Women put A&M in the spotlight

Gary Blair would have been smiling walking through the Indianapolis airport Wednesday.

Texas A&M's T-shirts were at the front on the cart hawking Final Four paraphernalia. The gobs of Notre Dame stuff was in the background.

As Blair said before beating the Irish for the women's basketball championship Tuesday night, few remember who finishes second. He also said he'd like to walk through airports and see A&M items alongside the likes of Ohio State, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma and Florida.

The man who for eight seasons threw out candy before home games does more than talk the dream. He lives it, giving Aggies the sweetest treat possible, a national title.

You can't begin to measure what that means to the women's basketball program, athletics in general at A&M, and just the school.

ESPN's telecast averaged 3.8 million viewers, which was higher than last year's 3.5 million who saw Connecticut win its second straight title by beating Stanford. That was a lot of folks, some for the first time seeing Texas A&M put its best foot forward. The Aggies became the best feel-good story with each victory in the NCAA tournament. The players become stars. Sure Danielle Adams was an All-American beforehand, but she showed why. And the nation also learned her story, about having to attend junior college, but making the most out of it to become the player of the year. Then she repeated the process at A&M, each season losing 40 pounds to get in the shape needed to be successful, but never losing the humbleness that made her a great teammate.

The team's other starters -- senior point guard Sydney Colson, junior guard Sydney Carter, junior forward Adaora Elonu and junior wing Tyra White -- along with sixth man Maryann Baker had equally compelling stories. Colson was the face of the program, a striking, vibrant young woman who has CEO written all over her dynamic personality. The 5-foot-6 Carter talked softly, but played bigger. White was the smiling, quiet assassin, who had a knack for big shots. Elonu got the big rebounds and buckets that were needed, but never noticed. And Baker was a leader on the court, and an even bigger one off it. Most of all, they were just great student-athletes representing A&M to the best of their abilities.

It also was a great three weeks for associate head coach Vic Schaefer who gave the nation a glimpse of one of the country's best defensive minds at work. He also had an uncanny gift for making players give their all play after play, game after game.

And then there's Blair. The Final Four was made for him. He had the national media buzzing. One writer became so charmed by Blair that he was rooting for the Aggies to win, because if Notre Dame had won, his story would have been killed for one about the Irish.

"This is just too good a story," he said.

It was, and Blair had plenty to do with it. He's maybe the greatest coaching ambassador the school has had. He started plugging athletics director Bill Byrne and the success of A&M's other sports in the first- and second-round games in Shreveport, gave his CliffsNotes version of how great the program was at the Dallas Regional, then gave a mini thesis at the Final Four of how there are few places more electrifying to be than Aggieland.

The key was people listened.

"Evidently, A&M is pretty good in a lot of sports," I overheard one national writer telling another after drinking the Blair Kool-Aid. "They've won national championships in golf, equestrian, softball and a couple in track. I'm going to write about that in tomorrow's paper."

You could argue that the guy was clueless. A&M, of course, is great in a ton of sports -- sixth last season in the NCAA Division I Learfield Sports Directors' Cup that rates the Top 10 women's and men's programs at each school. But until A&M has success in the major sports -- football, basketball and baseball -- it will fly under the radar when some people talk about the nation's best collegiate programs.

But with the nation's best women's basketball writers doing stories on Texas A&M along with almost twice as many viewers watching the outcome as those who saw South Carolina beat UCLA to win the College World Series last season, the Aggies are winning over fans.

So, forget that when the confetti dropped from the rafters it was blue and gold, which strangely matched Notre Dame's colors. Considering the economy, it probably was the cheapest the NCAA could find since it was Indiana.

And yes, it did seem that ESPN wanted a Stanford-UConn rematch, and then once that fizzled, jumped on the Irish bandwagon. And maybe some of the network's personalities didn't warm up to A&M , but that's their prerogative.

None of that matters now. The championship hardware came home on the Aggies' charter.

This could be the start of something bigger. That would be great, but the only thing that matters is that this remarkable team is the nation's best.

And many of us have the T-shirt to prove it, but more importantly, others will be buying them, some at airports.

Robert Cessna's email address is robert.cessna@theeagle.com.