re: Is this coaching or culture?

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Do you not have a clue of the selection process for being in the Old Guard? To be selected for the Old Guard as an E5 is impressive in its own right.

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It's something you can volunteer for during OSUT and the only requirement is you're at least 5'10.

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It's something you can volunteer for during OSUT and the only requirement is you're at least 5'10.

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This is correct.
Me and about 3,000 other dudes were all asked if we wanted to volunteer for it. Nobody raised their hand.

It isn't near as prestigious as people make it seem. In fact, I'm quite sure the job sucks.

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t's a weird thing to laud military service? The frick?

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It's just frickin' cheesy.

The worst was that 45 year old yell leader guy. Cringe.

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Old guard? Is that the fake military on campus there?

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Texas A&M had 20,000 Aggies serve in WWII which was more than the US military and naval academies combined. We also have 8 Medal of Honor recipients.

What part of that is fake

You do realize yell leaders are SUPPOSED to be cheesy, right? That's the history behind the getups they wear

But come on, of course TAMU will hold vets in high regard, given our military background as a school. Weird thing for some folks to look at askance.

Bitch IDGAF about your appointments

They blew a 34 point lead against a team that went 4-8 last year. That's unacceptable by SEC standards. And it's not the first time something similar has happened with Sumlin.

He isn't the only one.

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LB Mark Dodge: "I'm embarrassed. I feel for the players. The culture of "swag" that has been created around the A&M program is driving the play and decision making across the board. When successful, the team and coaches are great. But in adversity, the team can't dig out and get back into it. The old saying, "Act like you've been there before," goes a long way. Keeps people focused and even keel. Without that emotions run too high and too low with no middle ground. This is a culture issue, players and coaches playing & working hard but built on a foundation of over-confidence and emotion. This is and has been our program under Coach Sumlin. We shouldn't be surprised."

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No more comments needed. That's about as accurate a summary as it gets of the A&M program.

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ey have ALWAYS been able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It is literally the main reason people in Arkansas, and Texas, make fun of them. The homo thing actually comes second.

Texas A&M ALWAYS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF THE TIME underachieves. Sumlin has created a weird culture there. The swag thing that former player spoke of, but beyond that, their larger culture drove them to hire that drunk in the first place. They tried to make their image more hip by hiring a "hip" coach and it bit them in the arse. Like it always does. Their last coach did the exact same shite. It got him fired too.

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None of this answers my question. I'm sorry, but no matter how long you've been watching them, saying 'culture' because it sounds like a sufficiently insightful thing to say isn't the same as making a cogent argument. What analysis or evidence can you offer that there's a cohesive 'culture' that can be demarcated and proven to lead to certain results? So Sumlin has his own style. Name a coach who doesn't. So the TAMU players and coaches screwed the pooch and started celebrating/slacking off too early. This is hardly an oddity in CFB. The only distinctive thing that happened in that game was that UCLA actually managed to pull off the comeback (and not laying a good portion of the credit at UCLA's feet comes across as confirmation bias at its most glaring.) If you're going to argue a direct correlation between 'swag' and attempts at 'hipness' and blowing the game, I'm going to question the claim until you offer a convincing chain of causality that specifically demonstrates that TAMU 'culture' lead to this specific game and outcome. I don't think that's unreasonable considering how vague the claim is.