2022. The Machines have won. College Football has once again been the forefront of the battleground of amateur sports, and the SEC West is a smoking crater where once there was a great conference. Alabama is under prohibitive sanctions after Saban’s timely retirement in 2020. Auburn is being helmed by a Bowden cousin that floated in from the Caribbean somewhere. Dan Mullen took the Ole Miss job and the economy of Mississippi imploded. Bret Bielema went “camping” with some “boosters” one weekend in 2019 and got “lost.” Louisiana has declared independence and Ed Orgeron and the football team are now the secret police.

And Texas A&M finished 8-5.

This is the one certainty in life: 8-5. Texas A&M over the next five years will continue to do these things:

Overwhelm occasionally. Beat a top-five team on the road when everyone thinks they’re down-and-out.

Jump out to amazing starts in September. Knocking off a respectable non-conference foe, then cruising through the first few weeks of conference play.

Collapse and incinerate miserably in late-October. It’s not even the hot teams that catch us. It’s the middling 2-5 division bottom-feeders that jump out and chop our legs from under us. Dan Mullen in Oxford? Psssht. Forget it.

Sumlin will be the victim of countless firing rumors each December. And each December he’ll somehow pull a magical hire/transfer out of his hat and weather the storm. Every other year he’ll beat a down ACC powerhouse in a bowl game to cement momentum headed into the bowl game. Aggies don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed each year they have a successful post-season.

This dystopian future is already here, so there’s no use feigning horror. 8-5 is the rite of passage we’ve been assigned by the football gods, and it’s been ours to endure for the last three years. There are no signs of it letting up. We are now part of something greater: a grand experiment from which extricating ourselves is no certainty. Will perpetual 8-5 seasons be enough to sustain a beast as thirsty and untapped as the Texas A&M Football program? Will we manage to find the perfect balance of acceptance and malaise to harness this mediocre beast and ride it comfortably into the sunset? Or will the frustrations finally become too much? Will the clamor for Sumlin’s head turn into an insatiable bloodlust that no amount of timely wins, flashy draft picks, or December tricks can alleviate? Do we dance with this devil we know so well, or do we risk it all on that fleeting chance at something so much greater than 8-5?

What do we think?