6 Days 'til: Top-ranked Aggies face daunting SEC schedule in 2025

It’s that time of year! The Texas Aggie baseball team is set to open up the 2025 season on Friday against Elon at Olsen Field at Blue Bell Park. We’re counting down the days with our 2025 Aggie Baseball Preview Series.

The following is an entirely fictitious scenario manufactured in my brain. In no way is it subliminally dripping with any innuendo.

August 2024 - Michael Earley is busy preparing for his players to return to school for the fall semester. His phone has been ringing off the hook for several weeks, but this particular morning, he gets a call from a phone number he doesn't recognize with a Birmingham area code. He decides to answer it.

"Hello?"

"Coach Earley? Hey, this is commissioner Greg Sankey calling you from the league office. I'm sitting here with my mind on football, and I completely forgot that I hadn't yet congratulated you on being the next head baseball coach of the Fightin' Texas Aggies. Neat-O, huh? Anyway, as a congratulatory gift from all of us at the SEC, we decided that since you landed the job, held on to all those talented players, did an outstanding job in the transfer portal and got Ryan Prager to spurn Major League Baseball, we would present you with the toughest conference schedule in history this coming spring. Have fun! Good luck! Bye!"

*Phone clicks*

Coach Earley sets the phone down, shakes his head, and mutters, "Alright, let's do it."

Welcome to being a head coach in the toughest baseball conference in America, Mike.

While the new staff was traversing those rocky waters last summer, I'm not sure the schedule played a part in the fervent pursuit of the roster, but looking back at it now, it probably could have added even extra motivation to keep players out of Baton Rouge, Knoxville, Oxford and Austin.

Simply put, it's a good thing this 2025 Texas A&M baseball team enters the spring with enough talent to garner a unanimous preseason No. 1 ranking because navigating the ups and downs of the next 4-5 months is going to be one of the more significant challenges facing the Maroon & White this spring.

Even with all the quality in the lineup and on the pitching staff, these Aggies are going to lose games against this schedule. Hopefully, we don't have to belabor that point for the entire season. However, some of the post-series reactions from last year after dropping sets at Florida, at LSU and at Ole Miss caused a bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the loudest of Debbie Downers in the fanbase and beyond.

There is more talent in college baseball now than ever before. I don't think that is debatable. A truncated MLB Draft and the elimination of many minor league teams have coalesced with the rise of NIL and players now running their eligibility beyond the age of 23, in some cases. These have all combined to significantly increase the profile and depth of the current state of college baseball. On top of that, free transfers have turned mid-major programs, for all intents and purposes, into junior colleges in terms of how they are pillaged by the big boys each summer.

With all of that out of the way, let's take a stroll through the calendar and pick apart this 2025 Texas A&M baseball schedule.

Luckily, the Aggies will have a couple of weeks to get lathered up before entering March, as most of February features zero games against Power 4 opponents. Now, that's not to say that the initial 14 days of the season will be a cakewalk, but A&M will be decided favorites vs. Elon and Cal Poly on the weekends, as well as in midweek matchups against McNeese and Texas State.

All of that begins to change as we get to the end of the month when Earley will take his team down to Houston for the Astros Foundation College Classic, where the Ags will face Arizona, Oklahoma State and Rice throughout the weekend. The Wildcats and Cowboys are strong bets to be regional teams as they each start the year in D1Baseball's top 25. It would not surprise me to see either (or both) end up as hosts when postseason brackets are announced in June.

After their stay at Daikin Park (it's weird not calling that place Minute Maid anymore), A&M will return to College Station for a 10-game homestand — the back half of which will welcome the Alabama Crimson Tide to town to start what is a bear of a conference slate. A road trip to Nashville follows the series against Rob Vaughn's Tuscaloosa nine the next weekend, where the preseason No. 16 Vanderbilt Commodores await. I'd imagine the ‘Dores have that date circled after the pummeling they received in 2024 at Blue Bell Park.

The month of March concludes with a homestand against a Kentucky team coming off its first Men's College World Series appearance in program history. I'm sure the 12th Man and Olsen Field faithful will get a kick out of Nick Mingione's bunch. Between some of their wardrobe decisions, dugout antics and bunt-you-to-death style of play, the Wildcats have turned into a sight to behold.

Jamie Maury

The Aggies’ MCWS Finals rematch vs. the Volunteers is slated for April 4-6 in Knoxville. 

April is going to be tough.

Just about all these weekends will be challenging, but April looks particularly daunting when you mix in some tricky midweeks with massive conference series.

A weekend set and rematch from last year's MCWS Finals against Tennessee gets the Aggies started, followed by a home series against South Carolina — who's under new management as Paul Mainieri takes the reins in Columbia. On the other side of that are back-to-back road series at Arkansas and Texas. Baum-Walker Stadium in Fayetteville is an exceptionally tough place to play (at least in the regular season — sorry, Hog fans). I'm honestly trying to be complimentary, and we all know what the emotions will be like when this team gets on the bus to head west toward the State Capital. By the way, in between all that, there are Tuesday night games against salty mid-major programs in the likes of Sam Houston (twice), Tarleton and Lamar — all three of which should be in postseason discussion when you look at where they're predicted to finish within their respective leagues.

If the previous 30 days weren't enough of a gauntlet, May features weekends vs. a pair of preseason top 10 teams in LSU at Blue Bell Park and then on the road in Athens to face Georgia to close the regular season. The SEC home finale against Missouri is sandwiched in between those.

All in all, A&M will play 20 games against D1Baseball’s preseason top 25. Of those, only three will occur at Blue Bell Park. The Aggies will play 17 games against programs that have won a National Championship since 2000.

Navigating this schedule is going to take more than talent, which this group of Aggies has in spades.

It's going to require some real examples of toughness, mental fortitude and unselfishness. It's going to require some lessons learned. It's going to require some callouses. It's going to require some guts.

Will the team and coaching staff have the stomach for it?

After what a large swath of this group went through last year and a head coach that they've rallied behind, I tend to believe they do.

Buckle up, though.

This is going to be a challenge even for preseason No. 1.