Best Texas A&M football players: Modern-era Mount Rushmore

The best Texas A&M football players ever, including Johnny Manziel and Von Miller make up half of the Texas A&M football modern-era Mount Rushmore.

Playing in front of more than 100,000 fans at Kyle Field on any given Saturday, it’s safe to say that Texas A&M football is a big deal. College Station lives and dies by the successes and failures of the Aggies. And though they haven’t claimed a national title since 1939, there have been plenty more successes than failures in the history of the program.

Not only has the team now led by head coach Jimbo Fisher been a consistently above-average group but they’ve also had several boom periods where they’ve been highly relevant on a national scale. A handful of those instances, in fact, have come in the modern era since 1980. And it’s not shocking that many of the greatest Aggies to ever suit up in College Station came from those boom periods.

However, if we’re constructing the modern-era Mount Rushmore for Texas A&M football, that means there are only four spots available for the greatest Aggies to play since 1980. And to be sure, it’s a crowded list of all-timers vying for those four spots. But alas, we’ve settled on who earned the honor of being in the top four.

First, however, let’s give some honorable mentions who just missed out their due.

The Texas A&M career-leader in interceptions with 20 (second place on that list only has 14), Kevin Smith was a beast in the Aggies secondary over his four-year career. Smith was so dominant throughout his career in College Station that opposing quarterbacks all but avoided him entirely by the 1991 season. Even still, there’s no questioning his greatness as the best cornerback in program history.

One of the catalysts for the Aggies winning three-straight conference titles in the early 1990s, Sam Adams was a freakishly athletic beast on the defensive line. Adams was a two-time All-Southwest Conference performer and earned Consensus All-American honors for a superb 1993 campaign where he registered a 78-tackle, 10.5-sack season.

Mike Evans was the toughest exclusion from the modern-era Mount Rushmore. He’s responsible for two of the three best seasons in terms of receiving yards in school history and the second-most touchdown receptions in a single season. Despite only suiting up for two years, Evans ranks sixth in career receiving yards (2,499) and seventh in receiving touchdowns (17). And had he not had so much help from a certain quarterback, he’d likely be in the top four.