re: Your first impression on A&M and Mizzou after joing the SEC

I can actually give something of a legitimate answer to this thread. As a Mizzou van living in Austin with College Station just a couple hours down the road, I've been to CS for plenty of games - four football games and four men's basketball games to be precise.

I can say that relative to fans of other Big 12 schools (who, granted, set the bar very low) A&M fans were the most welcoming, friendly, and sportsmanlike of any road trip I'd been on. (My SEC trips have been to Vandy and Ole Miss - for sake of comparison the Ole Miss fans actually razzed us a lot more than Aggies do, though the Grove was a blast). As long as you're not a "t-sip" (Aggie vernacular for Longhorn fan) you are going to have a great time there. It helped for me that Mizzou won far more often than they lost when I was there, I'm sure, but to me the real sign of how classy a fanbase is is how they handle defeat and A&M really shined there. Not only will they say "good game" and grab the door for you and buy you a beer and what not, we actually had a bunch of random Aggie strangers whose house was near where we had parked *invite us into their home after Mizzou had just beaten them* to hang out, drink beer, eat barbecue and watch the Texas-Texas Tech game on their big screen TV. They may have some nutso, cultish traditions, but part of that brainwashing groupthink is that they stress sportsmanship and being friendly to visitors amongst all their students and alums and it genuinely shows. Nebraska fans used to claim to be like that but were really just the same old spiteful trashtalking douchebags as you'd find at any other regular school. But A&M really does, for the most part, do its best to be good sports and make visting their stadium and town a fun experience for both sides.

Having said all that, I hope Mizzou continues to beat them down like a redheaded stepchild the same as we've been doing for the past 10 years.