Texas A&M Aggies

Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds made headlines this week when he reiterated his stance against playing Texas A&M any time in the near future, though he admitted the game would likely happen at some point. Who gets to decide when?

"They're the ones that decided not to play us. We get to decide when we play again. I think that's fair," he said.

Another old Texas A&M rival from the Big 12 has struck a different tune, though. Texas Tech wants to play Texas A&M, and it doesn't sound like it'll be too long before it happens.

"I would think soon,” Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal of the renewal's timeline. “(Athletic director) Kirby (Hocutt)’s excited about it. I’m excited about it, so hopefully we can come to an agreement and get that thing rolling. I just think it’s a great thing for the state. It’s a great rivalry, a great football game and it would be great for Texas."

He added that he'd "love to be a part of that again."

At last week's Big 12 basketball tournament, Hocutt expressed a desire to resume the series in a meeting with media.

"We would welcome the opportunity to play Texas A&M in every sport," Hocutt told reporters. "It was a fun rivalry, a good rivalry and one in the future that we can begin again."

Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman doesn't sound like he's standing in the way of the renewal either.

"We would entertain anything," he told the Dallas Morning News.

It's great to hear talk like that, and just like the Texas series, A&M's rivalry with Texas Tech will be a great game to get renewed. It's not the crown jewel like the Thanksgiving tradition between the state's two biggest football rivals, but it's a step in the right direction for sure.

Texas A&M and Missouri's 2011 exit to the SEC, less than a year after the Big 12 momentarily stabilized with 10 teams, inspired plenty of bad blood across the Big 12, but those feelings shouldn't stop rivalry games that helped make college football great from happening again. Texas Tech isn't Texas A&M's chief rival, but both programs love beating the other, and it can only help marquee rivalries like Texas and Texas A&M and Missouri and Kansas to resume before long.

Kingsbury, who took the head coaching job at Texas Tech after just one season as Texas A&M's offensive coordinator, joked that the Red Raiders should wait to schedule the game until Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel packs his bags and leaves A&M's campus.

The Red Raiders open spring practice on Friday, and Kingsbury met with reporters after throwing out the first pitch -- he says it was a strike -- at Texas Tech's baseball game against Arizona State on Tuesday.

The Journal noted that Hocutt spoke last fall of beefing up the nonconference schedule, but that it wouldn't be a possibility until 2015 of 2016, when the schedule was a bit clearer.

That would be fine with me, but the sooner Texas A&M gets to take the field against its old rivals from the Big 12, the better.

A few days removed from the raw emotion of a 20-17 season-opening loss to Florida, Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin noted several positives that he and his team could take away from the game, including effort and physicality. Sumlin said he was pleased with his team's effort on offense and defense and that he believed his team played physical. The fact that the Aggies did not turn the ball over was also a positive, but one of the negative sticking points he mentioned Saturday was repeated again on Tuesday: penalties.

"The three things we talk about going into every game: play hard, play smart and be physical," Sumlin said. " I thought we were extremely physical and I thought we played extremely hard. The intelligence part of the game, we did not. So when you're in a close game and you have nine penalties, for 78 yards, that's not going to cut it. I think Bill Polian, the NFL (executive) studied and said that there's a formula that every 10 yards of penalties is worth one point. So there's a lot of combinations into that. I think our players right now, after talking about that, they understand the importance of that part of the game also.

"And as I said, that was an emphasis coming into this year: turnover ratio and penalties. So we got one of them done on Saturday and really one of them, the other side, cost us the football game, which is a learning experience."

Familiar foe

With SMU on tap, it's an opponent Sumlin is plenty familiar with. While at Houston, Sumlin's Cougars met June Jones' Mustangs annually as they resided in the same Conference USA West division. This will be Sumlin's fifth year in a row to meet SMU.

"I have a lot of respect for June Jones," Sumlin said. "He's a guy who's taken SMU to a Conference USA championship game from nothing and really done a fine job with that program. June's a buddy. I think I asked him last time I saw him, if now he'll let me play in his golf tournament in Hawaii since we're not in the same league anymore. He said 'Well, we still play each other,' so I don't know if he's going to let me play in it."

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After spending two weeks preparing for a game that has now been postponed, Texas A&M has turned the page and its attention to Florida.

With the Aggies' new season opener scheduled for Sept. 8 at Kyle Field after the original opener against Louisiana Tech, scheduled for Thursday, was postponed to Oct. 13 because of Hurricane Isaac, they closed the book on the Bulldogs and began preparing on Wednesday for the Gators.

"Today we moved on, we moved on to Florida," Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin said Wednesday during the SEC coaches' weekly teleconference. "And I think that obviously, our preparation has changed with the postponement of the game and the move of the game back to Oct. 13. So for our guys, it was kind of a bittersweet kind of situation. Guys were ready to play somebody else, they were down a little bit (Tuesday), but as we talked to them about where we are right now, finishing up our preparation for Louisiana Tech yesterday and really moving on to Florida. That's where our focus is right now."

According to new Texas A&M athletic director Eric Hyman, who met with reporters at Reed Arena on Wednesday, moving the game to Oct. 13 -- which was each team's open date -- was not what either team wanted to do.

"There's a lot of things that we looked at, the possibilities," Hyman said. "Our least desirable [option] from the get-go, from their perspective and our perspective was playing the game on Oct. 13.

"We based the decision on the facts that we knew at that time. [Tuesday] morning, it looked good. And then it changed. What it is today? I don't know. We tried to do what was the right thing to do based on the facts we had at that point in time. We looked at a lot of different possibilities, a lot of different options and none of them came [to fruition]."

Sumlin said he could sense a little bit of a letdown with his team when they got the news on Tuesday.

"I could sense a little bit of letdown (Tuesday) at practice," Sumlin said. "As I told the coaches, just looking at the coaching staff yesterday, because of all the effort and time you put into something, you kind of build emotionally to play a game. And when you get within 24 hours of leaving to go to play a game, it's a little bit of a letdown.

"It's kind of like anything else, you say, 'Hey, that's over with. We'll put our files away and you guys go home tonight and get some sleep and come back tomorrow and get ready to get up for Florida, and we as coaches will move on.' So (Tuesday) was kind of a downer but we understand the situation. I think as we got in here to work today and started in on our preparation for Florida, I think the excitement will build up and our guys will be ready to go."

Hyman acknowledged that the schedule change, which gives both teams 12 games in 12 weeks, becomes more of a challenge for the football team. But he also tried to keep the bigger picture in mind.

"We're very sensitive to the lives of people and putting them in harm's way," Hyman said. "We've got to factor that into it. The decision was made based on, from what I was told, the (Louisiana Tech) president and the athletic director and they talked to the weather experts, the security people, the safety people, it was a consensus from everybody that this was the thing to do, to cancel the game. So I've got to be respectful of them. These are honorable people and I've got to respect what they say."

Hyman said the option of moving the game to College Station was considered but ultimately the decision remained with the home team, Louisiana Tech.

"I don't know that we would give up a home game," Hyman said. "If we had a hurricane here would we do that? Would we go and play in Shreveport? Probably not.

"I would have done the same thing here. I would have gotten the weather people, security people, every expert in the area and they're the experts. I couldn't live with myself if I end up doing something and it turned out to be a catastrophe. I can't do that. So I've got to look at what's in the best interests of our fans, our students and those kind of things. It is a football game, but I don't want to put people in harm's way. I wouldn't do it from a dollar standpoint, I'd do it from a safety standpoint. What's the right thing to do?"