By ROBERT CESSNAThe Texas A&M football players believe Shreveport, La., is a great destination. They are downright giddy about spending Christmas there. They can't wait until Wednesday to arrive and revel in the Independence Bowl festivities leading up to next Monday's game against Georgia.
But a stay in the third largest city in Louisiana won't be confused with the Cotton Bowl and the West End in Dallas or the Sugar Bowl and Bourbon Street in New Orleans. But it beats being home for the holidays after a 4-8 season, which made for a long Christmas break last year for Aggies.
"We're excited to be playing in a bowl game. That's your goal to play in a bowl game," senior strong safety Jordan Pugh said. "Last year, we didn't get to experience that for the first time in my career."
Georgia isn't as gung-ho about heading to Shreveport, and rightfully so.
This is Georgia's 13th straight bowl trip, but only the fifth time the Bulldogs aren't playing in a New Year's Day-type bowl.
So Georgia players haven't been too complimentary about spending Christmas in Shreveport and playing a 6-6 team. The Bulldogs, who were among six Southeastern Conference teams with a 7-5 record, had hoped to be picked for the Chick-fil-A Bowl in nearby Atlanta. But Georgia slipped to the league's next-to-last bowl and was shipped more than 600 miles away.
The Independence Bowl also is a rung up from the bottom in the Big 12 bowl pecking order, but A&M is looking at it as a trip earned, not a sentence to purgatory.
"We're just excited getting another chance to play," A&M junior quarterback Jerrod Johnson said. "On top of that, you go to a bowl game to play football. Shreveport is a great town, I've heard a lot of good things about it."
Probably from defensive coordinator Joe Kines, who was Alabama's interim coach when the Tide played Oklahoma State in the 2006 Independence Bowl.
"We're very excited about going," Kines said." They are really good people in Shreveport. Their bowl committee does a great job. The community gets in there behind it. It will be a good experience and we're looking forward to going down and being a part of that."
Other than a delightful snow storm, A&M didn't enjoy its trip to Shreveport in 2000, suffering a 43-41 overtime loss to Mississippi State. The Aggie program was in a downward cycle. A&M had won the Big 12 South in 1997, then won the league the following year, playing in the Sugar Bowl. A&M slipped to the Alamo Bowl in 1999 and after losing the Snow Bowl in Shreveport the Aggies fell to the galleryfurniture.com Bowl in 2001. Then the Aggies opted not to even go bowling in 2002 after a 6-6 season.
That's certainly not the case this year. The Aggies are glad to be one of eight break-even teams among 68 postseason teams.
Second-year head coach Mike Sherman and the players should enjoy this week in Shreveport, they've earned it. But the reality is the fans won't be satisfied with a 6-6 record and a bottom-tier bowl trip next year.
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The 65-year-old Kines didn't want to talk about his future at Friday's press conference.
"The most important thing about my future is getting this practice done today," said Kines, who was out of coaching for a year when Sherman hired him in February 2008 to replace Reggie Herring, who was at A&M less than a month before being named linebackers coach for the Dallas Cowboys.
A&M is allowing 431.3 yards per game, which is 107th in the country. A&M was 114th last season (461.9 ypg).
Some critics of the program would like to see Kines replaced, but Sherman gave a typical response to whether he expected all of his assistants to return.
"At the end of every season, after our last ballgame, I sit down with [my assistant coaches] and we go through an evaluation process," Sherman said. "We'll do that once this season is over with."
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During his last time in Shreveport, Kines as Alabama's interim head coach had a memorable 23-second halftime interview by ESPN that became a hit on YouTube.
"We gotta stop that little inside trap," a smiling Kines shouted in a raspy voice. "The option didn't hurt us much. We're playing pretty hard. We just gotta stop that inside thing.
"Offensively, we kinda sputtered around. We got the ball in end zone. Defensively, we gotta get off the field in that two-minute drive."
The sideline reporter asked Kines what he was going to tell his team.
"Just go play," Kines said. "We just gotta keep playing."
One of the announcers in the booth afterward suggested that Kines' previous job was a jackhammer operator.
OSU had a 24-14 halftime lead en route to a 34-31 victory.
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Sherman said freshman cornerback/punt returner Dustin Harris (ankle) will be 100 percent by kickoff. Harris started the first 10 games. ... Georgia's string of 13 straight bowl appearances is fourth best along with rival Georgia Tech. Florida State will be making its 28th straight trip followed by Florida (19) and Virginia Tech (17). Kines was at Georgia from 1995-99 under Ray Goff and Jim Donnan.
INDEPENDENCE BOWL
Dec. 28, 4 p.m. Shreveport, La.
Texas A&M, 6-6, vs. Georgia, 7-5
TV/radio: ESPN2/WTAW (1620 AM)
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