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That championship season: from Midnight Yell Practice to the Twelfth Man, Texas A&M has one of the most storied football programs in the country. But only the 1939 Aggies can lay claim to the sport's ultimate prize.

Article Excerpt
Whether you love the Aggies or hate them, there's no argument about how passionate they are about football. Their fans yell when others cheer. They stand when others sit. They smooch when others high-five. They revere the Twelfth Man, Midnight Yell Practice, the Corps of Cadets, Reveille, and, despite tragedy, Bonfire. But for all the pageantry and history--one that's long on legends like Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and Heisman trophy winner John David Crow--Texas A&M has won only one national championship. And it was all the way back in 1939.

Today's Aggies, however, can relate to the pressures the program faced in the late thirties. At the helm was a coach, Homer Norton, whose job was on the line after five up-and-down seasons. His goals were clear: Take down tough conference opponents like SMU and TCU and, of course, beat UT. But if winning was important, so was the bottom line. The university needed Norton's teams to succeed to help save Kyle Field and pay off some $200,000 in defaulted loans (as far as we know,...

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