Cover Story: The day when everything changed

“Give to them nothing but take from them EVERYTHING.”

Just hours prior to kickoff, Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel tweeted those words as he and the Aggies prepared to take on the defending national champion and top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide. For those not familiar with the quote, it’s from the movie “300,” when King Leonidas rallies his troops against a seemingly insurmountable Persian army.

Manziel finished his tweet with: “Time to turn it up and leave it all on the field.”

Eventually, Johnny Football will speak to the media. In the meantime, his pre-game quotes speak volumes. In fact, those were about as a powerful and prophetic as it gets.

On Saturday in Tuscaloosa, the Aggies did indeed take everything from Alabama — and certainly left it all on the field at Bryant-Denny Stadium. With Manziel leading the way, the SEC upstart not only ended Bama’s quest for a second straight national championship (and third in four years) but also shook up the BCS picture by taking down the nation’s No. 1 team in front of over 100,000 fans.

The Ags did it with the entire country watching, and in dramatic fashion. They raced to a stunning 20-0 first quarter lead. They held on throughout the second and third quarters. They traded punches with the Tide down the fourth-quarter stretch.

When cornerback Deshazor Everett intercepted AJ McCarron's pass at the goal line with just over a minute remaining, the Ags had sealed the upset. Manziel had done Leonidas one better, since the Spartans actually lost the Battle of Thermopylae.

It’s been that kind of year for Manziel and the Aggies.

All season long, Coach Kevin Sumlin has preached to his players that the goal is to focus entirely on the task at hand. He’s told them ‘Go 1-0 this week’ after each of their first seven wins and their two losses. While even Sumlin admits that isn’t necessarily a novel approach, it’s worked wonders during his first season in Aggieland.

How committed is the head coach to making sure his players don’t get caught looking ahead or behind? You won’t find a single schedule in the A&M locker room, weight room or meeting rooms.

The Aggies didn’t need a schedule to know what awaited them. To a man, Texas A&M players and coaches knew the matchup with Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide was about much more than one game. It was about serving notice to the Southeastern Conference and the college football world that A&M is back and on the verge of becoming a true SEC and national power.

It was about proving once and for all — and emphatically so — that they had no intentions of easing into the “League of Champions.” Instead, A&M has sped up what many felt would be a lengthy process by competing for BCS bowl bids and conference supremacy. For the Aggie seniors, a group that Sumlin seems to mention with increasing reverence after each victory, it was about erasing years of pain and suffering.

For Manziel, the seniors and the rest of the Ags, Saturday’s showdown was about etching their name into history. The Aggies not only completely jostled this year’s national title race but may have positioned themselves as 2013 BCS Championship contenders in 2013 ... and beyond.

Sumlin will continue to preach his ‘1-0’ mantra. His job may actually get tougher this week while attempting to refocus a group of players that have done a great job of sticking to the task at hand all season. The fact is that Saturday’s win meant more, did more to shake up the college football landscape and drew more national attention than any single victory in A&M football history.

A&M beat college football’s most storied and successful football program in their house. They knocked off the greatest coach in the game and took down the nation’s No. 1-ranked team in an instant classic.

Alabama was closing in on immortality. Had the Tide beaten the Aggies, they’d have been an overwhelming favorite to achieve dynasty status by winning three BCS titles in four years. Instead, Bama was left to wonder “what if” while Ryan Swope and Manziel led a wild celebration in front of a large, delirious and contingent of A&M fans in the corner of Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Based on caliber of opponent, the timing of the win and the fact that A&M did it on the road, it simply doesn’t get any bigger.

The victory was much bigger than simply beating a great team, reveling in the moment (and the attention) for a few days and moving on. What makes the win more special and so incredibly significant is what it will mean to the future of Texas A&M football.

The Ags are suddenly a top-10 team. They’re a legitimate contender for a BCS bowl, an 11-win season and a top-five finish in the polls. That’s remarkable stuff considering many doubted A&M would sniff a bowl game in its first run through the SEC.

Perhaps as important as anything else, A&M has emerged as one of college football’s hottest and fastest-rising programs. Complete with sick uniform combinations, an explosive, up-tempo offense and a Heisman Trophy candidate, the Aggies suddenly look like the Oregon Ducks of the SEC. The Aggies are winning with style, a charismatic, confident head coach and a transcendent young superstar leading the way.

The Aggies now have a true signature win. For the first time in seemingly forever, maroon and white (and black and ‘Icy White’) are the cool colors in the state. As much as I’d love to get through a cover story without referencing another color, bringing up burnt orange is a necessary evil. Why? Since Mack Brown’s arrival in Austin back in 1998, Texas has dominated recruiting in the Lone Star State.

But the landscape shifted dramatically on Saturday. While the Ags were beating Alabama in the second-most watched college football game of the season, Texas was beating up on lowly Iowa State on the LHN.

Think about how many Longhorn fans watched the hated Aggies take down the Crimson Tide rather than watched their own team play on a network that’s about as easy to find as Bigfoot. Are you through laughing? Okay, let’s continue…

Both teams are 8-2, both teams will fight it out for most of the state’s elite-level recruits, but one team is viewed as a rising program and the other one that is stuck in neutral at best. Now, the hard part for Sumlin and his staff may be finding enough room to take all of the blue-chip prospects currently beating down their door. The Class of 2013 is going to be a great one and the ’14 haul is going to be even better.

Let’s go back to that Oregon reference for a moment. Last week an Alabama journalist referred to the Aggies as ‘Oregon Lite.’ The phrase wasn’t meant as a slight, just as no one intended to offend Sumlin, Swope, Luke Joeckel and Sean Porter at SEC media days in July. I was there at the Wynfrey Hotel and spoke to all three players shortly after they spent hours meet with a media horde 1,000 strong.

“I didn’t get the feeling that many people today believe we’re ready to make the jump to the SEC. Obviously, we believe differently and are working every day to prove it,” said Joeckel. “I definitely think it’s something that our team will use as motivation this season.”

Of course, two of the primary reasons listed by those expecting the Aggies to get rolled — not just by the Tide, mind you, but by most of the conference — were that A&M would get mauled in the trenches by the league punishing ground games and that Sumlin and Offensive Coordinator Kliff Kingsbury’s ‘finesse’ offense would be shut down by faster, more physical defenses.

The Aggies beat Saban’s group of stampeding elephants with style and speed — and with power. A&M’s style and pace is exciting to watch but it’s even more difficult to defend, especially with Manziel at quarterback and outstanding skill-position talent at receiver and running back.

All season, it’s been obvious that opposing defenses and defensive coordinators have been shocked at the beginning of games by how fast the Aggies play.

Even an Alabama defense that had not given up 20 points in a game since 2010 couldn’t stop the onslaught as A&M raced out to an incredible 20-0 lead before the Tide had even crossed midfield. By the end of the first quarter, Alabama trailed by three scores in what was described by many as the most stunning 15 minutes of football seen at Bryant-Denny in many, many years.

That was about the time a longtime NFL player with no ties or affiliation to Texas A&M texted me and said, “2012 vs. 1992.” For as great as the Ags’ new-age offense is, the fact of the matter is that A&M doesn’t beat Alabama without getting down and dirty in the trenches and playing a nasty, physical style on both sides of the ball. A&M may spread you out, but its offensive line is as good as there is and the backs and receivers are extremely physical.

Defensively, the Aggies not only held running backs Eddie Lacy and T.J. Yeldon in check, they also forced three turnovers, including McCarron’s first two interceptions of the season.

As it turns out, Kingsbury, Sumlin and A&M may change the way the Southeastern Conference views offensive football. The Aggies have put to rest the myth that they were ill-equipped to handle SEC physicality or the grind of the conference schedule. To the contrary, A&M is playing its best football of the season despite traveling five of the past six weeks (including five conference games). The Ags went 5-1 during that stretch.

Texas A&M stood toe-to-toe with Alabama in the trenches for four quarters, slugged it out for 60 minutes of extremely physical football and clearly got the best of the exchange. Just think about that sentence for a moment before reading on. I’ll be the first to say that I never thought I’d type that sentence … especially after seeing Bama in person back in September when the Tide rolled over Michigan at Cowboys Stadium.

Then again, Michigan’s Denard Robinson is no Johnny Manziel. The freshman quarterback earned his invitation to New York City with not just a Heisman moment but a Heisman game.

Johnny Football — who has captured the nation’s attention and imagination like no other Texas A&M athlete in history — has put up numbers that will top those posted by both Cam Newton and Tim Tebow during their respective Heisman Trophy-winning seasons. On Saturday, while amassing 344 yards and accounting for two TDs and countless breathtaking plays, he did something that both players did en route to winning college football’s biggest individual prize. He beat Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

While some will object to a freshman winning the award due to an archaic line of thinking, the fact of the matter is that Manziel is the single-biggest threat to Collin Klein in the Heisman race.

Regardless of what happens a month from now in New York City, Manziel is driven by hoisting another trophy before he’s done in Aggieland. Though he has yet to speak with the media, I can say with absolute certainty that he’s driven towards one singular goal: Bringing a national championship to Texas A&M.

In taking everything from Alabama as darkness fell in Tuscaloosa on Saturday, the Aggies took a significant step in that direction.