Is Texas A&M the Devil?

The Texas A&M baseball team has had an outstanding season. They went 45-14 during the regular season, won the SEC Baseball Tournament, were selected as a Regional host, and are now hosting a Super Regional against TCU this coming weekend.

They are an excellent baseball team, with a hype video to match. Check it out below:

In case you didn’t know, the voice in the video is “Bane” from “The Dark Knight Rises”. His intimidating, ominous voice make him fit to be “the devil” he refers to himself as. Towards the end of the video, a TCU fan is holding a sign that says "We want Boomer", a reference to the last Texas A&M player shown in the video, Boomer White.

Texas A&M seems to be drawing a parallel between their star player, Boomer White (who transferred from TCU), and Bane, "the devil", in the video.

I interpret the last line –  “speak of the devil, and he shall appear” – as Texas A&M saying “call on us, and we will appear like the devil to torment you.” Aggies are likely to interpret it differently and claim the devil reference is only about Boomer White, since he was specifically called out by TCU fans. That's fair, but I maintain A&M is subtly trying to make a larger point about the whole baseball team and athletic program.

Make no mistake, the video is awesome. There’s just one glaring problem…

Texas A&M won’t appear when you call on them. In fact, they’ll do the exact opposite.

Towards the end of the 2014 football season, many bowl projections had Texas A&M slated to play the University of Texas in the Texas Bowl. It would have been a great matchup. In-state rivals who haven’t played in a few years, facing off in the city of Houston where each school has countless alumni, etc.

Well we all know what happened next. Texas A&M lobbied their way out of the bowl game, as “the devil” was apparently hell bent on not playing Texas. The Aggies went to the Liberty Bowl in Memphis instead.

But you know what? It was just one time. And there’s a lot of politics involved with A&M not wanting to play Texas, and the conferences didn’t want it to happen either, and the Aggies are still mad about the Longhorn Network, so no big deal. Right? Wrong.

The very next season, the very same bowl game, an almost identical scenario. Bowl projections had Texas Tech and Texas A&M headed to the Texas Bowl. The Aggies had yet another chance to face off against a former conference foe and revive a classic in-state rivalry. Texas Tech fans tried hard to promote the matchup, even if the Red Raiders would have been underdogs.

And what happened? Texas A&M squirmed their way out of it, saying that their fans didn’t want to play in Houston since they had already played there earlier in the season. Instead, the Aggies got a matchup with Louisville in the Music City Bowl in Nashville. Compared to an in-state rivalry, the game failed to produce much hype.

As a side note, Aggie fans were full of it when they said they wanted a “destination game” rather than playing in Houston. None of them showed up for the bowl game against Louisville, as it was the lowest attended Music City Bowl in over a decade.

“Speak of the devil (Texas A&M) and he shall appear.” Well, if he has to, like in a Super Regional against TCU. But when given the chance to play Texas or Texas Tech in a football game, the devil went down to Tennessee instead.