The 411 on a college football weekend that has the Aggies at the top of the food chain

[caption id="attachment_26236" align="alignright" width="350"]Photo by Jerome Hicks Photo by Jerome Hicks[/caption] While swaths of Austin and Houston had a very bad Saturday, the party was rocking in College Station. Here's all you need to know from the college football weekend. Four ObservationsTexas A&M gets another signature win The Aggies planted a flag as the second best team in the SEC with a double-overtime victory over Tennessee at home. Texas A&M shouldn’t have needed overtime to win, but the effort showed some mental toughness from a team that almost gave the game away late. SEC teams don’t have to win pretty. The reputation of the conference is such that a win is a win. Even if Tennessee didn’t look overly impressive in its previous wins, A&M still scored a win over a top-10 team. Kevin Sumlin’s program gets an idle week to prepare for Oct. 22’s road contest against Alabama. An upset win there gives A&M the inside track towards an SEC Championship and a berth into the College Football Playoffs. Houston stumbles While one team in Texas helped bolster its resume, Houston lost all chance at winning a national title by falling on the road to Navy. The weather wasn’t great and quarterback Greg Ward turned the ball over four times. The surprising effort was that of the defense. Navy’s offensive system is unique in college football and the Cougars weren’t prepared for the motion. The defensive line didn’t get enough penetration and the linebackers were late to fill. The end result was an upset loss and elimination from playoff talk. Going undefeated is hard. Houston learned that in the past two seasons. A shot at the Cotton Bowl still looms, but it’ll take Houston running the table. And everyone else looked bad, too It was a rough week for Big 12 schools in Texas outside of idle Baylor. TCU won by one point on the road against Kansas. Texas Tech lost to Kansas State by allowing 44 points and the Longhorns allowed 45 in a defeat to Oklahoma in Dallas. All three programs entered the season with hopes of 10 wins. Now, each is hoping to reach eight wins. Texas has lost three straight and Charlie Strong’s seat is warming past comfort. Kliff Kingsbury is yet to figure out defense. TCU is a mess. Baylor hosts Kansas this week, but we’ll find out more about the Bears in the following three weeks with road games against Texas and Oklahoma sandwiched around a home game against TCU. New faces record big victories First-year head coaches Seth Littrell and Frank Wilson deserve a hat tip for their program’s Conference USA wins over the weekend. Each inherited teams with rosters not suited to compete for conference titles. Yet, North Texas stands at 2-1 in conference play and halfway to a bowl berth with three wins after thumping Marshall. North Texas won one game last year and that was against UTSA. The Roadrunners stunned Southern Miss at home, a team that knocked off Kentucky to start the season. Both coaches have the programs moving in the right direction. One Question Does Charlie Strong make it through the season? It appears Strong will head towards the exit once the season ends. Barring an undefeated finish to the season, Strong will no longer be the head coach of Longhorn football. He inherited a laughably bad roster for what Texas should have, but he’s still underachieved despite it. Yes, Mack Brown left the roster in shambles and Strong is forced to play older guys with less talent or younger guys still learning how to play college football. The end result is a stale program clearly building talent but not building consistency. Strong has already fired or demoted the two coordinators he brought with him to this job. He’s the only one left to blame. Texas hosts Iowa State this week before games against Kansas State, Baylor, Texas Tech and West Virginia. One or two more losses, especially without defensive improvement, could mean Strong is out the door before Texas concludes its season at home against TCU. One Prediction Rice wins a CUSA game before the season ends.

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