I'm not sure where the zoo falls on Stewart Mandel. I know they generally hate all national writers so I will assume the feelings about him are negative. This entry from his latest mailbag won't help:

If you released a new edition of your book this year, what teams would qualify for the "Ole Miss/Clemson Syndrome?" I feel like Clemson has turned a more permanent corner and Ole Miss fans have become fairly realistic about their current place in the CFB landscape.
Darren G., Naples, Fla.
That thing has gone through several different incarnations. Originally it was "Auburn/Clemson Syndrome," but Auburn went undefeated in 2004, so I could no longer consider their fans' expectations to be delusional. So then it became Ole Miss/Clemson Syndrome. But even long before Dabo Swinney's ascendence, I took Clemson out of the name just for keeping perennial 7-5 coach Tommy Bowden around for as long as it did. That took some serious patience.
So then it became Ole Miss/Texas A&M Syndrome, and I pretty much forgot about the whole concept for the past five to seven years.
Today, I think we can all agree that just saying "Texas A&M" out loud sufficiently encapsulates the whole delusions of grandeur thing in college football.

well.....to be fair, the proof has to be in the pudding. Win 10 year in and year out and shut his dumb ass up.

Darren G. from Naples, FL does not exist.

I think from reading him in the past is that his argument and description of the "Syndrome" is that we consider ourselves a national power when we don't really have the history to back it up. Hopefully Jimbo will do that (and Mandel has been positive about the hiring) but historically a typical Aggie year is 8-5 and we seem to think it is 11-2 or 12-1. Can't wait for it to change to "Sips Syndrome" as they continue to get ranked in the pre-season and struggle to finish .500.

Click bait. Nothing more.

Given the fact that he keeps having to change the name, it seems like this is more indicative that keeping high expectations eventually pays off. The message I'm hearing is to keep your expectations high because if you stay at it you can break through. The CFB landscape isn't as crystallized as people think it is.

Didn't Clemson win a Natty in the 1980s?

What kind of crap is this?

What a *****.

I'm 43. The older I get, the more I realize that national sports guys, whether it be radio, print, or TV are pretty much worthless. They got to their platforms because of their ability to get eyeballs/ears. They do that by riling people up one way or the other, not because of their superior sports knowledge/writing/casting ability. You simply cannot be a national guy and do your homework well enough to have anything more than a "drive by" opinion.

Tl;Dr version: national sports guys are almost all trolls.

I realize that few do "everybody hates us" whining better than this board but he's right. Nobody underperforms like we do. Look at all the resources we have and then look at the record over the last 10 years. It's not even arguable.

FWIW, in one of his mailbags from 10 years ago or so, someone asked him who he would list as his sleeping giant in college football. He named us. It's not his fault that we haven't lived up to it.

Beer Knurd said:

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I realize that few do "everybody hates us" whining better than this board but he's right. Nobody underperforms like we do. Look at all the resources we have and then look at the record over the last 10 years. It's not even arguable.

FWIW, in one of his mailbags from 10 years ago or so, someone asked him who he would list as his sleeping giant in college football. He named us. It's not his fault that we haven't lived up to it.

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That's the point. Not living up to expectations and having delusions of grandeur are two very, very different things. He can't have it both ways.

Exactly. I think his opinion is that we all think we're supposed to be rolling in championship trophies. Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe a few incurable pumpers in the bunch. But I don't think too many are harsher critics of the state of A&M football than the Zoo. The term "battered Aggie syndrome" stems from a VERY real place.........

So he just simply says this school or that school has this "syndrome", then when they win he replaces them with another school. Is it wrong to want the team you root for to win a championship. I never understood why it is delusional to want your team to win, no matter the sport. Isn't that what fans do? Should New England Patriots fans from 30 years ago not wished for a winning team. They were a perennial loser. Their fans should have been happy with that until the end of time? I don't get his point.
He sounds like an arrogant sip.

Sounds like the dude is talking out of both sides of his mouth...and why sould that surprise us?

This guy never changes. I remember him getting all butthurt about A&M rising above our station back when we decided consecutive records of 8-4, 7-5, 8-4, 6-6 weren't good enough for us and we fired Slocum. And then he got butthurt about us rising above our station in hiring Franchione away from Bama, showing that loyalty is dead, money is everything, and blah blah.

That was back in 2002. I never read his crap articles since then.

NewOldAg said:

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Given the fact that he keeps having to change the name, it seems like this is more indicative that keeping high expectations eventually pays off. The message I'm hearing is to keep your expectations high because if you stay at it you can break through. The CFB landscape isn't as crystallized as people think it is.

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If anything it's like he's saying we're the next auburn or Clemson lol

at this point we should be completely unfased by this. they write it cause we keep clicking it

WGAF?

Jimbo's hiring is the first time I've felt since Jackie that we actually selected a coach with due diligence. (I believe Bear Bryant may have even had a minor role.) Even RC's hiring was under duress.

A&M has had all of the tools for more than a generation to be at the top, and the move to the SEC delinked our fate from the Longhorns.

This one looks on the surface like the same "pick one target and hire him" kind of coaching search we always do, but the difference is Woodward is clearly a guy who evaluates his coaches in detail and a practitioner of MBWA.

He does all of his due diligence ahead of time (think Petersen's hiring at UW) and he sat through all of Jimbo's coaching meetings when they were at LSU, so he knew exactly what he was getting.

Coaching has been the missing piece at A&M. People forget that FSU was nothing until Bowden got there, and Oregon, Boise State, etc. have no inherent advantages to explain their rise.

College football changed once scholarship limits and TV contracts began to dominate it, and in today's world geographic distance means little.

Yes but do we have delusions of grandeur? Nobody really considers what we've accomplished as anything great. The idea that we have the money, support, facilities and location to be better isn't a delusion of grandeur. It's a fact. We do deserve better.

Just shove it down his throat and bruise his forehead with it in four years