10 Things for Tuesday

We hit a little bit of everything in this week’s TTFT, sponsored by Brent Campbell:

1. Hi, I’m Quarterback 1. I am a very big name. In 2025, over a projected 13-game season (I only played in 7 games), I would have completed 269 of 44 passes for 3,458 yards, 19 touchdowns and 6 interceptions. That’s a completion percentage of 60.6% and an average of 7.8 yards per attempt. My passer rating would have been 148. I would have also rushed for 569 yards and 9 TD for 4,027 yards of total offense. I led my team to the CFP two years ago and just made a ton of money!

Hi, I’m QB 2. I am considered a mid-level quarterback in my conference. Last season, in 13 games, I completed 234 of 377 passes, a completion rate of 62.7%, for 3,169 yards, 25 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. My average yards per attempt was 8.4 and my passer rating was 148.2. I also rushed for 493 yards and 6 touchdowns last year, as my team went to the CFP.

Quarterback 1 is Sam Leavitt. Quarterback 2 is Marcel Reed. Just for the heck of it, I asked both Grok and ChatGPT who had the better season, and both said Reed. Grok said Reed was “clearly better” and gave him props for doing his work in the SEC while Leavitt did his in the Big 12.  

Just keep all this in mind the next time you see someone slobbering all over Leavitt while dismissing Reed. And I know a lot of you really want to do that right now.

2. Ross Bjork will always be dragged for the Jimbo Fisher extension and subsequent firing, then botching the hiring of the football coach before fleeing to Ohio State, but he does deserve credit for hiring two men and one woman with a vision and a plan. Trev Alberts deserves credit for continuing that trend with the hiring of Bucky McMillan. 

Bjork hired volleyball coach Jamie Morrison all by himself, and then hired Mike Elko because he was looking down the barrel of the proverbial gun after the idiotic Mark Stoops debacle. Luckily for Bjork, both men came in with a very clear idea of what they wanted to do. Morrison came in not only came in with a plan to rebuild the Aggie volleyball program quickly, but make it sustainable while making Texas A&M a volleyball hotbed — two things that go hand in hand. Clearly, Morrison has succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations, as he brought home a national championship in his third season. 

Having the benefit of coaching at A&M before, Elko knew not only what he wanted to do, but how he wanted to do it. Perhaps just as importantly, he knew what didn’t work and wanted to avoid it. Elko talks a lot about the program’s culture, and he firmly believed that the one he inherited wasn’t working (and he was right). Unlike some people who have a “culture coach” on staff, Elko went right to the locker room and started the rebuild there. Two seasons in, he’s won 19 games, had the Aggies win double-digit games for the first time since 2012 and won more games than any team since the 1990s. 

Trisha Ford came in and took over a softball program that was rudderless. She made Aggie softball a national program by expanding the recruiting envelope. NIL helped as well. Ford took advantage of everything she had to work with and has a consistent top-10 team now.

We’re seeing what McMillan can do now. (And I didn’t even talk about track, tennis or golf.)

A&M not only has a bunch of coaches who have experienced recent success, but ones who are cerebral. It’s possible to be sports-smart and otherwise not so bright, but these recent hires seem to get the big picture.

3. Look for a lot of 3-pointers tomorrow night when the Aggies face off with Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide is first in the nation when it comes to jacking up 3’s, shooting 35.6 per game. A&M shoots almost 31 a game. I don’t know what the SEC record for 3-point attempts in a game is, but it’s probably already in danger.

4. The Texas A&M baseball team isn’t getting a whole lot of love in the preseason polling, which I can understand after last year — to an extent. But I feel pretty confident in saying that this team is going to hit, and they’ll do it with a well-designed lineup.

You’ve got speed (Terrence Kiel II);

The classic 2 hole hitter, with average and great bat control (Jake Duer)

Then you’ve got big time power and average 3-5, with Chris Hacopian, Gavin Grahovac and Caden Sorrell;

A guy with a lot of gap power and the ability to go yard while hitting .300 in Wesley Jordan (I see him at first)

A bopper at catcher in Bear Harrison;

A guy who had some surprising pop last year in Ben Royo;

Then you can pick and choose with how you want to align things, whether you want Travis Chestnut in the outfield or Blake Binderup at first or DH. Also, true freshman Nick Partida sounds like he’s making a push for playing time, so that could work things around to fit him too.

5. When putting that lineup together, I had kind of forgotten about the addition of Jordan. He really could be the difference in making this thing click. Having three power/average hitters is good; having four will give opposing pitchers nightmares. There aren’t many holes in this lineup, if any. 

6. With the creation of the Aggie Football Club, Texas A&M has come up with a new funding vehicle for the program and players (probably almost entirely players). That’s just part of the new landscape, and it should be pretty awesome for fans who can afford to join up. But I bring this up not because it’s cool, but because of who was in the intro video posted online and what they were wearing. Terry Bussey was wearing number 6 (which he could’ve worn last year) and Ashton Bethel-Roman was wearing number 8. ABR had indicated he was changing numbers earlier in the offseason, but the Bussey move is kind of a surprise (at least to me).

7. The presence of Bussey in that video shows that he’s very much in the plans for the 2026 season. Everyone else in it — Reed, Rueben Owens, DJ Hicks, Daymion Sanford and ABR — are key pieces to the puzzle. Bussey’s not in it because he’s a nice guy.

8. There’s always one transfer who comes in and I immediately start banging the drum for him. It was easy to pick KC Concepcion, but I went with Dayon Hayes and that worked out pretty well. This year I’m going with UNC transfer defensive tackle CJ Mims. He’s a veteran, had 42 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss and 2 sacks last year on a bad Tar Heels team, making him a little more productive than Tyler Onyedim was his final year at Iowa State. If he makes the jump similar to that of Onyedim, the Aggie defensive tackle rotation is going to be in great shape.

9. I really ought to let this go, but I’m enjoying the Buzz Williams/Maryland debacle entirely too much. The grumbling in the D.C. area is getting pretty loud, and it all sounds the same — a guy who talks one way and acts another; is pushing his own brand (TeamCoachBuzz) instead of the program’s and tosses so much word salad at press conferences that even politicians down the road are appalled. People are really livid that he last appeared on the Maryland Basketball Radio Show on Dec. 9 and won’t the rest of the year. On the other hand, former coach Gary Williams (who actually won something, back in 2002) will be on twice. This is the worst season in Maryland basketball history and Buzz has no answers for it. The idea that a pass should be given because he got in late and had no roster was blown up by…oh, the guy who replaced him.

And Maryland can’t play offense or shoot free throws. 

10. Tomorrow is Alabama’s last game before the weekend, and Charles Bediako has a court hearing on his eligibility Friday. So the Aggies will play against a guy who spent three years in the G-League and may not play college basketball again after tomorrow night. Can you imagine the injury report Friday night? Questionable — Charles Bediako (litigation).

That’s the world we live in, kids.

Our sponsor

Sponsored by Brent Campbell, Fighting Texas Aggie Class of 1998. Brent is a Commercial Real Estate Broker, serving all of Central Texas and specializing in sales, leasing & development. He leads a retail acquisition and sales team and was recognized by the Austin Business Journal as a Commercial Real Estate Heavy Hitter in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020 & 2023.

In the last 22 years, he has closed deals with a total transactional value of over $375 million and has leased more than 4.5 million square feet. Brent currently serves as the president of the board of directors for Habitat Homes, Inc. and Pathways Youth and Family Services. He is a former president of the Heart of Round Rock Neighborhood Association and a former member of the Round Rock Zoning Advisory Committee, the Round Rock Business and Retention Committee, and the City of Round Rock Ethics Commission, which has led him to begin developing in Williamson and Travis County.

An Austin native, Brent lives in Round Rock where he and his wife have raised four boys. Brent works for Don Quick and Associates, Inc. in Round Rock, TX and can be reached at [email protected].