, much more than in professional sports, feel really life-and-death because of recruiting. Because of that piece of things, there is a constant temptation to reframe any current event under one of about five narratives for your team. Succumbing to this temptation, though, makes you a permanent prisoner of the moment.

There’s a saying that Bob Sturm has about the NBA playoffs: when your team loses, you feel like you’ll never win again; but when they win, you feel like you’ll never lose again. Things can feel similar from week to week in college football; not in exactly the same way, of course—I really doubt there are any Texas A&M football fans predicting that the Aggies will really lose to ULM this week—but the whisper of “you’re just as bad as you were last year…” can be hard to shake at times like these.

The thing about moments is that they pass. There will be a week three—a week four, even. A week five, too, if you can believe it. We don’t know what the narratives will be at that point, because we haven’t seen those games play out. What if the Aggies beat ULM, handle a down Auburn and Arkansas, and enter the Alabama game at 4-1? What if—and stay with me here—the Aggies emerge from that contest 5-1?

Now that would be quite the narrative.

It’s no secret that the Aggies are locked in a couple of high-profile recruiting battles with the Longhorns—Kobe Black being the most preeminent of these. That’s one where the momentum has swung back and forth more than once. I don’t think those momentum swings will stop—but the guy hasn’t committed anywhere yet, and, from all indications, won’t until the end of the season. Dominick McKinley, who recently committed to Texas A&M football, is another one that the Austinites covet, though he seems solid at this point.

I’m not going to lie to you and say that this last weekend left either completely unaffected. I’m sure it did—I have literally zero inside information, but just knowing the mere fact of what happened had to have left some impression, at least. Was that enough to make Black commit or McKinley flip? Seems like the answer is no, at least right now. And, as time moves on, that afterglow will continue to fade. More games will be played, by both teams. The Aggies will have a crack at the Tide themselves—one that is beginning to look more and more favorable for them as we find out more about this Tide team. There’s plenty of time left to change the narrative.

They just have to go out there and do it.