COLLEGE STATION, Texas -- Five seasons have gone by in a blink, until you stop and think about how far Texas A&M has come in the Kevin Sumlin era.

That is hard to do, stopping and thinking, given the ongoing telenovela that has been Aggies football: big wins, bigger losses, revolving-door coordinators, revolving-door rosters, lewd assistants and, of course, Johnny Football. Behind the scenes of the drama, however, the Aggies program underwent a complete makeover.

While this is the third time that Texas A&M (6-0) has reached No. 6 under Sumlin, the Aggies team that goes to Tuscaloosa on Saturday to play No. 1 Alabama (7-0) is a more muscular animal, financially and literally, than ever before.

That may not be enough to knock off a Crimson Tide program that has people searching history, not to mention Roget's Thesaurus, for the appropriate descriptors. But it is an indication that the program is on firmer footing than when Sumlin arrived.

"You've got, really, a couple of ways you can do it," Sumlin said in his office Monday. "You can go about it and say, 'Here's what we believe in, and I'm going to start here and work through philosophically the way you want to do things.'"

Kevin Sumlin, in his fifth season at Texas A&M, is 42-16 with the Aggies. Scott Halleran/Getty Images

He cited Bret Bielema as an example of that method. Bielema brought a physical style from Wisconsin to Arkansas in 2013, and the Razorbacks lost the first 13 Southeastern Conference games they played trying to adapt to his demands. Since then, they are 8-6 in the league and 16-8 overall.

"Over time, he was able to do that," Sumlin said. "I wasn't sure I had that amount of time."

Sumlin knew what had happened to the Aggies in the 10 years before he arrived. A&M fired R.C. Slocum, who pretty much went straight from College Station into the College Football Hall of Fame, not to mention Dennis Franchione, who had taken teams to first place in four different conferences, and Mike Sherman, the former head coach and general manager of the Green Bay Packers.

Those three men won a combined 422 games in college and pro football, and their careers screeched to a halt at Kyle Field.

The Aggies team that Sumlin took over had speed. It didn't have size. Time, again, to stop and think. The up-tempo spread offense that is the norm these days didn't exist in the SEC that Texas A&M joined. As unique a talent as Johnny Manziel proved to be in 2012 and 2013, no one in the SEC knew how to deal with the scheme that showcased him, either.

For most linebackers who timed the snap perfectly and crashed through a gap to confront a quarterback, that's where a play ended. With Manziel, that's where it began. Manziel thrived because he could buy himself time. But his greatest legacy may be that he bought the entire program time.

"You have to have a chance to win," Sumlin said, "so to do that, we were different and utilized our skill set. Of course, Johnny was not only maybe the best player in the country, he was certainly the most exciting player in the country, which gave us the opportunity to increase the roster."

Manziel's success -- he won the 2012 Heisman and propelled the Aggies to a final AP ranking that year of No. 6 -- gave Texas A&M the entrée to compete for top recruits such as defensive end Myles Garrett, now a junior. Manziel also bought time for the administration to come to grips with the financial commitment and mental will it would take to engage in the SEC arms race.

"Winning had a lot to do with that -- resource commitment," Sumlin said. "But they also saw what this league had."

Since Sumlin arrived, Texas A&M has spent $450 million on an expansion and makeover of Kyle Field, turning an erector set into a showplace; the program also has built a $12 million player performance center (nee weight room) and a $12 million nutrition center (nee training table).

Texas A&M also understood that it had to ramp up its coaches' salaries. In Sumlin's mind, the doubling of his salary, to $5 million this season, is less relevant than the increase in the salary pool for assistants. According to USA Today's annual survey of coaches' salaries, that pool increased from $2.68 million in 2012 to $4.4 million in 2015.

The toughness of the Aggies' defense reflects the coaching of coordinator John Chavis, whom Sumlin lured away from LSU two years ago with a salary of $1.6 million per season. Last winter, Sumlin hired Noel Mazzone from UCLA to be his offensive coordinator for a guaranteed three-year deal that at completion will have paid Mazzone a total of $2.56 million.

Kevin Sumlin signed players such as Armani Watts, who had the game-winning interception in overtime against Tennessee, and was forced to watch them learn on the field. AP Photo/David J. Phillip

They are coaching a more talented roster than Sumlin found when he arrived. When he signed recruits such as Garrett and strong safety Armani Watts in 2014, they were good enough to start that fall. Part of the reason is that the Aggies lost three juniors in the first round of the 2013 and '14 drafts: offensive tackle Luke Joeckel, Manziel and wide receiver Mike Evans.

As much talent as Garrett and Watts brought to College Station, there's a reason the Aggies went 3-5 in the SEC in 2014. Boys played men. Watts started the season with an interception in the opener against South Carolina, but when "we got to around Game 6 or 7, and Armani just got overwhelmed," Sumlin said. "Had to take him off the field. ... But now he's a junior.

"He understands that his body has changed. His mental preparation during the week and his physical preparation during the week are different. And that comes with education and experience."

That brings up the last change that Sumlin engineered. Over the last 10 months, strength coach Larry Jackson revamped the way the Aggies work out to expedite a transition from a speed-based team to one more balanced between speed and strength.

Sumlin had seen the Aggies wear down too many times in the fourth quarter. Some of that had to do with playing teenagers. Some of it had to do with the emphasis on speed, and some with the realization that the SEC had learned how to defend the up-tempo spread.

"We changed our philosophy about who we are," Sumlin said. "We looked at the end zone tape. The mass just looked different." Meaning the Aggies were not as big from hip to hip as their SEC opponents.

This season, Texas A&M made a goal-line stand in the final seconds to stop Arkansas. The Aggies beat Tennessee in double overtime. They are not wearing down. Texas A&M under Sumlin has engineered a complete makeover and gone 42-16 (.724) while doing it.

The next test will be getting to the fourth quarter against Alabama. This is not the Aggies team that, with Manziel, upset No. 1 Alabama 29-24 in Tuscaloosa in 2012. More important, it's not the Aggies team that Alabama humiliated 59-0 at Bryant-Denny in 2014. By every measure, Sumlin's team is bigger and stronger.