COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Texas A&M promises that Yell Practice will still be held at midnight. Reveille, the Aggies' mascot since 1931, will always be a collie. The students will continue to stand throughout the game, symbolic of the 12th Man ready to enter the game.

After that, however, all bets are off.

New Texas A&M coach Kevin Sumlin is overseeing quite a transition in Aggieland. Brett Davis/US Presswire

There's a new coaching staff with new schemes for the players. There's a new building under construction. There are new windscreens on the fences that line the practice field. They share a trait with the new shirts on sale at the bookstores. Who knew that a blue circle with yellow letters that spell "SEC" went so well with maroon?

Everywhere you turn in Aggieland, there's a football program in transition.

All head coach Kevin Sumlin has to do is look out the windows of his third-floor office in the Bright Football Complex. At eye level last week, Sumlin could watch workers building the roof of the $9 million player performance center, the new football-only weight room that will be sweat-ready Aug. 1.

When that is done, the program will take a beautiful unused patio behind the south end zone and use the space to build a "nutrition center" for all sports. And this week, Texas A&M announced that it had hired a firm to begin planning the renovation and expansion of Kyle Field. These are the types of facilities that only the top echelon of schools can afford. That's the neighborhood into which the Aggies have moved.

"I've heard some of our fans say, 'We were always an SEC school. We just didn't know it," athletic director Bill Byrne said.

Even the fans are in transition. After the earliest sellout of season tickets in Aggie history, Byrne said: "One of the issues we're dealing with is a lot of fans who were always used to being able to walk up and buy a seat in the stadium. They can't do that now. They're having to go to the secondary market."