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 SEC debut — will end with the ninth-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 11th-ranked Oklahoma (10-2) in the Cotton Bowl tonight. 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 victory over Northwestern.
Once in the SEC, which has won 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 victory 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. It seemed to be what everyone wanted to talk about externally, but internally we just didn’t,” Sumlin said. “Any time you have to get over a hump or clear a hurdle, you have got to win a game in a certain fashion.”
Sumlin pointed to a 30-27 victory 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 BCS game after clinching a share of their eighth Big 12 title, even 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.
“I was pretty upset about it,” Sooners senior quarterback Landry Jones said. “But fortunate enough for us, we got put into this game, which you can rank them right up with those BCS games.”
Texas A&M and Oklahoma have both averaged more than 40 points and 500 yards of offense per game. The only losses by both were to current Associated Press Top 10 teams.
It is only the second Cotton Bowl appearance for the Sooners, but will be the 17th consecutive season they will play Texas A&M.
Since Bob Stoops became Oklahoma’s coach in 1999, the Sooners have won 11 of the 13 meetings. Jones threw five touchdown passes as a freshman in a 65-10 victory in 2009, though the Aggies won the next year before the Sooners won the final Big 12 meeting between the two last season.
“This is another opportunity to put a stamp on that. We figured last year would be the last time we’d play them for a while,” Sooners defensive tackle Jamarkus Mc-Farland said. “It does mean something.”
Sports, Pages 21 on 01/04/2013