Texas A&M fans are much like other college football fans: when close calls go against their team, there is a certain section of the fanbase who will wax eloquent about the disposition of the referees against their team. Of course, much like other fanbases again, you will often see other Aggie fans biting back against those kinds of charges.
In 2024, it seemed to many that the number of these incidences was actually kind of high. The Aggies seemed to be lacking in equitable results when it came to referee calls, and there was a loud portion of the fanbase who was making sure everyone knew it— the most egregious of these being the lack of holding calls against Aggie opponents for a very long stretch.
However, Dave Bartoo (@CFBMatrix on X), a well-respected analytics guru who has a penchant for finding interesting numbers, found that the idea that the Aggies were worse off compared to other teams actually had some validity to it. He found that the Aggies, when it came to judgment calls by the referees, were the most disfavored team in the entire country.
Texas A&M sustained massive hits to possible huge resume thanks to referee's lack of balance
Here's what Bartoo found when digging into the numbers about FBS teams in home games:
In 2024 GASO was PLUS 11 judgment calls in their favor at home. By contrast the lowest home judgment against was Texas A&M at -14 calls. 25 total judgments calls difference AT HOME!
— Dave Bartoo (@CFBMatrix) August 7, 2025
Considering a defensive judgment call adds just over 3 point EPA per drive thats huge!
Read that again. The Aggies were a negative fourteen in judgment calls going against them in their home slate. That's where, traditionally, you should be getting the benefit of the doubt!
Those calls added a total of 42 total expected points for the Aggies' opponents per EPA-based models— and that's just if A&M had broken even. If we're comparing them to the team that benefitted the most from these judgment calls, it added 75 total expected points to A&M's foes!
It wasn't just bad at home, though. The Aggies were the least favored in the conference when they were road favorites, as well!
SUCKED to be a road favorite in the SEC last year.
— Dave Bartoo (@CFBMatrix) August 7, 2025
Not only was Texas A&M #1 in net judgement calls against them on the road as a favorite, but #OlemIss was #2 and #GoVols was #3.
Think about how different the season would have looked with a win against Auburn or South Carolina— or both!
The upshot here, of course, is not to complain about unfair refereeing, but to calibrate expectations for the upcoming season. It seems massively unlikely that the Aggies would rank at the bottom of this list two years in a row, so if they can regress to the mean in the upcoming year, it will look like a much bigger step forward thanks to how disfavored they were in 2024.
Still, though, with all the big-name opponents the Aggies hosted last year, you have to wonder when you see this kind of thing. All you can do is move forward, though.