#21 Texas A&M whipped #7 South Carolina 52-28 on Thursday night in the biggest game of the first day of the new college football season. The Aggies also ended the Gamecocks‘ 18-game home winning streak, the longest home winning streak in the nation.
Apparently the loss of #1 NFL draft pick, defensive end Jadaveon Clowney of South Carolina, was a bigger loss to his team than Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Johnny Manziel was to Texas A&M. Manziel’s replacement Kenny Hill threw for a school record 511 yards, on 44 of 60 passing and 3 touchdowns.
South Carolina’s new starting quarterback Dylan Thompson threw for 366 yards and 4 touchdowns himself. This was not your old fashioned SEC defensive struggle. The teams combined for over 1100 yards of total offense. The 393 yards that the Aggies had at halftime, was more than the Gamecocks allowed in 9 of 13 games last year.
With the new college football playoff starting at the end of this season, consisting of the top 4 teams in the nation, South Carolina is already in serious danger of missing out, after their first game. With 4 games remaining against teams currently ranked in the Top 25 preseason rankings, and a 24-point home loss against Texas A&M, they may need to run the table to have a chance to earn a spot in the playoff.
After scoring the first 10 points of the game, Texas A&M held a 17-14 lead early in the 2nd period, before scoring 2 more touchdowns to close out the first half with a 31-14 lead. South Carolina never got any closer.
This was the first game on the new SEC network, and South Carolina fell miserably short of how they hoped to start the season. After 3 straight 11-2 seasons, the Gamecocks will have to play a lot better defensively to even get close to that mark this year.
It’s great to have college football back finally, and the season started off with a bang, with the introduction of a possible new star quarterback at Texas A&M. Manziel tweeted after Hill’s record performance “Kenny Football”, but Hill said he didn’t really like that nickname. This is just day 1 on the way to the inaugural college football playoff, the beginning of a new era.
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Sports With Frank Thomas
Howdy! This blog post couldn’t be written any better!
Reading through this post reminds me of my previous roommate!
He constantly kept preaching about this.
I’ll send this information to him. Fairly certain he will have a very good read.
Many thanks for sharing!