Volume 6, No. 12

AVOIDING ROAD KILL Extreme focus is the ticket for Aggies, as they embark on tough tour of Big 12 By Homer Jacobs

The Aggies haven’t tried voodoo and rain dances to help with traversing the Big 12 road schedule each year, but maybe they should. With places like Colorado, Kansas State, Oklahoma and Texas Tech to visit, maybe it’s time for R.C. Slocum to take his team to The Grove on a Thursday night, throw off his jacket and stomp on it like some Bear Bryant revival, with the Corps of Cadets and Reveille howling beneath him.

The Aggies have tried a variety of ways to approach road trips under Slocum, and yet, the Aggies are just 12-8 away from Kyle Field since the inception of the Big 12 in 1996.

And now, Texas A&M faces its toughest road gauntlet yet in the Big 12, with games against two ranked teams in Kansas State and OU and the ever-brutal road trip to Lubbock. A tough Colorado venue gets the whole fun started Saturday.

Fortunately, the Aggies don't have to travel to Lincoln this fall to play the Huskers.

A select group of teams can win consistently on the road – and they reside in Tallahassee and Lincoln. The rest of Division I-A has to survive road games in some of the toughest sports venues there are in the world. Just ask the victims of Kyle Field over the last five years.

The Big 12 isn’t the SEC in terms of intimidating road atmospheres, but the quality of teams in this league may make it equally as difficult to notch wins away from home.

There are several factors that go into teams having troubles on the road, including the obvious noise factor. But here are two of the notable tendencies most teams – including the Aggies – seem to exhibit away from their friendly confines:

• Playing not to lose. This also comes under the being "tight" category, as nerves tend to fray when the possibility of winning really exists.

R.C. Slocum admitted at his team was incredibly tight when the Aggies played at Colorado in 1995 (see Aggie Flashback on pages 30-31). They played to verify their No. 3 national ranking not enhance it… and the Aggies blew a game they should have won.

The playing-not-to-lose element seems most pronounced at Texas Tech, where usually the Aggies bolt out to a lead or gain control of the game, only to wait for the inevitable bad stuff to happen. Then it does. The result has been three straight A&M losses in Lubbock.

• Not going for the win. Not to be confused with playing not to lose, this aspect often goes unnoticed until an underdog road team pulls out a game in the final seconds. I have no bias toward North Carolina State, but the Wolfpack earned my respect a few years ago when they found themselves in an overtime game with Syracuse. The Pack trailed by seven, but scored a touchdown and could have tied it to force a second OT. But coach Mike O’Cain huddled his team without a timeout and immediately went for two. He went for the win and got it, stunning a sold-out crowd at the Carrier Dome.

Most teams hope to win road games with defense and special teams, and the Aggies will fall into that category. But when facing a top 10 team on the road, an aggressive offense can be just the ticket.

So how will the Aggies approach this tough stretch of road games? Well, don’t expect A&M to deviate from its usual pregame routine: Fly into town about 5 p.m., bypass the common walk-through, watch film, eat pizza and go to bed.

But on the field, the A&M players and coaches agree that focus will be the key, not motivational speeches or hex rallies.

"I still think once the ball is kicked off, you just have to play football," quarterback Mark Farris says. If you talk about it too much, you almost make it more than it is.

"Yeah, the fans factor into it, and the home team plays a little bit better, But you’re still playing on a 100-yard field, and you still have to make plays. It doesn’t matter to me once the ball is snapped. You either make good plays or bad plays. I don’t think we’ll talk about it that much. We’ll just talk about it like we talk about all the homes games – going out there and having pride being from Texas A&M and playing like it."

The Aggie defense and special teams – just as the coaches hope – will be major factors in determining what kind of road season A&M can put together. And A&M must play with the intensity it showed against Oklahoma State and Notre Dame.

"The main thing is we have a lot of confidence right now," linebacker Brian Gamble said. "The key is to just to build on that. A lot of games on the road are decided by defense. I just feel if we keep playing with the intensity we’ve been playing with and continue to get better every week and cut down on the mental mistakes, then we’ll be a good road football team.

"What happens on the road is it’s not a lack of effort. But maybe your mind starts wondering and you have mental breakdowns. On the road, that can really kill you."

Jay Brooks knows a blocked punt wouldn’t hurt, either. Of course, Brooks scooped up a blocked punt against Tech two years ago and raced into the end zone to give A&M a 10-0 lead that ended up as a 21-19 loss.

And while the Aggies are nearly invincible at home, Brooks says they have to keep away from the kryptonite that keeps finding its way into the travel lockers.

"You have to have the same mindset as when you’re playing at home," said Brooks, who remembers when A&M went 7-1 in 1998 to claim the Big 12 title. "You have to make their home our home. Being on the Wrecking Crew, you have to wreck homes. The only way to win championships is to go to somebody else’s house and beat them on their home field."

For teams that come into Kyle Field, there are more extraneous factors than normal to distract a football team. So how can a big Buffalo named "Ralphie" intimidate the Aggies? Brooks’ position coach, Shawn Slocum, bristles at the fact of having to worry about such peripheral stuff.

"First of all, we’ve got a very different squad from a mentality standpoint right now," he said. "We are very focused. To go win on the road, you have to be focused and you have to get all the surroundings out of your mind. You have to be focused on the job at hand, and that’s playing a team. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing on the road, at home or in another country.

"I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about playing on the road or at home. I’m going to talk about lining up and kicking their butts, because that’s what it’s all about."

Sounds like a good speech for The Grove on a Thursday night.

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