Thing I'll miss: The Thanksgiving day ritual. I honestly don't know how I'll react this year; the day has been set for me my whole life. To be clear, those longhorns especially DeLoss Dodds, have been such arseholes that playing them seems just about as dumb as can be for the moment. But I will miss that day's comfort in knowing what is up for quite a while. Perhaps when LSU is on the docket it will return to some sense of Normalcy.

Coming to the SEC has been such a positive net gain there is no reason to ever look back. The Big XII had no soul in terms of rivalries. Take A&M/Mizzou... I just didn't get fired up for that, and many on either side have said as much. There were two games that got my attention A&M/Horns and A&M/Tech. I had lifelong friends at each school so there was a ton of bragging rights. That's about it.

What is different/Better:

TV. Plain and simple. In years' past, I would never have complained about an 11 am game just because we were on TV so little. Now, you can afford to groan about it because someone, either you or your foe, wasn't good enough to get a 2:30 or 6 pm slot.

Fans
Just so different, but in my head I knew it would be. Going back to when we played LSU in the late 80s/early 90s, I can vividly remember time after time when some drunken Tibideaux would be in a verbal altercation with me and we would be questioning each other's family tree's lack of branches all the while he would be feeding me the best gumbo or sauce piqaunt I've ever eaten and getting me drunk on his bourbon. That's just fricking awesome. Even the "doormats" show up, and if you're not careful, their teams can get a win. Baylor never had the fans and outside of the last 3 years would never have challenged for a win.

Stadiums: They're packed with fans and they ooze with tradition. Texas has the size, but it really feels much smaller because they're so quiet. Wine and cheese Austinites that have no skin in the game treat the games like socail mixers rather than College Football where one loss means everything.

Lastly, and I say this without any malice, I feel bad for TCU. They were sold a bill of goods that I don't think will come to long term fruition, and worse yet, they are getting only a partial share fo the money. Their full participation gets only partial payment. Frick that.

Anyway, water is wet, the sky is blue, and the Ags are where they should have been since 1991.