Latest news with #CollegeStation
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Texas A&M coach Mike Elko jokes about Texas fight song mishap during SEC Media Days presser
There was no fight song mishap after Texas A&M football coach Mike Elko was introduced at SEC Media Days on Thursday. When Texas coach Steve Sarkisian came out for his press conference on Tuesday. the Texas A&M fight song, "Aggie War Hymn," accidentally played as the Longhorns' coach took the stage. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey acknowledged the gaffe, calling it "a bit of a fumble." "I want to acknowledge we had the wrong music played after I introduced Steve Sarkisian," Sankey said on Wednesday. "So, mistakes happen. No ill intent there. And we'll make sure we do better in possessing our responsibilities.' That led some to wonder — and perhaps hope — that the Texas fight song, "Texas Fight," would play Elko out to the podium for his presser on Thursday. Alas, no one wanted another embarrassment. Perhaps Sankey was standing right behind whoever was working the sound system this time around. Anyone hoping for a similar mistake or retaliatory playing of "Texas Fight," was disappointed, however. Elko walked out to "Aggie War Hymn," and all was right with the world — or SEC Media Days, at least. 'For those of you who had me walking out to 'The Eyes of Texas,' you lost your bet," Elko quipped as he took the podium. In Elko's first season at College Station last year, the Aggies went 8-5 and 5-3 in the SEC (part of a six-way tie for third place). Texas A&M lost to USC in the Alamo Bowl, 35-31, blowing a 24-7 lead the Aggies held midway through the third quarter. Elko didn't predict how the Aggies would finish in his second season, but implied that they should be competitive in the SEC with the amount of NFL talent on the roster. "We should get to double-digit NFL draft picks this year," Elko said, via ESPN's Pete Thamel. "That'll be the first time Texas A&M has done that in a very long time." Quarterback Marcel Reed returns after throwing for 1,864 yards and 15 touchdowns (to six interceptions) as a freshman. Running backs Le'Veon Moss (765 yards rushing) and Amari Daniels ((661 yards) will also be back, in addition to the entire starting offensive line. Cashius Howell, who finished second on the defense with four sacks, also returns. On the subject of NFL draft picks, Elko also confirmed that Shemar Stewart, the Cincinnati Bengals' first-round pick who remains unsigned, is working out by himself and not with the Texas A&M football team. He will not be attempting to rejoin the Aggies, amid speculation regarding him being in College Station, which likely would have required a lawsuit against the NCAA.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Bengals' Shemar Stewart takes unprecedented step toward returning to Texas A amid contract holdout
With each passing day, there's a bit of a stronger feeling that Shemar Stewart may somehow wind up not playing for the Cincinnati Bengals. The first-round pick from Texas A&M is holding out due to specific language demands in his contract negotiations that aren't being met. And now, CBS Sports reporter Bud Elliott has shared that Stewart is back in College Station working out with his former Texas A&M team. There's the idea that he might go back to school and enter the draft again next year. "It may not be legal yet, but then again, everything in the NCAA is subject to litigation," Elliott said. "I didn't know you could do this. I knew you could do this in baseball... I don't know why you could do it in baseball but not football. You probably have to go to court." MORE: How good was LeBron at football? NBA legend would have been 'one of the best' in NFL Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio wrote about this earlier in the offseason, too. Florio, though, shared a specific passage from the Collective Bargaining Agreement that essentially suggests Stewart could go back to school but then would still be considered a Bengals draft pick after the season. Here's that Florio breakdown: "This is something that we contemplated during the 2025 draft both as to quarterback Shedeur Sanders and quarterback Quinn Ewers — Stewart could try to return to college for the upcoming season. Even though it would require an actual or threatened legal battle against the NCAA, the rule that prevents a player who has been drafted but who hasn't signed an NFL contract from returning to college football could be susceptible to an attack under the antitrust laws. "Somewhat surprisingly, the CBA contemplates the possibility that a drafted player will instead go back to college. Here's the language, from Article 6, Section 6: 'If any college football player who becomes eligible for the Draft prior to exhausting his college football eligibility through participation is drafted by an NFL Club, and returns to college, the drafting Club's exclusive right to negotiate and sign a Player Contract with such player shall continue through the date of the Draft that follows the last season in which the player was eligible to participate in college football, and thereafter the player shall be treated and the Club shall have such exclusive rights as if he were drafted in such Draft by such Club (or assignee Club).' "In English, this means that, if Stewart returns to college football in 2025, he'd be treated as a draft pick of the Bengals in 2026. Which means that he wouldn't be permitted to re-enter the draft next year." This would certainly be unprecedented by Stewart, and if he pulls it off, it could set a wild new trend that would change college football and the NFL Draft forever. At this point, that may just be what happens. MORE NFL NEWS: 49ers QB Brock Purdy is willing to go to prison to win a Super Bowl Xavier Worthy hints at adding a new position for Chiefs Joe Burrow has the wildest fascination with fossils Falcons QB Kirk Cousins can earn $8 million in a wild scenario J.J. McCarthy facing increased pressure in Minnesota Johnny Manziel reveals a big Texas A&M regret
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
3 Texas A&M players are expected to be selected in the 2025 MLB Draft
Ahead of the 2025 MLB Draft, which will begin on Saturday, July 13, Texas A&M will see at least one player selected in the first round, as junior outfielder Jace LaViolette is expected to be chosen on Sunday, while junior pitcher Justin Lamkin and sophomore pitcher Shane Sdao are the following players in line to hear their names called over the next two days potentially. However, senior ace pitcher Ryan Prager is not ranked within MLB Pipeline's Top 250 prospect list despite being selected in the 3rd round by the Los Angeles Angels in the 2024 MLB Draft. Choosing to return for what was expected to be his final season in College Station, Prager struggled during the majority of his starts, finishing with a 4-4 record, 4.21 ERA, and 73 strikeouts. Advertisement Compared to his 9-1 finish during the Aggies' College World Series run in 2024, Prager was expected to improve, but as we've seen with star pitchers in the past, it's sometimes a mistake to return after being selected in the first three rounds. While there is a slight possibility that Prager returns, Justin Lamkin and Shane Sdao are the two other players to watch, especially Sdao, who, after missing the entirety of the 2024 season, may not see his draft status rise any further than it currently sits. Lamkin, who finished with a 5-7 record and 3.42 ERA, finished with 98 strikeouts, while his complete, hitless game against the Georgia Bulldogs included 15 Ks in the best outing of his Aggie career. According to MLB Pipeline's 250 rankings, LaViolette comes in at No. 20, Lamkin at No. 111, and Sdao at No. 116. Even if all three players are selected, they still possess the option to return to Texas A&M for the 2026 season. Advertisement Contact/Follow us @AggiesWire on X and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Texas A&M news, notes and opinions. Follow Cameron on X: @CameronOhnysty. This article originally appeared on Aggies Wire: Three Texas A&M players expected to be selected in the 2025 MLB Draft
Daily Mail
13-07-2025
- Daily Mail
BREAKING NEWS College football star Le'Veon Moss arrested in Texas after repeatedly threatening stranger
Texas A&M running back Le'Veon Moss has been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct stemming from an incident in College Station in the early hours of Sunday morning. According to local reports, Moss was detained at around 1:00 in the morning after he was observed by an officer making multiple threats to a bystander. Police said that they attempted to stop Moss from making more threats and that they and his friends tried de-escalating the situation. However, he continued to make threats toward the stranger and was eventually arrested.
New York Times
08-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Texas A&M still stuck in Texas' shadow after rivalry's SEC reunion. Can it escape?
Editor's note: All week, The Athletic is writing about college football rivalries at a moment of change in the sport. Read our ranking of the top 100 rivalries here and also vote for your favorites. COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Across the street from the largest football stadium in the SEC on a warm spring day, students study, a couple of dudes with guitars jam and swans float on a pond. The scene is straight from a college brochure. Advertisement On fall Saturdays here, the 20-acre green space comes alive with tailgaters, but for most of the year, it's an idyllic gathering spot at the heart of the Lone Star State's largest university by enrollment. Staring up at the soaring stands of Kyle Field, capacity 102,733, it is hard not to think: Texas A&M really does have everything. Yet, still, when it comes to football — and athletics in general — the Aggies find themselves chasing Texas, their once-again conference rivals who walked into the SEC last season and headed straight for a seat at the head of the table. The message from Texas A&M's relatively new leadership team is that while a rivalry can be a great motivator, any energy spent worrying about what's going on 87 miles southwest in Austin is wasted. 'I don't think it's problematic. I think it's real,' Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts said. 'Anytime you have an in-state rival, fans are going to compare, and that's part of what competition is rooted in: comparison. But from my perspective — and I've been a part of some pretty big (rivalries), Nebraska-Oklahoma, then Nebraska-Colorado — I'll tell you the best chance you have of being successful in those is to spend all your time focusing on yourself.' Just one season into its renewal, the state of the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry — which dates to 1884, has been played 119 times and is No. 15 in Scott Dochterman's top 100 rivalries — is as spicy as ever. Maybe even more so. 'The rivalry has always been intense in my eyes, but I think the fire does burn a bit deeper now with Texas in the SEC and the absence of those two teams playing for so long and then the success that Texas had off the bat,' said David Nuno, an A&M alum and host of TexAgs Radio. It was a tough year all around for the Aggies in the rivalry. Advertisement In men's basketball, the Longhorns won two of three meetings, including the rubber match in the SEC tournament. In baseball, Texas lured coach Jim Schlossnagle away from A&M immediately after he took the Aggies to the College World Series final, then swept the Aggies this season, a low point for a team that had been preseason No. 1 and failed to make the NCAA tournament. Only A&M softball struck back for the Aggies by eliminating Texas from the SEC tournament. In the one that matters most? The Longhorns beat the Aggies 17-7 at Kyle Field in their first football meeting since 2011 on the way to appearances in the SEC championship and College Football Playoff. Texas' first season playing SEC football could not have gone much better (13-3 and No. 4 in the final AP poll). Meanwhile, even with more than a decade's head start in the conference, Texas A&M is still looking for its first trip to Atlanta for the title game. Mike Elko's debut season as the Aggies' head coach had a lot to like after the disheartening and costly Jimbo Fisher experiment in College Station. But Texas A&M stumbled to 8-5 after a 7-1 start, failing to reach double-digit wins for the 12th consecutive season since Johnny Manziel and the Aggies took the SEC by storm in 2012. 'I think when you look at last year, the big picture of it, you have to see success,' Elko said. 'I think we were competing on a stage that Texas A&M had not been on, really, since they joined the league; being in the race to be in the Playoff, being in the race to be in Atlanta all the way down to the end of the season. And so to me, when I look at it, I think we absolutely steadied the ship. I think we absolutely took a forward step.' R.C. Slocum was part of 30 A&M-UT games as either an assistant or head coach of the Aggies, and he takes pride in having been on the winning side 16 times. Texas leads the all-time series 77-37-5, though Slocum notes: 'They like to count the times when our guys were all fighting the war, in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.' Advertisement Slocum, who grew up in Orange, Texas, on the Louisiana border, coached the Aggies to a school-record 123 victories over 14 years. His .721 winning percentage is best of any Texas A&M coach in the modern era, and his 1998 Big 12 championship team is the last Aggies squad to win a title. Leaving the Big 12 — and Texas and its Longhorn Network — and joining the SEC in 2011 was an enormous point of pride for Texas A&M. While many Aggies seethed when Texas was invited to the SEC in 2021, Slocum was all for it. 'Texas was gonna go somewhere. So would you rather them being in the Big Ten, down here in Texas recruiting all the time and telling kids that, 'Hey, you come here, we're gonna go to the West Coast? We're gonna go to the East Coast.' Let's have them here in this state. We're the two big dogs in this state, and we compete for these kids, and we play in the same league,' Slocum said. During Texas and Texas A&M's estrangement, the Longhorns floundered. Texas ushered out Mack Brown in 2014, eight seasons after winning the school's last national title, only to continue sputtering through three seasons of Charlie Strong and four under Tom Herman. The rivalry lived on through schadenfreude, with each side basking in the other's failures. It was a long-distance relationship based on the premise that misery loves company. 'It's really interesting with Texas,' Brown said. 'Texas Tech was a rival. Baylor was a rival. TCU was a rival. Everybody hated Texas, right? In fact, we had a little saying that everybody hates Texas more than they like themselves.' While the A&M rivalry runs deep, the Oklahoma game typically defines a Texas season. Under Brown, the annual Red River game at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, with half the stadium clad in OU crimson and the other in UT burnt orange, often had national title implications. Advertisement To many Texas fans, OU is a peer. A&M is a younger sibling. 'I think there's a level of arrogance with Texas fans that comes at A&M,' Nuno said. The Longhorns are most definitely feeling themselves these days, and why not? Under coach Steve Sarkisian, hired by AD Chris Del Conte in 2022, Texas is 25-5 over the past two seasons with two CFP semifinal appearances. This season, with Arch Manning set to take over at quarterback, the Longhorns could start as the No. 1 team in the country. In College Station, there is also reason for optimism, though with more modest expectations. Elko's second team features one of the best offensive lines in the country, an intriguing dual-threat quarterback in Marcel Reed and a potential All-America linebacker in Taurean York. Still, it doesn't quite look like a roster ready to take a huge leap in the SEC. To that end, Texas A&M boasts the No. 3 recruiting class for 2026 in the 247Sports Composite, with 21 of 24 commitments rated either a five- or four-star prospect. Of course, Texas' success affects Texas A&M. The opposite would be true, too. That's the way rivalries work. Especially in-state rivalries. 'You're in the same recruiting footprint, stepping all over each other,' Elko said. 'You certainly would love to be the team that's doing amazing and the other team doing poor. But I don't know that it's an impactful feeling. I don't sit around rooting for them to do poorly.' Elko is Texas A&M's fifth head coach since Slocum was pushed out after the 2002 season. Alberts is the fourth AD since the move to the SEC. Turnover at the top, including at the top of the university itself, is generally not a formula for success in college athletics. 'I think alignment matters,' said Elko, the former defensive coordinator under Fisher who went 16-9 in two seasons at Duke before being brought back to A&M to replace his former boss by then-AD Ross Bjork. 'Your alignment, from your president to your head coach to your AD, all of that really, really matters. There's been a lot of transition in all of those positions since we've joined the SEC.' Advertisement The Aggies are hoping that in Elko and Alberts, the former Nebraska All-American linebacker and athletic director, they have found their version of Sarkisian and Del Conte, even if they'd prefer to forget the comparisons. 'There's this great picture of Michael Phelps swimming in the Olympics, and his chief rival is swimming next to him,' Alberts said. 'Phelps is looking straight ahead. His rival's looking at him. And it says, winners focus on winners. Losers focus on winners. So my point is, I have great relationships, I have respect, but I'm really not all that concerned with what's happening in Austin. 'We need to be the best version of Texas A&M, and we need to spend all of our energy and all of our focus on making sure that Texas A&M is as good as we can possibly be.' (Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic; photos: Todd Kirkland, Michael Chang, Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
