By Homer Jacobs

We hype. That is what we do. At 12th Man Magazine, at Sports Illustrated, at The Dallas Morning News and at The Los Angeles Times, hype sells.

Sure, war is not hyped. Neither are plane crashes. They are often sensationalized in print after the fact, but never hyped before the actual incident.

Hype, you see, is build-up. It’s anticipation for something great about to unfold. It’s harmless, and it should be fun.

Sports, in general, reeks of hype. It’s the countless advance stories in the daily newspapers leading up to the big game. It’s college football gurus Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit exchanging banter on ESPN.

And, perhaps, no other sport lends itself to hype like college football. In basketball there are not enough players to build up. In baseball, there are too many games to break down.

But in college football, where there are 85 players and just 11 or 12 games in a four-month season, there is often more style than substance, more talk than walk.

And, yet, that’s why I love college football. It’s 354 days of conversation and analysis. With 11 Saturdays to open the presents, there are 11 more Christmas Eves of anticipation out there.

I receive calls every day of the year — every day — from fans who want to talk Aggie football. It can be the day before the Texas game or a listless summer afternoon in June, and the excitement is still palpable.

And so another Texas A&M football season is nearing, and the college football hype machines — a.k.a. Athlon’s, Lindy’s and Texas Football magazines — are hitting the newsstands.

Your special 12th Man Magazine football preview is in your hands, and you have about 60 more pages of hype to consume. But this is college football, and this is how it should be.

Fortunately, there is a lot to hype about the 1999 Texas Aggies. And, unabashedly, 12th Man Magazine is hyping the maroon and white for a run at the national championship.

Why? There are several reasons, including the fact Florida State will have to play someone in New Orleans in the Bowl Championship Series title game Jan. 4, 2000

But let’s not tout the Aggies to win it all in ’99. Rather, A&M appears to have enough talent, enough coaching, enough schedule and enough history behind it to possibly play for it all this fall.

Most preseason polls concur that FSU is the easy No. 1 team heading into the season. The Seminoles return a ton of talent, played for the title last year and, amazingly, have not won the title in six whole years. In other words, Bobby’s Boys are due.

So who’s in the race for No. 2 heading into the season? Well, Penn State is a popular pick, with Arizona close behind. Ohio State, Michigan and Florida have to be considered for some title talk, and you can’t forget this year’s trendy pick of the year, Virginia Tech.

And then there are the Aggies. A&M (documented throughout our position analyses) has as much ammunition returning as any of the above teams, with the exception of FSU.

The reason the Aggies are not receiving hype to the hilt nationally like they did in 1995 when The Sporting News and Playboy tabbed A&M the preseason No. 1 team is because there is no Leeland McElroy on this team.

While the ’99 Aggies are more well-rounded and better suited for a title run in this fall than in ’95, there is no star on this squad. Even last year’s Big 12 champion had Dat Nguyen carrying home the Lombardi Award.

This year, 12th Man Magazine associate editor Rusty Burson was a consultant on picking the All-Big 12 teams for Lindy’s and Preview Sports magazines, and he could hardly come up with enough Aggies to fill spots on the second- and third-teams, much less the first team.

Dante Hall could become A&M’s second leading rusher of all time (he needs just 1,065 yards). But for some reason, Hall gets overlooked by most publications and pundits.

And when your punter is the only player with national credentials as is the case with Playboy All-American Shane Lechler, it usually signals a lack of talent on the team.

But, just like with Tennessee a year ago, some stars will emerge for the Aggies. Let the hype fall on cornerback Jason Webster, linebackers Roylin Bradley and Cornelius Anthony, nose guard Ron Edwards and receivers Chris Taylor and Bethel Johnson.

If you want to find some hype about the Aggies, you naturally can’t find much in the coaches offices, although several members of R.C. Slocum’s staff have let some fairly flattering statements about the potential of this team slip out of their mouths.

But hype does hover around the players dorm rooms and in the cafeteria lines at Cain Hall.

Says top hype-master and junior left guard Chris Valletta:

(On the Aggie defense): "I’m sure it’s hard for Coach Slocum to not build up some of the guys. I know the guys on our defense are just playing outrageously (in the spring).

(On Johnson’s potential at wideout): "He’s got lightning in his shoes. He’s incredible."

(On the offense in general): "I think the offense is just waiting to explode. It’s just a matter of time. The offense is literally like a volcano, and I seriously think it’s going to erupt because of the talent that we have."

Besides the talent returning and all the X’s and O’s that go into a football season, let’s hype Texas A&M football because it deserves it.

• A&M football is coming off one of its most dramatic seasons in school history. It won the 1998 game of the year in college football, beating Kansas State in double overtime for the Big 12 championship.

• A&M played four teams ranked in the top five at one time or another last year and beat two of them.

• A&M fans will be breathing down opponents’ jerseys this fall when The Zone at Kyle Field is opened.

• The Longhorns and their hype machine come to town in November.

The Aggies may not be able to survive a road trip to Lincoln and beat an improved Nebraska squad. They may not be able to shake the Tech hex in Lubbock.

It could even rain again every Saturday.

But, if any team is hype-worthy in ’99, it’s Texas A&M.

If you disagree, we can talk about it. There are only 60 days or so until the season opener.

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