Texas A&M’s SEC story still circles back to Kevin Sumlin.
The former Aggies coach, now leading the UFL’s Dallas Renegades, says the job in College Station has only gotten harder since he left. And with Texas A&M sitting at 4-3 and 1-3 in the SEC under third-year coach Mike Elko, that view lands with extra weight.
The Aggies head to No. 13 Alabama on Saturday as a 14-point underdog, and a losing record is still very much on the table with the schedule they have left.
“You have a chance to sit back and look at it, and every (Texas A&M coach) has had some sort of issue,” Sumlin told the Star-Telegram in an interview last week. “Whatever it is, there has been an issue. And now it’s become a lot tougher even when I was there.”
That’s a blunt assessment from the coach whose first two seasons in the SEC remain the best consecutive stretch Texas A&M has had since joining the league. It also fits the reality of where the program has landed. The Aggies made the playoff last season, returned a senior starting quarterback, and now find themselves among the nation’s most disappointing teams in college football.
Nine years have passed since Texas A&M moved on from Sumlin after his sixth season in College Station. Jimbo Fisher followed, and his run was worse than Sumlin’s and much more expensive. The program’s best season this century is still widely considered to be 2012, when Johnny Manziel won the Heisman Trophy, Texas A&M beat Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl, finished 11-2 and landed at No. 5 in the final AP Poll.
That year included the game that still burns brightest for Aggie fans: the 2012 win over No. 1 Alabama in Tuscaloosa. It remains one of the defining moments of Texas A&M’s time in the SEC, but Sumlin says it was never a sign of what was coming next.
Why the job changed so much, in his view, has a lot to do with what the SEC used to look like and what it looks like now. When A&M entered the league, the conference had 14 teams, with Missouri and the Aggies arriving together. At the time, leaving the Big 12 was supposed to give Texas A&M something different.
“When we moved to the SEC, it really separated A&M in the state. People thought it was crazy, but it drew a line.
We weren’t playing Texas anymore,” he said. “And you’re really not recruiting the same guy; you’re recruiting the same guys, but you’re not.
Does that make sense?”
It does. Back then, Texas A&M had a cleaner sales pitch. That edge disappeared when Texas and Oklahoma joined the SEC in 2024.
“In certain ways, this is a harder job now than just being in the SEC West,” Sumlin said. “Your main competition (Texas) you have to play and beat, not only in recruiting but on the field, let alone LSU, and Alabama and the rest. So it has become a tougher job.”
Sumlin also pointed to something Texas A&M had to learn the hard way after entering the league: not every challenge was going to come from the obvious heavyweights.
“People would always say, ‘Why can’t we beat the Mississippi schools?’” Sumlin said.
“People didn’t understand that then that those teams had good players. Guys like Dak Prescott, or A.J.
Brown.”
During Sumlin’s time in College Station, Texas A&M went 3-3 against Ole Miss and 3-3 against Mississippi State. Since then, the SEC numbers have remained tight: Ole Miss is 6-5 against the Aggies, while Texas A&M is 8-5 against Mississippi State.
“They understand it, especially now. It’s what it was; you can look back and say, ‘Well, nobody understood that.’
The fan base didn’t recognize it because we had never played them,” he said. “And now they know this is a little bit different (from the Big 12).
They understood Texas and Oklahoma, so combine that, and it’s a tougher row to hoe.”
Sumlin also sees a broader reality settling over the super-conference era. The margins are tighter, the pressure is bigger, and not everyone gets to stay on top.
“Everybody can’t win,” Sumlin said. “The conferences are tougher, and there are more people, more eyeballs, more money, and it creates more pressure.”
Texas A&M is now in its 15th season in the SEC, still chasing the high point of those early years under Sumlin.
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