Each Aggie has their own indelible memory of a certain Texas A&M-Texas football game.

Some Old Army graduates can recite each play of the fateful 7-0 loss to Texas in 1940, a game that dashed the Aggies’ hopes of a second straight national title.

Some, like R.C. Slocum (see page 13), would say the 1975 20-10 classic at Kyle Field, which landed A&M on the cover of Sports Illustrated and kept the Aggies in the hunt for a national title, was the game that sticks out the most.

Rusty Burson’s flashback column describes the 1992 A&M-Texas matchup as his landmark game, for it was Burson’s first to see in person.

For me, I was too young to appreciate the ’75 game and too accustomed to beating Texas to marvel at the 34-13 rout four years ago.

But in 1985, something grabbed this university, this community and this program and took it on a wild ride for 60 minutes.

Call it electricity, fate or good karma. But everything was in line on Thanksgiving night 11 years ago.

The Aggies had to have help to even be in the Southwest Conference title chase as the finale arrived. Baylor, which had beaten A&M, 20-15, was tied with the Aggies going into the Bears’ final game at Texas, and thus, held any tiebreaker edge on A&M.

The Bears were favorites to win the Texas game, even though it was played in Austin. But the Longhorns did the Aggies a huge favor and pulled off the 17-10 victory.

On the same day, A&M took care of its eighth-victim of the year and waxed TCU, 53-6.

Texas and A&M entered the game with 8-2 records and one conference loss apiece with a trip to the Cotton Bowl at stake. For the Aggies, it would be a chance for their first trek to Dallas in 18 years.

To survive the November stretch was remarkable, considering the Aggies had to beat a good SMU team (19-17) and a typical Arkansas squad (10-6).

But the Aggies, who had begun to mesh in the last two games of the 1984 season, finally had assembled enough talent and enough experience to win the 1985 conference title.

Blessed with players like Kevin Murray, Shea Walker, Rod Bernstine, Domingo Bryant and Kip Corrington, the Aggies — as the players would later say — would refuse to lose.

But this was Texas, and the Aggies could only muster a 7-0 a half-time lead. Then came a second half that will go down in the annals of A&M football as one of the most dominating and memorable of all time.

A&M scored 35 second-half points en route to a 42-10 blowout. Along the way, Murray was working his magic through the air, while the Wrecking Crew not only stopped the Longhorns on four downs inside the 5-yard line, but sacked a UT quarterback on a play that will go down in infamy.

Bret Stafford came to the line of scrimmage on third-and-long in the third quarter, his team buried deep in A&M territory. With a crowd beyond frenzied, Stafford asked the referee for help in snapping the ball.

Stafford’s teammates couldn’t hear the signals, so he decided to wait out the noise. The official, in a most bizarre yet legal move, allowed him to take his time.

For what seemed to be almost five minutes, Stafford waited. The crowd noise intensified. And finally, heeding the official’s signal, Stafford went for it and snapped the ball.

Bad move.

The Aggies and Bryant swept over Stafford for the sack, and perhaps Kyle Field hit its most deafening and defining moment, at least in the Jackie Sherrill era.

Suddenly, the Aggies were headed to the Cotton Bowl. They beat Texas to do it. They won the game at home on Thanksgiving night.

It was a perfect ending to a magical season.

"That night, in terms of just sheer fun and atmosphere, I have never been in a game with more atmosphere than we had that night with that crowd going crazy," said Slocum, the Aggies’ defensive coordinator at the time. "Then there was the result. The crowd would be going crazy, they’d snap the ball and we’d go back there and hammer them."

The game really was an event in the stands. It was the type of night when you hugged and high-fived strangers around you. It was a game when you sometimes couldn’t feel your feet touching the ground because the fans were packed so tightly in on that cold, damp night in College Station.

The fans milled around the stadium four hours before game time and four hours after the final gun. It was a time when streets shut down for revelers and yell practices made their way to the roof of the Dixie Chicken.

The 42-10 victory was the second in a string of six straight wins over Texas, and the win proved to be the start of A&M dominating its rival and the rest of the conference for a decade.

But on top of the significance of that game for the future, perhaps more importantly, the victory dispatched the Aggies from a struggling past. The emotions on that field and in the stands were a result of an 18-year Cotton famine.

The feelings of Aggies had been building since the lean years of the early 1970s, the freakish three-way ties of the mid-’70s and the turbulent days of the early 1980s.

The frustration of losing to Arkansas in 1975, the memory of an evaporated 13-0 lead against Texas in the first quarter of 1983 and the idea that the 37-12 win in Austin was merely a fluke all came together and unleashed itself on the Texas Longhorns on — of all things — Sherrill’s birthday in 1985.

If the Aggies can go into Austin next week and surprise the Longhorns and ruin their 1996 season, there will be some serious celebrations by Texas A&M players and fans.

At the very least, the disappointments of this 1996 season will have been temporarily forgotten.

But if the Longhorns do outscore the Aggies, their fans, too, will celebrate hard and long, just as they did in the mayhem following the Longhorns’ 16-6 victory at Kyle last year.

It used to be Texas would dust off A&M in routine fashion, beating A&M 17 out of 18 years from 1957 to 1974.

Now the rivalry is again on even footing. Texas isn’t confident about beating A&M anymore, and victories over A&M are more precious. And the doubt crept in 11 years ago when the Aggies erased any Longhorn dominance in one convincing game of college football.

Bret Stafford wasn’t sure when or if he should snap the ball on that Thanksgiving night. Maybe, in retrospect, the Longhorns shouldn’t even have made the trip to College Station.

The Horns were doomed as soon as they turned the bus onto Highway 21, as a hot A&M team, a frothing 12th Man and deep-seeded frustration awaited at Kyle Field.

That game, without a doubt, changed the direction of the A&M program. It changed the Texas program as well.

And yet, no matter what happens between the two schools into the next century, one thing will never change:

The memory of 42-10 etched deeply in my mind.

As she prepares her team for its first season of Big 12 competition, Texas A&M women's basketball coach Candi Harvey is faced with a variety of questions and concerns. With the departure of four key players from last year's team, for example, the Lady Aggies have a lack of depth, a lack of proven scorers and a lack of easy opponents, especially in conference play, on the schedule.

All of that has added up to a lack of sleep for Harvey. But while there are plenty of potential problem areas, the third-year coach of the Lady Aggies is certain of one thing: Her team will play hard. She also has one certain request of all A&M fans: Pray hard.

"One of the really big keys for this team is something that we can't control, and that's injuries," said Harvey, who has compiled a 41-21 record in her first two seasons at A&M. "I ask Aggies everywhere to pray that we can just stay healthy. Over the last two years, we've had kids that have been out a couple of weeks or not been at full speed. But during that time, we've had quite a bit of depth, especially at the post, to pull us through.

"Well, we don't necessarily have that this year, so we're just hoping and praying that we can stay injury-free. We've done everything we can do from a strength and conditioning standpoint to put ourselves in a position to stay healthy. But once you get into the flow of a game and a season, it's really something you can't control. So, we could certainly use the prayers."

Harvey's request for Divine guidance doesn't mean she believes the Lady Aggies will struggle and stumble against the new powers of the Big 12 and the old powers of the Southwest Conference. On the contrary, she believes her 1996-97 team has the potential to do something equally as impressive as the 1995-96 squad.

And that's saying a lot.

In a magical weekend in March, last year's team became the first squad in school history to win the Dr. Pepper Southwest Conference Classic and earn the league's automatic bid into the NCAAs. The Lady Aggies upset nationally-ranked Texas and Texas Tech in the final two rounds of the SWC Tournament to win the title.

Against the Lady Longhorns, A&M overcame a 19-point deficit with an amazing flurry to win by 14. Then in the championship game of the tournament against Texas Tech, the Lady Aggies built a 17-point lead midway through the second half and held on down the stretch to pull out an improbable 72-68 upset in one of the finest moments in the 22-year history of women's basketball at Texas A&M.

Tears, hugs and high-fives were everywhere as the Lady Aggies danced on the floor of Dallas' Reunion Arena and hoisted the championship trophy into the air to the disbelief of a partisan Texas Tech crowd. Harvey called the moment her most rewarding experience in 16 years of coaching. And with any kind of luck, she says this year's squad is capable of a repeat performance.

"I think you're going to see one team in November that's going to be scrappy," Harvey said. "The effort is definitely going to be there, but we're going to make some mistakes because we are a young team. But if we learn from our mistakes and continually improve, come Jan. 8 (the opening home game of Big 12 play), we could be a much different basketball team. And by mid-February, we could be a drastically improved team.

"I think that can happen, and I believe that by March 1 when we play Texas in that last regular season game, we could have the potential to go into the Big 12 Tournament and do what we did last year in Dallas."

If the Lady Aggies, who open this year at home on Nov. 22 against Southwest Texas State, are to equal the excellence of last year's team, they will need to find replacements for two key starters from a year ago. All-American honorable mention guard Lisa Branch and second team All-SWC center Angel Spinks have moved on, leaving large holes in the lineup and large voids of leadership in the locker room.

Together, Branch and Spinks averaged nearly 32 points per game last year. Furthermore, Branch was, without a doubt, the emotional and physical leader of the team a year ago. Her leadership could be missed as much as her points and assists.

The Lady Aggies also received some bad off-season news when they learned senior center Martha McClelland would be forced to end her basketball career. McClelland, who was redshirted last season, suffers from discitis, the result of bacterial infection in the disc space which erodes the shock absorption mechanism between the vertebrae.

The good news, however, is Texas A&M returns three starters from a year ago, senior guard Lana Tucker, senior forward Marianne Sevin and senior forward Melissa Rollerson. And in addition to five other returning lettermen, the Lady Aggies' strong freshman class of Kera Alexander, Jennifer Burrows, Prissy Sharpe, Amy Yates and Natalie Tucker, who is the younger sister of Lana Tucker, could see playing time right away and should provide considerable help.

"We definitely have some holes to fill," Harvey said. "And we need our older players to step up. We need Lana to be better than she was last year. The same thing with Melissa and Marianne. All the returning players absolutely need to take their game to the next level.

"If that happens, we can bring these five freshmen along and develop them the way we need to. By the same token, these five kids are going to be expected to step in right away and play and possibly start very early. But the better our returning kids play, the more we can live with the natural and expected mistakes these freshmen are going to make."

Harvey has placed a particularly heavy leadership responsibility on Lana Tucker's shoulders. Tucker (see accompanying story) is the smallest player on the A&M roster at 5-foot-7, but she may also play with the biggest heart. Harvey has asked her senior guard to become a more vocal leader to offset the loss of Branch.

Harvey has no concerns that Tucker, the third leading scorer on last year's team with an 11.8 points per game average, will fill such a void. Harvey also seems confident that Sevin (10.2 points and 5.2 rebounds per game last year) will again be solid.

One of the main keys to A&M's success this year could be the play of Rollerson, a 6-foot-1 forward who started 24 games last year after transferring from Trinity Valley Community College. Rollerson averaged just 6.1 points per game during the 1995-96 regular season, but she showed flashes of brilliance during the SWC Tournament.

Harvey says those flashes need to become far more consistent for A&M to make a serious push for either the regular season or postseason Big 12 titles.

"Melissa has been outstanding from day one (of practice this year)," Harvey said. "She's running the floor, she's getting it done from the inside and she's facing the basket and knocking the shots down like she did in the Southwest Conference Tournament. She's really gained a lot of confidence, and I'm just hopeful that will carry over into game situations. When Melissa is a confident basketball player, she can be very, very good."

"Very, very good" also describes the level of competition in the Big 12. Seven of the league teams advanced to the 1996 NCAA Tournament, equaling the Southeastern Conference's total of participants. Kansas and Texas Tech reached the regionals last year, while Colorado, Oklahoma State and Texas advanced to the second round, and Nebraska and A&M both made first-round appearances.

Fortunately for A&M, the Lady Aggies will enter the new and improved league accustomed to facing strong competition. Texas A&M, which finished in the Top 25 of the final Associated Press poll last year for the first time ever last year, played 13 games last season against teams that were ranked in the Top 25 during the 1995-96 season. The Lady Aggies went 5-8 in those 13 games.

"It's nothing new for us to play against some of the top teams in the country," Lana Tucker said. "But we know we are going to have to win more games against those top teams to have a chance in the conference. We're excited about the new challenges in the Big 12. I know it's going to be tough, but I believe we have the capabilities to compete and beat anybody we play."

It's certainly apparent that Texas A&M is no longer an afterthought among the big-time women's programs across the country. The Lady Aggies have appeared in the postseason for three consecutive years and have recorded 20-win seasons in each of the last three years.

The 1993-94 Lady Aggies received an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament and became the lowest seeded school ever to advance to the Sweet 16.

In Harvey's first season, the 1994-95 team was surprisingly left out of the NCAA Tournament, but A&M proved it belonged in the postseason by winning the Women's National Invitational Tournament.

Last year's team was eliminated by Kent in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but Harvey says making the "big dance" was an incredible award a year ago and provides plenty of incentive for this year's team.

"Successful tradition breeds success, and that should be a positive for us," Harvey said. "We've got seniors who have been involved in the postseason three straight years. There's a pride factor there, and these girls don't want to be the group that lets this streak end.

"It will be challenging to get this team back to that level, but I also think this could be as fun a group as we've ever coached. The want-to and desire is there. The team is very cohesive, and the players genuinely like each other. All the ingredients are there for really good chemistry. If everything works out, it could be a very special season."

All the Lady Aggies need is a little bit of luck. And a lot of prayer.

QUESTION: What is your most memorable A&M-Texas game?

COACH R.C. SLOCUM: Probably the ’75 game (A&M 20, Texas 10). It had been so long since we’ve beaten them. We had a new program and were playing them on national television.

They were good, and we were good. And we were playing them here. It was such a big breakthrough for our program. We were on the cover of Sports Illustrated after that game.

Our quarterback got hurt in that game, or we might have won the national championship.

Q: Was the 28-27 loss to Texas in 1990 the most disappointing defeat against Texas in your coaching career?

SLOCUM: Last year would have been a lot more disappointing than ’90. In ’90, we played and got in position to win the game and came up just a little short. But we really played pretty well in that ballgame. Last year was disappointing because I don’t think we played pretty well. We turned the ball over a bunch of times. That was probably the most disappointing game since I’ve been a head coach.

Q: Can you describe what it was like to be on the field during the 1975 and 1985 games against Texas?

SLOCUM: There was just so much emotion involved in the ’75 game. Nationally, it was a televised game. And it was one of those things where the score was pretty close, but I thought we really controlled the game for the most part. I thought it was a game where we went out there, and our defense played well early. They had a quarterback, Marty Akins, who had been hurt a little bit. And he came in, and early in the game, we got a good lick in on him. And we may have knocked him out of the game, or at least rattled him. So that was fun.

The thing I remember about the ’85 game was they had the ball first-and-goal at the 4, and we stopped them down there on four downs. They went for it on fourth-and-one, and we ended up winning the ballgame.

Q: When Bret Stafford refused to snap the ball because of the noise in the ’85 game, what was the exact rule that allowed him to wait out the bedlam?

SLOCUM: It’s still a rule in effect. If you can’t (snap it), you can turn to the official and ask for relief. They may give it to you once, but normally, they just tell you to go on. Finally, he just snapped the ball, and we went back there and just hammered him.

Q: If A&M beats Texas this year, will it take a lot of the frustration out of this season for you and the team, as well as the fans?

SLOCUM: That game is of such magnitude every year that it overshadows your season a little bit. You could have a great season, and if you lost that game, it would really diminish your season. Or you could have a season that wasn’t a great season, and if you win that game, it doesn’t totally erase everything. But it’s not all bad when you win that game.

It’s that way with UCLA-USC, Alabama-Auburn, Michigan-Ohio State. Most games you say we take them one at a time. They all mean the same and count the same. That game in the conference standings technically counts the same, but it doesn’t count the same.

Q: How would you sum up this season as it winds down?

SLOCUM: I don’t know how you sum it up, other than to say it’s been disappointing. Turnovers and the shock to our psyche of getting off to a bad start kind of shocked us. The inexperience of our players having to deal with that kind of held us back and makes me wonder what could have been. If we’d have been an experienced team, we could have come back from that much easier.

You have to look at a bunch of different things to sum it up. Part of it was turnovers, part of it was we are young. We had inexperience at quarterback and we didn’t really have any part of our offense that we could rely on, that could really carry us.

Q: Do you feel like the team turned around the season somewhat in November?

SLOCUM: I do. We’ve been through the part where you’re just hanging on, trying to fight through it, where there was enough bad going on that there was a multitude of other problems that could have erupted. When you’re having a year that’s not going like you expected, you get all these other things that you have to work through. You’ve got all the negative press, the negative fans, and you’ve got a chance for the team to point fingers at each other.

To be able to come through that and stay intact is gratifying to me. We’ve come through all that and haven’t fallen apart. We haven’t gone in different directions. People who have something to say have said it, and we worked through all of that. People who remain steady are still steady, and the ones who were quick to jump have jumped.

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