Catching up with former Texas A&M quarterback Reggie McNeal

On Friday's edition of TexAgs Radio, former Aggie quarterback Reggie McNeal joined us in-studio to chat about all things Texas A&M football. McNeal spoke on Mike Elko, what the Maroon & White could look like this fall and much more.

Key notes from Reggie McNeal interview

• We’re doing good. Life has been good, and we’re steady, rolling.
   
• When you deal with the type of kids that I do, my son included, they talk as much noise and run their mouths as much as they do; I feel like I’m still trying to compete with them to keep up. As soon as they think I get too skinny or something, my son is like, “Pops, you need to go do some curls.” I don’t have time to be in the gym like that. Being around them, they keep me very humble, to say the least.
   
• My son thinks he knows who I was when I played. My little girl, I’m just poppy to her. I don’t think it even matters. She has seen my cards and stuff, but she doesn’t really know.
   
• The kids keep me up to date. The first kids I started training one is now an OC at Corpus Christi Veterans, one is a coach at Fulshear, and CeeDee Lamb is another. I had a couple of kids that I worked with who are in the NFL, but the rest are all doing high school stuff now. I’ve always been around youngsters, so they keep me up to par on all the music, even though I can’t stand a lot of it. I stay young on the mental side because of them. Think about 7-on-7. I’m around kids all day long, and we have the radios out there because we have to listen to their music.
   
• No. 1, the NFL is a business. It’s a business, and I had some fun times. It’s a bunch of kids that are grown men with money. As men, we’re still clowns, fool around and talk mess with each other. The game doesn’t change. The biggest part of it is the politics and the business side. For some kids, myself included, it’s not about whether you’re good enough. It’s the other thing. When I came out of college, I was tabbed by Dennis Franchione as having attitude issues, and it followed me. I had never had any attitude issues or run-ins, but the one time something happened, then I had an attitude. From my side, that’s what it was. Once I was considered a “bad” mental guy, it was hard to shake.
   
• I went to the Houston Texans to do a workout for them, they told me I was a hell of an athlete, but they didn’t know they could sign me. I went to Oakland and was the best receiver there. “We don’t know.” My agent was asking me what I did. I did nothing to them.
   
• The CFL is not a billion-dollar business like the NFL. When you go out over there, they let you be men, but if you’re an American that gets in trouble, you’re going back home. They didn’t care what you did, but as soon as you got in trouble, you were gone. You just had to make good decisions. On the road in Canada, you’d stay the night. You could party and have fun. I was in Toronto, and I had a blast. It was a good time.
   
• In Cincinnati, I was teammates with Chad Johnson, T.J. Houshmandzadeh, Chris Henry, Dexter Jackson and Deltha O’Neal, and Marvin Lewis was our coach. Lewis had no control of the team. We had a ton of talent, but he had no control of the team. None at all.
   
• Outside of football, two of my best friends that I work with and do business with are Aggies. The life after Texas A&M... You can go anywhere in the country. The life after football and after school is next level. That’s the biggest thing outside of all the football and memories made on the field. Everything that happens after is really what matters because you’re only going to play football for just a few years.
   
• College Station is a city now. I was coming through and was looking around like, “What?” I like it, though! You see the growth, and where it’s headed, and hopefully, it rolls right into the program, too.
   
• I think our schedule falls perfectly for us this season. It’s not the toughest. It’s not easy. Any time you go through the SEC, it’s not easy, but we did escape some big-time names.
   
• When Mike Elko was here for the first time, he was an amazing defensive coordinator. He went to Duke and did the same thing. I think it was a great hire for us, and I love the trajectory that we have. I hope we just put it all together now. That’s always our problem. We always have the team and the pieces, but we just never put it together.
   
• You can go back to how we had been recruiting. I see a lot of kids, and I think we have been chasing stars instead of players. You have to have both. I was talking to a coach from Miami who said I was a five-star who was ready to play on day one, but if a kid is not ready to step on the field now, he’s not a five-star. They need to start putting those labels on kids because a five-star that isn’t actually that good won’t get coaches as hard and is getting paid through NIL. You can’t get on them like you want to because they’ll transfer. A&M has to put it all together. There are some studs out there that aren’t stars, and I see it on the regular. I don’t like it when coaches chase stars.
   
• I love Conner Weigman. I love the snappiness from his release, how quickly he gets the ball out and his mental game. Now, we just have to keep him healthy. I like our backup, too... Marcel Reed. I like Jaylen Henderson, too. 
   
• I would watch and follow the other A&M quarterbacks when they were playing. I watch more high school football than anything. I’ve watched all of the other quarterbacks, though. Of course, I knew Stephen McGee. I was a fan of Haynes King when he was at Longview, and I watched him coming out of high school. I came back to school when Johnny Manziel was here. We’ve had some good ones come through. Kellen Mond played 7-on-7 with me before he left San Antonio for IMG.