AG1996 said:
Have not read the whole thread, but you guys have to realize a&m has middle of the pack at best financially 25 years ago. The older guys will remember our facilities in the 90's, sub par to just about every Hugh school in Texas, then not today. The tide really turned in 2012, for obvious reasons. Couple that with the fact that A&M was a small all male military school until the seventies, and you will not see a long history of athletic success.
Fair points
Back in the 90s A&M was consistently top 3 in terms of enrollment (along with sip & tOSU) and about 20-25 years past its small military school days. We're still top 3 in terms of size now (
Wikipedia) FWIW.
So financially those 90s grads have collectively gotten rich & been giving back since the JFF days. The question is: how long to translate financial success into true elitehood?
My entire argument here is that we are no longer limited by demographics or finance, but rather now by the myriad glass ceilings that the "elites" from 50-100 years ago have emplaced (including ESPN's long-term jump into bed with sip). Look at NCAA sanctions, treatment from ESPN (remember when they wanted to start putting HS recruits on the Longhorn Network?) and other media, consistent losses in games where officiation tips the balance, and the consistent postseason screwovers we get (not just 2020 CFB but also baseball & basketball in recent memory). Now maybe NIL neuters the glass ceiling due to NCAA sanctions ... but we'll have to see. I think portal tampering may be the new frontier for entrenched elites to leverage favorable regulatory treatment & media potrayals to consistently undermine their un-anointed peers.
So I don't see time (just wait another decade or two) as the solution to these glass ceilings. There are many, much more direct ways to shatter them. Bjork was completely sackless in going after them. Jury's still out on Trev Alberts. If we need to bring in Bowtie or Bullet Bob, let's start on it now...
