Johnny Manziel and the Texas A&M Aggies handed the Alabama Crimson Tide their only loss of the 2012 season last year, and they did it on Alabama's field to boot. This year, however, Alabama says they're treating this Saturday's matchup like any other.
"Yeah, it's the only game we lost last year," said Alabama wide receiver Amari Cooper. "To me, it's not a revenge thing because if we wanted to get revenge, we'd have to play that same team last year with the same team we had last year. It's really not a revenge thing. If you lose a fight with someone, you don't get revenge from fighting someone else."
This year's showdown will be happening in Johnny Football's backyard, and some are expecting tempers and emotions to flare up all night long. Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban is saying otherwise, though.
"It's never a part of our game," he said. "We tell our players, there's no circumstance where you need to talk to another player, and there's been very little of that with our team. Businesslike is the way we'd like to approach this game. It's going to be emotional, don't get me wrong. And I'm not trying to minimize the importance when I use the term businesslike.
People who get emotional sometimes don't make the best decisions."
Manziel, the Heisman winning Aggies quarterback is one of those emotional people who make poor decisions at times. He also used those emotional highs last year to pull off the biggest upset of the season. Even though Alabama went on to win the BCS National Championship game handily, the win was still a high point of the college season.
Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron agreed with Saban that emotions will not be an issue, and that this group of players isn't dwelling on the past. "That's last year," he said. "Turn the page. I don't really focus on what happened last year no matter if we won or we lost. I'm worried about this year and what we need to do to win this year."
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