ARLINGTON, Texas — Spencer Nealy and some of his Texas A&M teammates were discussing potential bowl games even before their first SEC season began.
“We were like, how funny would it be if we made the Cotton Bowl,” Nealy said. “We were looking at SEC vs. Big 12 teams. That’s what we thought about, that situation.”
Well, Texas A&M’s season of firsts — coach Kevin Sumlin’s first year, quarterback Johnny Manziel becoming the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy and the school’s SEC debut — will end with the 10th-ranked Aggies (10-2) playing a familiar Big 12 foe.
In the only bowl matching the SEC against the Big 12, Texas A&M takes on 12th-ranked Oklahoma (10-2) in the Cotton Bowl tonight [8:00, Fox, ESPN Radio (98.7 FM)]. Both teams have five-game winning streaks.
“It’s a little more than a game,” Nealy said. “It’s almost like we had a great season, but we have to win this one.”
In their 16 Big 12 seasons, the only time the Aggies won more than nine games was when they were 11-3 their 1998 conference title season. They left the league with a winning record (7-6) last season only after a bowl win over Northwestern.
Once in the SEC, which has six national titles in a row, Texas A&M lost its opener 20-17 to Florida. The other loss was 24-19 to LSU before the current winning streak that includes the Aggies’ first-ever road win against a No. 1 team — at SEC-champion Alabama, which plays in the BCS title game Monday night.
“The first thing we did was we didn’t talk about it very much what happened in the past,” Sumlin said. “It seemed to be what everyone wanted to talk about externally, but internally we just didn’t.”
Sumlin pointed to a 30-27 win at Ole Miss the first Saturday in October, when the Aggies overcame six turnovers and were down 10 points with 6 1/2 minutes left. They lost to LSU two weeks later, but haven’t lost since.
The Sooners seemed certain of a Bowl Championship Series game after clinching a share of their eighth Big 12 title, though Kansas State had a tiebreaker giving the Wildcats the league’s automatic BCS slot. But Mid-American champion Northern Illinois then qualified as a BCS buster.