Ags Go Cotton Pickin'

So it was announced this evening that A&M will be heading back up to Dallas to play in the 77th annual Cotton Bowl.

Our opponent will be Oklahoma, who were completely screwed out of a BCS bowl when Northern Illinois somehow leapt up from #21 to #15 in the BCS rankings after a win over #17 Kent State?

(and at the same time, texas only drops from #16 to #23 after losing both of the last two weekends?)

Of couse, they were only going to a BCS game because the BCS only takes two teams from each conference.  OU is ranked #11 but they would have leaped over 4 SEC schools ranked higher because Alabama and Florida got the two BCS bids.

This, to me, is a disappointing match up.  Like I said before, I love bowl games because you get an opportunity to play opponents that you normally don't get to.  This will be the 19th time we've faced OU in the last 20 years.

On the field, this should be an excellent game against two fairly evenly matched teams.  I'm just not excited.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to spend the next 30+ days trying to figure out which child I will sell to get tickets.

The game is already sold out and tickets are starting at $189 on Stubhub.

Orange Bowl tickets featuring NIU, however, are available for $16.

Over this next week we'll start seeing all of the individual player awards being handed out.  The big night is obviously next Saturday night in NYC with the Heisman but on Thursday night ESPN will be broadcasting The 2012 Home Depot College Football Awards (at 6:30pm).  There are 10 major individual awards that will announced that night.

Luke Joeckel is a finalist for the Outland Trophy for top interior lineman and Johnny is a finalist for the Maxwell Award and the Davey O'Brien.

Johnny is also a finalist for the Manning Award (announced Jan 6th) and Damontre Moore is a finalist for the Hendricks Award. (announced on Dec. 5th).

Joeckel and Moore were both also named to the 1st Team AFCA All-American squad.