There's been a lot made of Texas A&M's drought against AP top-25 teams on the road over the last couple of years— a streak that the Aggies are hoping to break when they travel to take on no. 8 Notre Dame in South Bend this weekend.
However, there's a little more to this streak than meets the eye. If you delve into the actual matchups and numbers, it's a little more easy to understand what has gone on for the Aggies over this previous stretch of time.
Texas A&M football's ranked road schedule has been insanely difficult by any stretch of the imagination
The first thing that I think is notable here is that every loss that the Aggies sustained on the road in this stretch is to a team that was not only ranked at the time, but finished ranked. The Ags have not had the luxury of a team like Texas in 2020, where they played an Oklahoma State team on the road ranked 6th (during COVID, of course), and then the Cowboys finished as an unranked, eight-win team.
The last time the Aggies had a game like that was when they demolished the then-9th-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks on the road to open the 2014 season, but Carolina only finished 7-6 in Spurrier's final season.
No, Texas A&M has played a remarkably tough schedule in this time. Of the 15 road matchups against ranked teams since their last road win, a full third of them were against teams that would eventually play in the national championship game— 2016 Alabama, 2018 Alabama, 2019 Clemson, 2019 LSU, and 2020 Alabama.
This isn't even to mention that four more of these teams finished within the AP Top 10 at season's end: 2015 Ole Miss finished 10th, 2019 Georgia finished 4th (and the Aggies gave the Bulldogs all they wanted down in Athens that year), 2022 Alabama finished 5th (where the Aggies were two yards away from winning), and 2023 Ole Miss finished 9th.
Yet two more teams in this list finished in the AP top 12, meaning that 11 out of 15 of these teams finished in the top 12, with just under half of those 11 eventually playing for the national championship.
Comparing Texas A&M's ranked road schedule with other teams
Let's draw a comparison here with the Georgia Bulldogs. Since the beginning of the 2015 season, Georgia has played 13 ranked teams on the road. Of those teams, 3 finished unranked, and all were wins for the Bulldogs. Against teams that finished ranked, mighty Georgia is a mere 5-5. Four of those wins were against teams that finished outside the top 10 in the final AP Poll: the lone one that wasn't was Texas last year.
So that means in road games against teams that finished in the top 10 of the AP Poll, Georgia under Kirby Smart is 1-5, with the only win being against a manifestly overrated Texas team last year. Only one of these matchups was against a team that ended up playing for the national championship.
Again, the Aggies played 5 road games against national championship participants, and 9 total against teams that ended in the top 10. Zero against teams that finished unranked.
Let's try another squad - let's say the Florida Gators. In this same timeframe, the Gators have also played 13 ranked teams on the road, 11 of which finished ranked. Their overall record is 2-11 in that timeframe, and one of those wins came against a 2018 Mississippi State team that finished unranked and with five losses.
They played one game against an eventual national championship participant (2019 LSU), six games against teams that finished in the top 10, and eight games against teams that finished in the top 12. They are winless in all such games. Their last road win against a team that finished the year ranked at all was 2016.
Texas A&M fans should note the other problems with ranked road win criteria
On that note, it should be said that the Aggies actually have a road win from the same year against a team that finished ranked: Auburn. The Aggies shellacked the Tigers in Jordan-Hare that year, but it was when Gus Malzahn's squad was unranked!
The other big issue with this in the specific case of Texas A&M is that it isn't just wins against ranked teams away from home. This means that it does not count things like bowl wins or, more importantly, the heretofore-neutral-site game against Arkansas.
The Aggies have won two games against the Hogs away from Kyle Field while Arkansas was ranked, but since it's not technically a true road game, those don't count towards this stat.
So, what's the point here? The Aggies need to be better on the road, without a doubt. But it's also the case that the Aggies have happened to miss playing against any teams that have been ranked as the result of a hot streak leading up to their game against A&M who tailed off afterwards— they always are catchign those teams at the wrong time.
Most teams, just by pure probability, would catch some of those games at some point in a ten-year stretch— but the Aggies haven't. They've also gone against a murderer's row in the ranked teams that they have played, with a full third of those games being against teams that played for a national championship.
It's been inordinately difficult for the Ags up until this point, but the streak needs to end. I believe the Aggies can take care of business in South Bend this weekend— circumstances haven't helped them out so far in this stretch, but I think it's high time they make it happen.