COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Halfway through the coach’s radio show, they held a random drawing for a T-shirt and a media guide. When the third and final name was called, no one answered. “She left!” someone said, and Kevin Sumlin made a quick decision.

“Must be present to win,” he said.

Everyone laughed, and settled back in for the weekly combination of barbecue and light banter. The mood was relaxed, perhaps in part because the football team had taken the previous weekend off. The bye week, Sumlin said, had come at a good time.

“Everybody can take a deep breath,” he said.

That might go for everybody even slightly affiliated with Texas A&M football. Something approaching a cautious optimism seems to be spreading in Aggieland. Could this team, which blew a 34-point lead in a loss at UCLA, which struggled to beat Nicholls State and Louisiana Lafayette, be — how should we put this — good?

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Is it possible Sumlin, whose perpetual hot-seat status was nearing critical mass, may be on the verge of regaining job security?

“People’s first reaction was, ‘Here we go again,’” said Bucky Richardson, the former A&M great, of how the season has played out so far. “This team has done a good job of reversing that and causing people to step back and say, ‘Wait, this team is different.’ ”

Well, maybe. There’s still a long way to go. The Aggies know what can happen in a season’s second half. But at 5-2 overall, 3-1 in the SEC, they’re a long way beyond where anybody expected them to be a few weeks ago, after a second-half collapse in Pasadena that seemed like a microcosm of the program’s performance in the last few years. Come Saturday, when Texas A&M hosts Mississippi State, it’s the start of a critical homestretch — but then, that’s been the case all season.

And in what would probably be the biggest upset of all, Sumlin might be on his way to winning enough to keep his job.

“We know who we are,” Sumlin said. “We’ve gotten better every week. We need to continue to do that.”

The context for the season was set in May, when Texas A&M athletic director Scott Woodward said this on the Paul Finebaum Show: “Coach knows he has to win. He has to win this year. He has to do better than he has done in the past.”

It wasn’t necessarily anything new; Woodward had said similar things before. Likewise, doubting Sumlin’s future has been an annual feature in recent years. But Woodward’s comments were spoken into college football’s loudest microphone, live on the conference’s very own network. Sumlin was on notice.

And when A&M lost that big lead to UCLA in the season opener on Sept. 3, things got ugly in a hurry. That night, Texas A&M regent Tony Buzbee blasted Sumlin in a 200-word Facebook post, saying he “can’t coach the big games.”

“Our players were better tonight,” Buzbee wrote. “Our players were more talented tonight. But our coaches were dominated on national TV, yet again. I’m only one vote on the Board of Regents, but when the time comes, my vote will be that Kevin Sumlin needs to GO. In my view, he should go now.”

(A few days later, the Houston-based attorney purchased a World War II-era army tank for $600,000. As one does.)

The next week, A&M found itself tied with FCS-level Nicholls State in the fourth quarter. A week after that, A&M and Louisiana Lafayette were tied at halftime. The Aggies won both games, but the general mood approached toxic. Adding unfathomable insult, an unsigned racist letter was mailed to Sumlin’s home. (“It’s hard,” Sumlin said this week. “It’s a tough deal.”)

Talk swirled about whether Sumlin needed to beat Arkansas to keep his job. And then after that, South Carolina. But the Aggies won both, then played closer to Alabama — a 27-19 loss — than any other opponent. It took four field goals, but A&M won at Florida.

And then, with a free weekend, it seemed like everyone looked around, realized what they’d just been through, and exhaled. That goes for the players and coaches, too.

Sumlin declined this week to directly address questions about his job status, but he doesn’t deny it has been the backdrop for the season, an ever-present issue for not only coaches but players to deal with. It’s why, when he talked about the importance of a midseason break afforded by the schedule, he referred several times to how the first half had been at least as much a mental as physical grind. As much as they tried to shut out the outside, they heard. They knew.

“This right here is dangerous,” Sumlin said, tapping his smartphone and knowing it’s how virtually every player is connected, all day long, to the world of social media. “It’s the enemy amongst us. We’ve talked about what’s important, and that’s trusting the people in this building. We can control the environment in here. We cannot control the outside.”

And they know the stakes remain high. Does A&M need to win nine games, which would mean beating either Auburn or LSU? Ten, beating both? Or given the apparent momentum and unfolding promise of youthful talent, would 8-4 possibly be enough? Woodward declined interview requests from USA TODAY Sports. Buzbee, the regent who had so much to say after the UCLA game, did not return messages.

The answers might hinge in part on which narrative gains primacy. In his sixth season at Texas A&M, Sumlin is 49-23 (24-20 in SEC play). He’s led a period with the most success since R.C. Slocum’s tenure ended in 2002. But the expectations at Texas A&M are higher — and Sumlin, whose $5 million annual salary ranks 10th among college coaches, helped to create them.

Everyone remembers that day in Tuscaloosa in 2012, when the Aggies unleashed a whirling dervish nicknamed Johnny Football on the Crimson Tide. But that was Johnny Manziel. And that was 2012. And that’s a big part of the problem.

That first season in the SEC, Sumlin’s first as A&M’s coach — 11-2 and wow, what’s coming next! — fueled the funding for the reconstruction of Kyle Field into a $485 million palace, complete with all the amenities a football program could use or want. It also stoked the idea that the Aggies were poised to become an elite powerhouse.

But after going 9-4 in 2013 with Manziel, they finished 8-5 in each of the next three seasons, roaring to fast starts each time but then unraveling. At about this time a year ago, Texas A&M was ranked No. 4 in the initial College Football Playoff Top 25, only to lose its last three SEC games.

“My job is to fix it,” Sumlin said at SEC media days in July, when so many of the questions centered on Woodward’s comments. “It’s not about talking about it. The biggest sign in our building says, ‘No Excuses.’ It’s our job to get it fixed, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Last offseason, Sumlin made changes, notably to his strength and conditioning staff, in an attempt to build more endurance and strength. The Aggies have intentionally used more players in games — an average of 57 per game — in an attempt to keep starters fresh later in the season.

“The thought process (is) in game 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12, if you’re reducing a guy’s snaps by eight or 10 a game, that’s a whole ‘nother football game,” Sumlin said.

That’s meant playing 42 freshmen or sophomores, including 18 true freshmen. And it has included the rapid development of quarterback Kellen Mond. The former five-star recruit, a true freshman, was pressed into the starter’s role early because of injury, and may be blossoming into a star.

“I think this team has gained confidence just by playing in close games and being able to win ‘em,” Sumlin said, “or even how the Alabama game ended up.”

It’s because of that growth that some, like Richardson, the former Aggie great, are preaching patience, saying stability is key to building strength in the program. But to a segment of fans — and clearly, to some power brokers, as well — there’s no time to wait. Their argument goes something like this: Sumlin is a good coach, but the Aggies should be elite — and they need someone else to get them there.

But is it possible that winning big in the SEC West — no longer the murderer’s row of a few years back, but now fully owned and operated by Alabama — is a nearly impossible task? While Texas A&M has disappointed in recent years, let’s also acknowledge the reality that the SEC is Nick Saban’s world. Everyone else is simply trying to survive in it.

Sumlin is one of two active SEC coaches to have beaten Alabama; Auburn’s Gus Malzahn is the other). Both guys have a tenuous hold on their jobs.

“Have we won all the games that — did we go undefeated every year? No,” Richardson said. “But we do play in a very tough league in a very tough division. Every team we play in the SEC thinks they should win every game every year.”

That’s true in Aggieland, too, which is why that deep breath was nice — but these next few games seem pretty important. Three in a row are at Kyle Field, starting Saturday with Mississippi State and then Auburn after that. Richardson called them “50-50 games,” and added: “The season is in the balance.” The program might still be, too. Everything could change Saturday or next week or next month.

“We’re just midseason,” Sumlin said. “There’s a lot of football to go.”

But with five games left, he is still present. The Aggies are winning.