re: This bama melt over LSU fans is kinda sad.

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I hear Ags on here (and the ones in my family) talk about the admission of females to A&M as being a defining moment for A&M football. Ostensibly indicating that since that time, A&M football is better than it was before that point. But are you?

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Am I saying that it changed things? Maybe.

It certainly was not a recruiting advantage to have no frickable females withing 90 miles of campus. We can argue whether it was a disadvantage.

We could also argue about whether mandatory participation in military training and lifestyle was a disadvantage.

Having a large, controlling university with lots of resources having an unlimited amount of scholarships was probably not an advantage to any of the other schools in the state.

There are many additional factors and measurables to consider, but it's at least a correlation with major improvements in A&M's program. The admission of women, removal of mandatory participation in military training/lifestyle, scholarship limits, and A&M becoming a university, rather than just a military-style Ag college, all them fall within about a 10 year period between 1965 and 1975.

What likely affect did all of those changes have?

See for yourself and decide.

A&M was ranked in the Top 25 only 3 times from the start of WW2-1942 all the way to 1972. Guess which coach got those three rankings.

Notice how things started to change around the mid-70s.

Now, that may be a simple matter of correlation, but it sure the frick does not look like it.

You decide.