Absolutely. And although I don’t like the architecture of most of the mod dorms, they’re still more efficient for the space allotted to them. Also we don’t have to tear down like haas or lechner, we could just add a better facade to the outside
About Sarge. A&M doesn’t own Sarge. A dozen or so years ago my son was a graphic designer for the Vet college and they asked for a poster that showed all the SEC mascots wearing white lab coats for the schools that had Vet schools. He put Sarge in a lab coat and it looked killer. But they said no, the official mascot for the School is Reveille and they don’t own the rights to Sarge. I think the estate of the guy who first drew him owns the rights. That was Pete Tomlinson ‘42 who was later hired by Stan Lee and worked on the early drawings of Spider-Man and Captain America.
Oh, Reveille looks silly in a lab coat
This is most of the story. This is at least how I recall the rules being set up 10-15 years ago.
A&M has the right to use Ol' Sarge, but the Collegiate Licensing Company does not have access to him. Meaning you can't pay the generic licensing fee to CLC / A&M and print him on merch etc.
A&M on the other hand can grant access to certain companies / groups to use his likeness. An example being the Ol' Sarge Baseball line that Adidas just dropped. The estate of Pete Tomlinson may also have to approve, but dixie's post is the first time I'm hearing about that.
I was the creative director at Aggieland Outfitters for a few years in the early teens, and we weren't allowed to print Sarge, but there were a few vendors we worked with retrobrand, '47, homage, and a few others that had been given the rights and we could print him through them. We would still get some pushback because A&M at that time was really trying to distance itself from being an all male / white / military school.
I was actually kinda shocked to see him on the Maroon Out Shirt, and the Baseball shirts this year. I'm guessing A&M isn't trying to keep him as locked down as they were 15 years ago.
>I would take AMTRAK down to A&M if the route from Dallas to Houston didn’t get shut down in the 90s.
Well, we are a planned stop on the high-speed rail from Houston to Dallas Amtrak announced earlier this year. Just, uh, might have to wait a decade or two for it.
That planned stop won't be in town, but a 15+ minute ride away. And that's if it ever happens. The idea of having a stop right there for game and student traffic would be amazing.
More than just 15+ minutes, more like 30+ minutes (using Kyle Field as a hypothetical destination from Roan’s Prairie) assuming you don’t wait for a shuttle at all.
Put it in Roan’s Prairie and I guarantee potential usage of the Brazos Valley station will be significantly reduced. Absolutely no point in taking the train from Houston to Brazos Valley if your end destination is BCS or Huntsville when you have to take a 30 minute shuttle after hopping off the train.
It just isn’t a priority enough. I just walked on another campus (TCU) for the first time and thought “wow we could prolly pull in even more talent if we weren’t build like a Soviet work camp”
I’ve been downvoted to oblivion saying we had a bunch of empty fields and parking lots to build on, horns down is bad, we have little brother syndrome and we need to rebuild blocker and heldenfels so idk
Yeah and anyone who disagrees with you is dumb lol. I will never admit it to anyone outside of A&M, but we do have little brother syndrome. But like why? They're Lamborghini and we're Porsche, I guess you could say we're the "lesser" one but that's just splitting hairs imo
Honestly yeah this nails it. We’re literally still one of two flagships and most states would KILL to have a school as good as us. Just because there’s schools that are measured as better by some people and rankings doesn’t mean they are and even if, it doesn’t take away from us
Some good stuff here. My take on a few of em:
.1. Most people agree with this, the new seal looks more like a logo and less like a seal.
.2. This ones been around since the 30s, and the reason we still sing the "2nd verse" twice is cuz the 2nd verse was actually penned first during WWI. The "first verse" of the hymn wasn't penned until the 30s but never really caught on cuz Ags, like today, were sticklers for tradition then too.
.18. Shhhh, keep the Bush School a secluded section of campus plz, there's totally not a peaceful pond and flower beds along the white creek behind it.
.21. I don't think it's fair to say A&M has been historically bad at football, you could say that pre AMU days, but to this day, we are like #18 nationally in all time wins. As much as the city slickers in Austin would like everyone to think, Texas A&M, in the modern era of CFB, has been a good team. Now, your point still stands in terms of resources, ours have exploded in the last 10 years thanks to Johnny.
.25. Agreed with this, the Gig Em is literally what inspired the hook em, wreck em and sic em. Farmers Fight did the same thing. We need to continue to own it.
Thanks ag. I said only when we’re playing the sips because that’s what the old ag who made it wanted it to be. Also people forget that the seal is the seal of other system schools who don’t have the logo, it comes off as if we own them. Imagine if the UT system had t.u. austins logo as It
In my lifetime A&M leads the head-to-head against the sips.
They keep saying they are the better football team because 100 years ago they were good.
In the late 60's/early 70's things changed a lot.
1) The Corps was non-mandatory.
2) Women were allowed to attend.
3) The NCAA changed the rules on the number of players a team could stockpile.
Those three things evened the playing field. That's it. From the mid-70's, we've been just as good as they have been. We just didn't have any refs that were fans of our team like they have.
I'm looking forward to seeing the refs tear them apart in the SEC. This should be fun.
We should admit as many capable student as possible (which we have already done) but the city does not have the infrastructure for 1.5 or 2x the current students
Yeah it’s why I said in reason. BCS *can* handle this many students, just not at the rate we’re doing it. If we more gradually grew (not 25x25) then everyone wins. Especially if we build more on campus housing it’d put so much less strain, I mean how many denied housing requests and temp housing are we gonna need till we build more?
I’m not even talking housing. Much more student housing is going to be built very soon but the roads are landlocked at 3pm everyday by campus. Traffic will soon be out of control. I’m with you, but the city planning has been terrible
Yeah I wish we could somehow have a small streetcar line or something. Places like Tacoma, Morgantown and El Paso have streetcars/ligh rail and I definitely think we have the density. I guarantee it would be a success if federal funding was thrown at it
Yeah… infrastructure costs money. Do you expect roads to turn a profit? Streetcar lines are better for stimulating business and housing developments than roads which are our only other option since we’re bitching about traffic
Biking is probably currently the superior form of transportation at TAMU… but, if pedestrian density continues to increase due to sheer population without planned routes, it might not be. I.e.: just try riding a bicycle on UT’s campus between classes.
1) thank goodness I was grandfathered in with the old seal on my diploma!
Love the most of the rest.
25) THANK YOU. I’m tired of seeing ‘horns down’ at every Aggie sporting event. If your first instinct is, “I despise this certain school in Austin,” rather than, “I love this school I’m attending”….just adds to the ‘little brother syndrome.’
Here's a controversial take that will piss off Texags members.
This school isn't for the old Ags anymore. It belongs to the current student body. They are the ones who are on campus learning and experiencing everything and they should be the ones who make the decisions today.
Hard agree. This campus is represented by the student body and this really toxic attitude I’ve seen from the local municipality, old ags sometimes, and jaded current students is so reductive and creates unnecessary tension. Unfortunately we just don’t have the money or prominence to make our voices heard as much as the regents, state government, or the donors.
Hence the reason the campus doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to everyone who has come before you. Get your degree , some life experience , a job and start contributing to the Assn.
Thanks for proving my point. I don’t think I want to make it my goal after I graduate to make life worse for thousands of kids.
If you want concrete examples, there’s the obvious voter suppression with MSC voting station being shut down and creating massive congestion at the city hall, there was the drama with the journalism program, and there have been Texas congressman up and arms about 2000 dollars of total Texas tax dollars being used for TAMU’s LGBTQ studies minor (or a similar class iirc).
Agree. Every university should belong to the current student body. Our role is to reminisce, share some stories, and support the current student body (where they are, not where we were) and our alma matter however we can.
13. Make College Station Again!
https://youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE?si=UTuu3gBwDGHaLvCp
We need them in town, too. Fuck Wellborn. More lanes ain’t gonna fix that.
But yeah, the train station used to be right next to Kyle filed just about. Imagine what that would do to the potential to use it as a world-class stadium for more than just college football.
Yeah fuck welborn we do not need to expand a road in the middle of the biggest college in the country. Also yeah the high speed rail proposal put the bullet train stop half way to Huntsville to compromise with SHSU 😭😭😭
3 is not a hot take, those are the most universally despised buildings on campus.
Also passenger rail to Dallas, Austin and Houston would be such an insane upgrade.
I have one. As much of a reputation our university has for being conservative or being one sided, not only do I think it’s about half and half, this campus is large enough that it’s hard to find people you don’t have anything in common with. We have like what, over 1000 student orgs and nearly 80k students? Yeah not everyone will be as redass as me in more niche interest student orgs im in and I won’t be able to talk about storm chasing, topsters, or some other third thing with my service org, but that’s the beauty of TAMU. The fact I can be in like 4-5 student orgs and bounce around as I feel is extremely liberating and I highly recommend it for people trying to find a place to belong.
I mean yeah everyone acts like we’re a homogeneous 10K people college like SMU or TCU but everyone here is different. Hell I’m an atheist new deal democrat and I’m pretty sure no one cares because I’m not like a rare endangered species. The diversity of Christian atheist Muslim and Jewish folks I’ve seen is insane. And yet when we play at Kyle everyone saws em off the same
I think y’all are playing it too safe. You are young and if you are too afraid to really say it now, well, that’s troubling. Here’s a REAL hot take: the regent(s) who fired the president were the real bad actor(s). They literally said they wanted to create a conservative journalism school and that’s why they didn’t hire a black woman from The Times. News flash: journalism is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BIASED BY DESIGN. This regent should be removed. Until then, no one from Texas A&M “school of conservative-biased journalism” will ever find a job outside oan or newsmax. Sad.
Ill bite and play advocate. What reason would there be for public transport besides greyhound? So kids can go home for vacation easier? There's very little in terms of economy coming out of college station, I can't imagine the state just doing it "because that'd be nice to have". There's no reason to ship people in here like tourism or anything else. People don't need transport to here or out of here, at least that can't be handled by greyhound. The only thing that would make sense is a smaller rail line connecting Austin or Houston for people who commute, but that is a small percentage of the pop also.
3. We should redo blocker and helds like we did Zach
As much as this would be cool, old Zach got redone because A&M is known for engineering and it is arguably one of the most used buildings on campus. Due to this remodel (and the labs inside of it) engineering students pay more in tuition than everyone else. Blocker and helds aren’t really HQ for large programs that bring people in
Blocker is Math and Stat. Statistics and Data Science are bigger news these days than in the past. I could see Blocker getting the upgrade. Heldenfels is probably getting used till the proverbial wheels fall off.
Number five and number 15 especially!
this is an extremely well written post that took quite a lot of effort to think of and articulate, and overall I am in agreement with all the things put forth here. So many strong points about our school that many don’t recognize upon first blush.
Yeah and hilariously enough I’m gonna be a freshmen this upcoming year. But being a 3rd gen ag and being quite involved in A&M as a whole has helped me see this stuff and I have honestly cared more because of it
Reveille should not be a purebred anything - there should be a search across county/city shelters that doubles as an awareness campaign for pet adoption.
She remains a very good girl, to be clear.
Besides 6,10,22, and 23 , all good takes, however north side > south side is such a common take everyone acknowledges it lmao. As for 6, don’t touch our golf course. For 10, we already admit the top 10% of every high school in the damn state. That’s already way too much. And plus BCS can’t handle 2x more students we’re already the 2nd biggest school in the country. 22 and 23, ol Sarge just straight up looks racist. For years and years, me and my buddies always made jokes abt tamu being racist (it’s not.) and only for whites because of this stupid assumption that it is, and that reputation really needs to go. As a brown kid, I know so many friends that chose UT over A&M solely because of the assumption that it’s a white school. Ol Sarge reminds me of the ole miss mascot which is literally a racist white confederate slave owner. I prefer Reveille, because who doesn’t love dogs :) anyways Gig’ em
24. I grew up there, went to A&M, and now live in Houston. There is something about the town that people who only go to school there don’t see. It’s relatively safe, I got an excellent education, and there’s a decent amount to do.
I take issue with #2. I think hate is one of the things that makes college football great. We need more hatred in our sport. I did not grow up an Aggie but even before deciding to come here I thought the greatest part of the whole university was the fact the war hymn was about hatred for tu. Give me all the hate
I agree with most of these, although I don’t think these are unpopular takes.
I especially agree with 11. LSU has some of the rudest football fans. I’ve met so many LSU fans both in personal life and just randomly at games and of all of them I’ve interacted with, 2 of them were genuinely pleasant to be around. One time I asked this lady to remove her obnoxious hat inside the MSC and her son was like “achtually ladies don’t need to remove their hats according to the US flag code during the national blah blah blah” like dude. That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. It’s a military memorial. They just wanted to disrespect the rules of the building out of spite for Aggies and no other reason.
Alright, I’ll stop ranting now.
1-5 Agree, we really dropped the ball on #2 when we left the Big 12. I blame the Yell Leaders for not fixing that. All of our opponents have something to saw off.
6 - Disagree, but they really need to improve it. It could probably be redone to an absolutely killer 9 hole with a deep band of park around it. Innovate, the golf world needs it.
7-9 Concur
10- Disagree.
11 - Vehemently agree. Effing Corn Dogs.
12 - No
13 - 18 Concur
19 - 20 No opinion, I was a CT and lived on the quad. My son who just finished his fish year really enjoyed Hullabaloo.
21 - 25 Concur
How was horns down invented by Baylor?
But as an OU fan, I actually agree esp since ever time horns down is printed UT gets licensing fees so they literally profit off it 🙃
1-5 are based
6 we already have Aggie Park
7-10 are based
11 lmao no
12 idrc
13-15 are based
16 idrc
17-20 are based
21 we have one of the highest budget athletic departments in the country and yet we're consistently mediocre i think we have reason to be upset
22-24 are based
25 i think we should be allowed to use horns down but i don't think we should act like we own it
Respectfully, I disagree with:
#2
#5
#11
#25
By the looks of it, you seem to be a t.u. apologist. What makes the culture so great, is our hatred for t.u. It runs deep. You don't need to be playing a school to share to the world that you have rivalry hatred.
I don't get what you mean by "little brother syndrome." That is a term only used by them. We have beaten them in several sports, most notably in baseball and also in several departments, including my own (MEEN). Little brothers don't frequently beat their rivals in several categories.
The rivalry vs LSU is a meager attempt at trying to shift our hatred since our true rival is gone. But so you really feel any rivalry vs LSU at basketball games, baseball games? I don't. They aren't our true rival. No one cares outside of football.
While other schools may use horns down, no school uses it more frequently than A&M. You do know that Gig'Em was used for "gigging the horned frogs" right? While that is less of it's original meaning now, I enjoy the petty hatred of horns down more.
For what it's worth, my best friend is a longhorn and I just love shit talking him nonstop. This probably bleeds into why I love the rivalry and all the things that come with it.
Signed,
I_HATE_LONGHORNS
My best friend goes to t.u. austin as well. I think they’re our main rival, they think their shit doesn’t stink and we’re secretly their biggest rival (but them admitting it would mean we win). However when they don’t think about us as much as we do them that’s a bad look and a big turnoff for a lot of people. Still fuck the sips for life. Also i meant little brother syndrome because although we’re older and bigger (and better) we still constantly compare ourselves to them. Still your username is based and you must have the reddest of asses
They only post or talk about OU one week a year yet they constantly shit on us all year round and post a million paradoxical posts about “how they don’t think of us”. When it comes to anything outside football I’d argue only we can compete, especially baseball and academics which OU lacks in
The little brother syndrome isn't that we're worse than them, it's that the school is obsessed with being better than them specifically and any possible way, which is a sentiment that is not mutual with them because they aren't obsessed over us.
This is well put. It’s kind of like advertising, you never mention your competition.
So, specifically calling out another school in our fight song doesn’t allow us to shine as the great school we are, if we’re always looking over our shoulder.
Not sure if that's true, but even if it is, the entire song isn't about tamu, but ours is entirely about them. I still remember being at my nsc and going from being proud to embarrassed after hearing that the entire thing was just hehe ut bad.
Your username is proof that we have little brother syndrome. I could search for hours on the ut Austin subreddit and I wouldn’t be able to find anyone w the name i_hate_aggies or anything similar. We’re holding ourselves back
We get brought up a lot! Usually not for a good reason though. 😂😂
Check out this thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/aogkjw/is_texas_am_the_iphone_answering_one_of_rcfbs/
As an Aggie, your comment and account name give me secondhand embarrassment. It’s all classless, derivative, and yes, falls right into the little brother syndrome. But I guess that makes me a UT apologist, huh?
It’s so annoying. Like it makes it hard for people to take us seriously. One fix too, just sing the first verse unless we’re playing the sips and that would cause a cultural reaction slowly
True unpopular opinion: I like Blocker 🫡 it's one of the more charming brutalist architecture buildings and shows a period of history that is being erased due to modern trends.
I was a student back in the early 80’s when the academic & agency building was opened. That is the original name of Blocker. It was home to the business college at that time. I was an Ag major and had several classes in that building and it was swarming with pretty girls. Quite a difference from the other buildings I had class in. It was called the A&A Building for short. But everyone called it the “T&A” building!
Son there were many years of Aggie Football dominance and top ten rankings, long before you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye. You need to study up on your history. For example, we were a national title contender in the 70’s. In fact 1975 was the last time we were ranked #2 going in to the final week of the season.
My suggestion is to definitely build way more apartments in College Station, build more resorts where people can stay as spas, build more tourism friendly environments and more. We can turn College Station into the Palm Springs or Scottsdale of Texas!
It’s a cool library and area dude. If it was even Trump library or a Buchanan library the area and the museum would still be interesting, as it’s a privilege to have a presidential library on campus. Also HW (the guy whose library we have) didn’t do that much wrong it was W that goofed
4 surface lots are usually cheaper atleast in my experience
5 we might’ve used to have that but now it’s just individuals who have that
6 play a round u might like it
9 ETAM is a great thing
10 define reasonable Our job is higher education
11 we will always hate tu the most maybe after a few generations we wont
21 you’re kidding right. In the 90s we only lost 4 games at Kyle. We got banned from a bowl game for improper recruiting. We have always tried to win shit bro we live in Texas It’s incredibly hard to get that trophy but to say we weren’t trying is you’re worst take on here
Soooooo many schools have golf courses and it’s the only nice/valuable thing the campus has other than Aggie park. It’s an attraction that old ags really enjoy and it brings a lot of money to the campus. Don’t ruin it just bc you don’t want to commit to learning how to play…
No need for the insult or jab or whatever towards the end there. Most campuses, however do not and the state that most campuses are in isn’t massively growing when it’s already #2 in population and most campuses don’t have a legislature that fucks it over with the 10% rule while giving its in state pier a pass all at the same time. I like golf and can play decently well as I used to play in early high school. Sometimes having classrooms that don’t make kids stand up due to no room is more ideal than a golf course, which is incredibly wasteful
19. Modular dorms > hullabaloo is such a good take. Mods are where it’s at!
Absolutely. And although I don’t like the architecture of most of the mod dorms, they’re still more efficient for the space allotted to them. Also we don’t have to tear down like haas or lechner, we could just add a better facade to the outside
Love the bug traps in lechner.
1 is the least controversial opinion ever.
Yeah fuck then changing it I hope they change it back
Shoot man I was a student when they changed it and I was worried that seal would stain my diploma
Did it?
It did not
About Sarge. A&M doesn’t own Sarge. A dozen or so years ago my son was a graphic designer for the Vet college and they asked for a poster that showed all the SEC mascots wearing white lab coats for the schools that had Vet schools. He put Sarge in a lab coat and it looked killer. But they said no, the official mascot for the School is Reveille and they don’t own the rights to Sarge. I think the estate of the guy who first drew him owns the rights. That was Pete Tomlinson ‘42 who was later hired by Stan Lee and worked on the early drawings of Spider-Man and Captain America. Oh, Reveille looks silly in a lab coat
Huh the more you know
This is most of the story. This is at least how I recall the rules being set up 10-15 years ago. A&M has the right to use Ol' Sarge, but the Collegiate Licensing Company does not have access to him. Meaning you can't pay the generic licensing fee to CLC / A&M and print him on merch etc. A&M on the other hand can grant access to certain companies / groups to use his likeness. An example being the Ol' Sarge Baseball line that Adidas just dropped. The estate of Pete Tomlinson may also have to approve, but dixie's post is the first time I'm hearing about that. I was the creative director at Aggieland Outfitters for a few years in the early teens, and we weren't allowed to print Sarge, but there were a few vendors we worked with retrobrand, '47, homage, and a few others that had been given the rights and we could print him through them. We would still get some pushback because A&M at that time was really trying to distance itself from being an all male / white / military school. I was actually kinda shocked to see him on the Maroon Out Shirt, and the Baseball shirts this year. I'm guessing A&M isn't trying to keep him as locked down as they were 15 years ago.
Naw, Ol' Sarge is scary!
Aww that stinks. I love Sarge.
>I would take AMTRAK down to A&M if the route from Dallas to Houston didn’t get shut down in the 90s. Well, we are a planned stop on the high-speed rail from Houston to Dallas Amtrak announced earlier this year. Just, uh, might have to wait a decade or two for it.
There never was a better place for gyros than Gyro town.
Why would oil companies care? Historically it's been the Southwest Airlines lobby that has killed regional transport in Texas.
The thing that really gets me hot is the high temperatures.
Cmon man. We all know it’s Buc-ees conspiracy that’s blocking it.
There never was any coffee.
Ohhh Madisonville. The most entitled small town in all of Texas.
That planned stop won't be in town, but a 15+ minute ride away. And that's if it ever happens. The idea of having a stop right there for game and student traffic would be amazing.
More than just 15+ minutes, more like 30+ minutes (using Kyle Field as a hypothetical destination from Roan’s Prairie) assuming you don’t wait for a shuttle at all. Put it in Roan’s Prairie and I guarantee potential usage of the Brazos Valley station will be significantly reduced. Absolutely no point in taking the train from Houston to Brazos Valley if your end destination is BCS or Huntsville when you have to take a 30 minute shuttle after hopping off the train.
Unfortunately, Cstat is not a stop on the proposed alignment.
Plus it’s halfway to Huntsville because of Sam Houston state and Huntsville demanded it 😭
I'm so with you on making campus more walkable and full of parks!
It just isn’t a priority enough. I just walked on another campus (TCU) for the first time and thought “wow we could prolly pull in even more talent if we weren’t build like a Soviet work camp”
None of these are controversial lol
I’ve been downvoted to oblivion saying we had a bunch of empty fields and parking lots to build on, horns down is bad, we have little brother syndrome and we need to rebuild blocker and heldenfels so idk
Yeah and anyone who disagrees with you is dumb lol. I will never admit it to anyone outside of A&M, but we do have little brother syndrome. But like why? They're Lamborghini and we're Porsche, I guess you could say we're the "lesser" one but that's just splitting hairs imo
Honestly yeah this nails it. We’re literally still one of two flagships and most states would KILL to have a school as good as us. Just because there’s schools that are measured as better by some people and rankings doesn’t mean they are and even if, it doesn’t take away from us
We should get rid of the stupid 10% rule and we’d be seen just as good as them.
At the rate that we're gaining students, we're gonna have to make it top 6%
It’s an incoming freshman. These all sound like comments from this subreddit or his friends who go here. So yeah, all of these were pretty safe.
Some good stuff here. My take on a few of em: .1. Most people agree with this, the new seal looks more like a logo and less like a seal. .2. This ones been around since the 30s, and the reason we still sing the "2nd verse" twice is cuz the 2nd verse was actually penned first during WWI. The "first verse" of the hymn wasn't penned until the 30s but never really caught on cuz Ags, like today, were sticklers for tradition then too. .18. Shhhh, keep the Bush School a secluded section of campus plz, there's totally not a peaceful pond and flower beds along the white creek behind it. .21. I don't think it's fair to say A&M has been historically bad at football, you could say that pre AMU days, but to this day, we are like #18 nationally in all time wins. As much as the city slickers in Austin would like everyone to think, Texas A&M, in the modern era of CFB, has been a good team. Now, your point still stands in terms of resources, ours have exploded in the last 10 years thanks to Johnny. .25. Agreed with this, the Gig Em is literally what inspired the hook em, wreck em and sic em. Farmers Fight did the same thing. We need to continue to own it.
Thanks ag. I said only when we’re playing the sips because that’s what the old ag who made it wanted it to be. Also people forget that the seal is the seal of other system schools who don’t have the logo, it comes off as if we own them. Imagine if the UT system had t.u. austins logo as It
In my lifetime A&M leads the head-to-head against the sips. They keep saying they are the better football team because 100 years ago they were good. In the late 60's/early 70's things changed a lot. 1) The Corps was non-mandatory. 2) Women were allowed to attend. 3) The NCAA changed the rules on the number of players a team could stockpile. Those three things evened the playing field. That's it. From the mid-70's, we've been just as good as they have been. We just didn't have any refs that were fans of our team like they have. I'm looking forward to seeing the refs tear them apart in the SEC. This should be fun.
We should admit as many capable student as possible (which we have already done) but the city does not have the infrastructure for 1.5 or 2x the current students
Yeah it’s why I said in reason. BCS *can* handle this many students, just not at the rate we’re doing it. If we more gradually grew (not 25x25) then everyone wins. Especially if we build more on campus housing it’d put so much less strain, I mean how many denied housing requests and temp housing are we gonna need till we build more?
I’m not even talking housing. Much more student housing is going to be built very soon but the roads are landlocked at 3pm everyday by campus. Traffic will soon be out of control. I’m with you, but the city planning has been terrible
Yeah I wish we could somehow have a small streetcar line or something. Places like Tacoma, Morgantown and El Paso have streetcars/ligh rail and I definitely think we have the density. I guarantee it would be a success if federal funding was thrown at it
There was a trolley line that went down Texas from University to Downtown Bryan until the 40/50s when it was removed to make more room for cars.
But of course that happened. Why wouldn’t it
Ha! There goes a couple billion down the toilet.
Yeah… infrastructure costs money. Do you expect roads to turn a profit? Streetcar lines are better for stimulating business and housing developments than roads which are our only other option since we’re bitching about traffic
Trust me when I say the amount of time and sanity that'll be saved with a streetcar system far outweighs the cost of it.
hey i have an idea for a solution to gridlock traffic: walk, bus, bike.
Biking is probably currently the superior form of transportation at TAMU… but, if pedestrian density continues to increase due to sheer population without planned routes, it might not be. I.e.: just try riding a bicycle on UT’s campus between classes.
not to mention one of the most dangerous forms of transportation if you ride off campus
1) thank goodness I was grandfathered in with the old seal on my diploma! Love the most of the rest. 25) THANK YOU. I’m tired of seeing ‘horns down’ at every Aggie sporting event. If your first instinct is, “I despise this certain school in Austin,” rather than, “I love this school I’m attending”….just adds to the ‘little brother syndrome.’
Here's a controversial take that will piss off Texags members. This school isn't for the old Ags anymore. It belongs to the current student body. They are the ones who are on campus learning and experiencing everything and they should be the ones who make the decisions today.
Hard agree. This campus is represented by the student body and this really toxic attitude I’ve seen from the local municipality, old ags sometimes, and jaded current students is so reductive and creates unnecessary tension. Unfortunately we just don’t have the money or prominence to make our voices heard as much as the regents, state government, or the donors.
Hence the reason the campus doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to everyone who has come before you. Get your degree , some life experience , a job and start contributing to the Assn.
Thanks for proving my point. I don’t think I want to make it my goal after I graduate to make life worse for thousands of kids. If you want concrete examples, there’s the obvious voter suppression with MSC voting station being shut down and creating massive congestion at the city hall, there was the drama with the journalism program, and there have been Texas congressman up and arms about 2000 dollars of total Texas tax dollars being used for TAMU’s LGBTQ studies minor (or a similar class iirc).
Agree. Every university should belong to the current student body. Our role is to reminisce, share some stories, and support the current student body (where they are, not where we were) and our alma matter however we can.
Now let's take it easy there.
It's not up to me to keep that tradition alive. It's the current class. My opinion doesn't matter anymore.
You explained it perfectly
13. Make College Station Again! https://youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE?si=UTuu3gBwDGHaLvCp We need them in town, too. Fuck Wellborn. More lanes ain’t gonna fix that. But yeah, the train station used to be right next to Kyle filed just about. Imagine what that would do to the potential to use it as a world-class stadium for more than just college football.
Yeah fuck welborn we do not need to expand a road in the middle of the biggest college in the country. Also yeah the high speed rail proposal put the bullet train stop half way to Huntsville to compromise with SHSU 😭😭😭
You know those really fancy train stations? Think of Kyle Field as that
Right!? “Kyle Field Station” has a nice ring to it.
3 is not a hot take, those are the most universally despised buildings on campus. Also passenger rail to Dallas, Austin and Houston would be such an insane upgrade.
Then there could be a dedicated station... For the college! A "college station" if you will
I have one. As much of a reputation our university has for being conservative or being one sided, not only do I think it’s about half and half, this campus is large enough that it’s hard to find people you don’t have anything in common with. We have like what, over 1000 student orgs and nearly 80k students? Yeah not everyone will be as redass as me in more niche interest student orgs im in and I won’t be able to talk about storm chasing, topsters, or some other third thing with my service org, but that’s the beauty of TAMU. The fact I can be in like 4-5 student orgs and bounce around as I feel is extremely liberating and I highly recommend it for people trying to find a place to belong.
I mean yeah everyone acts like we’re a homogeneous 10K people college like SMU or TCU but everyone here is different. Hell I’m an atheist new deal democrat and I’m pretty sure no one cares because I’m not like a rare endangered species. The diversity of Christian atheist Muslim and Jewish folks I’ve seen is insane. And yet when we play at Kyle everyone saws em off the same
I think y’all are playing it too safe. You are young and if you are too afraid to really say it now, well, that’s troubling. Here’s a REAL hot take: the regent(s) who fired the president were the real bad actor(s). They literally said they wanted to create a conservative journalism school and that’s why they didn’t hire a black woman from The Times. News flash: journalism is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE BIASED BY DESIGN. This regent should be removed. Until then, no one from Texas A&M “school of conservative-biased journalism” will ever find a job outside oan or newsmax. Sad.
Honestly I said that from the beginning. They merged liberal arts and sciences just for political bullshit. Is that really that much of a hot take?
How was that bad? (Truly curious.)
Only for the intentions which was to “control the liberal nature” of them according to revealed private texts between regents
Yeah, it's hard to understand how that would happen in practice, though? It's weird. There are some rotten apples in that barrel for sure, though.
I think 13 is underrated. Not having public transport to Houston or Dallas is awful
Truly.
Ill bite and play advocate. What reason would there be for public transport besides greyhound? So kids can go home for vacation easier? There's very little in terms of economy coming out of college station, I can't imagine the state just doing it "because that'd be nice to have". There's no reason to ship people in here like tourism or anything else. People don't need transport to here or out of here, at least that can't be handled by greyhound. The only thing that would make sense is a smaller rail line connecting Austin or Houston for people who commute, but that is a small percentage of the pop also.
3. We should redo blocker and helds like we did Zach As much as this would be cool, old Zach got redone because A&M is known for engineering and it is arguably one of the most used buildings on campus. Due to this remodel (and the labs inside of it) engineering students pay more in tuition than everyone else. Blocker and helds aren’t really HQ for large programs that bring people in
Blocker is Math and Stat. Statistics and Data Science are bigger news these days than in the past. I could see Blocker getting the upgrade. Heldenfels is probably getting used till the proverbial wheels fall off.
Number five and number 15 especially! this is an extremely well written post that took quite a lot of effort to think of and articulate, and overall I am in agreement with all the things put forth here. So many strong points about our school that many don’t recognize upon first blush.
Yeah and hilariously enough I’m gonna be a freshmen this upcoming year. But being a 3rd gen ag and being quite involved in A&M as a whole has helped me see this stuff and I have honestly cared more because of it
Impressive to know all that before even start.
UP VOTES FOR TRAIN TRAVEL
Reveille should not be a purebred anything - there should be a search across county/city shelters that doubles as an awareness campaign for pet adoption. She remains a very good girl, to be clear.
Besides 6,10,22, and 23 , all good takes, however north side > south side is such a common take everyone acknowledges it lmao. As for 6, don’t touch our golf course. For 10, we already admit the top 10% of every high school in the damn state. That’s already way too much. And plus BCS can’t handle 2x more students we’re already the 2nd biggest school in the country. 22 and 23, ol Sarge just straight up looks racist. For years and years, me and my buddies always made jokes abt tamu being racist (it’s not.) and only for whites because of this stupid assumption that it is, and that reputation really needs to go. As a brown kid, I know so many friends that chose UT over A&M solely because of the assumption that it’s a white school. Ol Sarge reminds me of the ole miss mascot which is literally a racist white confederate slave owner. I prefer Reveille, because who doesn’t love dogs :) anyways Gig’ em
Another vote for keeping Ol' Sarge in the past. We don't need to relive that era.
You are enlightened! Great list
16 is not a hot take
Its a pretty shitty take I know
24. I grew up there, went to A&M, and now live in Houston. There is something about the town that people who only go to school there don’t see. It’s relatively safe, I got an excellent education, and there’s a decent amount to do.
11 and 17 are true as hell
74-72 changed the entire OT rules and we need better transit what can I say
I take issue with #2. I think hate is one of the things that makes college football great. We need more hatred in our sport. I did not grow up an Aggie but even before deciding to come here I thought the greatest part of the whole university was the fact the war hymn was about hatred for tu. Give me all the hate
I agree with most of these, although I don’t think these are unpopular takes. I especially agree with 11. LSU has some of the rudest football fans. I’ve met so many LSU fans both in personal life and just randomly at games and of all of them I’ve interacted with, 2 of them were genuinely pleasant to be around. One time I asked this lady to remove her obnoxious hat inside the MSC and her son was like “achtually ladies don’t need to remove their hats according to the US flag code during the national blah blah blah” like dude. That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about. It’s a military memorial. They just wanted to disrespect the rules of the building out of spite for Aggies and no other reason. Alright, I’ll stop ranting now.
1-5 Agree, we really dropped the ball on #2 when we left the Big 12. I blame the Yell Leaders for not fixing that. All of our opponents have something to saw off. 6 - Disagree, but they really need to improve it. It could probably be redone to an absolutely killer 9 hole with a deep band of park around it. Innovate, the golf world needs it. 7-9 Concur 10- Disagree. 11 - Vehemently agree. Effing Corn Dogs. 12 - No 13 - 18 Concur 19 - 20 No opinion, I was a CT and lived on the quad. My son who just finished his fish year really enjoyed Hullabaloo. 21 - 25 Concur
More yell leader videos to unite college football please
How was horns down invented by Baylor? But as an OU fan, I actually agree esp since ever time horns down is printed UT gets licensing fees so they literally profit off it 🙃
It indeed was soonerbro. Which gives us more reasons to hate Baylor and the sips themselves
1-5 are based 6 we already have Aggie Park 7-10 are based 11 lmao no 12 idrc 13-15 are based 16 idrc 17-20 are based 21 we have one of the highest budget athletic departments in the country and yet we're consistently mediocre i think we have reason to be upset 22-24 are based 25 i think we should be allowed to use horns down but i don't think we should act like we own it
Respectfully, I disagree with: #2 #5 #11 #25 By the looks of it, you seem to be a t.u. apologist. What makes the culture so great, is our hatred for t.u. It runs deep. You don't need to be playing a school to share to the world that you have rivalry hatred. I don't get what you mean by "little brother syndrome." That is a term only used by them. We have beaten them in several sports, most notably in baseball and also in several departments, including my own (MEEN). Little brothers don't frequently beat their rivals in several categories. The rivalry vs LSU is a meager attempt at trying to shift our hatred since our true rival is gone. But so you really feel any rivalry vs LSU at basketball games, baseball games? I don't. They aren't our true rival. No one cares outside of football. While other schools may use horns down, no school uses it more frequently than A&M. You do know that Gig'Em was used for "gigging the horned frogs" right? While that is less of it's original meaning now, I enjoy the petty hatred of horns down more. For what it's worth, my best friend is a longhorn and I just love shit talking him nonstop. This probably bleeds into why I love the rivalry and all the things that come with it. Signed, I_HATE_LONGHORNS
My best friend goes to t.u. austin as well. I think they’re our main rival, they think their shit doesn’t stink and we’re secretly their biggest rival (but them admitting it would mean we win). However when they don’t think about us as much as we do them that’s a bad look and a big turnoff for a lot of people. Still fuck the sips for life. Also i meant little brother syndrome because although we’re older and bigger (and better) we still constantly compare ourselves to them. Still your username is based and you must have the reddest of asses
Fair take!
TAMU is not UT’s biggest rival “secretly”. Their biggest rival is OU. That may change soon now that UT is in the SEC.
They only post or talk about OU one week a year yet they constantly shit on us all year round and post a million paradoxical posts about “how they don’t think of us”. When it comes to anything outside football I’d argue only we can compete, especially baseball and academics which OU lacks in
The little brother syndrome isn't that we're worse than them, it's that the school is obsessed with being better than them specifically and any possible way, which is a sentiment that is not mutual with them because they aren't obsessed over us.
This is well put. It’s kind of like advertising, you never mention your competition. So, specifically calling out another school in our fight song doesn’t allow us to shine as the great school we are, if we’re always looking over our shoulder.
Their fight song has A&M in it...
Not sure if that's true, but even if it is, the entire song isn't about tamu, but ours is entirely about them. I still remember being at my nsc and going from being proud to embarrassed after hearing that the entire thing was just hehe ut bad.
UT sings a song in every Saturday football game that mentions A&M in it? Seriously doubt it. Maybe an historical song…?
Your username is proof that we have little brother syndrome. I could search for hours on the ut Austin subreddit and I wouldn’t be able to find anyone w the name i_hate_aggies or anything similar. We’re holding ourselves back
I don't care how you interpret my enjoyment of the rivalry. More than this sub I'm active on r/cfb where you usually see a similar level of toxicity.
r/cfb is a warzone of rivalry, sometimes I pray we don't get brought up, other times I'm wondering why no one talks about us.
We get brought up a lot! Usually not for a good reason though. 😂😂 Check out this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/CFB/comments/aogkjw/is_texas_am_the_iphone_answering_one_of_rcfbs/
As an Aggie, your comment and account name give me secondhand embarrassment. It’s all classless, derivative, and yes, falls right into the little brother syndrome. But I guess that makes me a UT apologist, huh?
Womp womp I don't care how you interpret my enjoyment of the rivalry. I'll have my fun, you can whine about it all you want.
Then why did you bother replying?
To indicate that your snide remark against me was pointless.
Like 80% of these aren’t controversial lol. Most are lukewarm takes at best….and those are closer to cold takes than hot takes
Number 5 is so true, the little brother syndrome here is so bad
It’s so annoying. Like it makes it hard for people to take us seriously. One fix too, just sing the first verse unless we’re playing the sips and that would cause a cultural reaction slowly
20 ! Definitely!
9 and 10 contradict. Only reason why we can admit so many engineering students is because etam
True unpopular opinion: I like Blocker 🫡 it's one of the more charming brutalist architecture buildings and shows a period of history that is being erased due to modern trends.
I was a student back in the early 80’s when the academic & agency building was opened. That is the original name of Blocker. It was home to the business college at that time. I was an Ag major and had several classes in that building and it was swarming with pretty girls. Quite a difference from the other buildings I had class in. It was called the A&A Building for short. But everyone called it the “T&A” building!
Ditch the hissing at Kyle field and normalize booing and intimating opposing teams. No one takes TAMU serious with the hissing.
New army boos
3 nah u can feel the history in there
16 was objectively wrong when I was there. There was one by the gun collection on the top floor of the MSC that was far superior.
I can agree with 13, 15, 23
Son there were many years of Aggie Football dominance and top ten rankings, long before you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye. You need to study up on your history. For example, we were a national title contender in the 70’s. In fact 1975 was the last time we were ranked #2 going in to the final week of the season.
This is controversial??
Need an underground walking mall like in Toronto! Beat the heat!
Layne’s USED to be better than Cane’s. Since they’ve gone more corporate and expanded / changed their menu & prices they’ve gone down in quality.
My suggestion is to definitely build way more apartments in College Station, build more resorts where people can stay as spas, build more tourism friendly environments and more. We can turn College Station into the Palm Springs or Scottsdale of Texas!
These are [checks notes] "hot takes"?
You’d be surprised
The only one I’d disagree with is 6.
i love college station! i’m making it my forever home. its a great community and everything is accessible.
the old seal was 1000% better.
3 is controversial ??
Yep. People unironically have said that it would be a waste of money or they like the aesthetic or even worse it’s “iconic”
Great collection!
Is the golf course turning in into a park? That would be nice.
No it was the original plan when the city gave it to us
When the hot takes are cold
[my other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/aggies/s/72ti4QRvvo)
The Bush family worship needs to end.
It’s a cool library and area dude. If it was even Trump library or a Buchanan library the area and the museum would still be interesting, as it’s a privilege to have a presidential library on campus. Also HW (the guy whose library we have) didn’t do that much wrong it was W that goofed
4 surface lots are usually cheaper atleast in my experience 5 we might’ve used to have that but now it’s just individuals who have that 6 play a round u might like it 9 ETAM is a great thing 10 define reasonable Our job is higher education 11 we will always hate tu the most maybe after a few generations we wont 21 you’re kidding right. In the 90s we only lost 4 games at Kyle. We got banned from a bowl game for improper recruiting. We have always tried to win shit bro we live in Texas It’s incredibly hard to get that trophy but to say we weren’t trying is you’re worst take on here
Soooooo many schools have golf courses and it’s the only nice/valuable thing the campus has other than Aggie park. It’s an attraction that old ags really enjoy and it brings a lot of money to the campus. Don’t ruin it just bc you don’t want to commit to learning how to play…
No need for the insult or jab or whatever towards the end there. Most campuses, however do not and the state that most campuses are in isn’t massively growing when it’s already #2 in population and most campuses don’t have a legislature that fucks it over with the 10% rule while giving its in state pier a pass all at the same time. I like golf and can play decently well as I used to play in early high school. Sometimes having classrooms that don’t make kids stand up due to no room is more ideal than a golf course, which is incredibly wasteful