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Apologies to my former home state of Texas, but bigger isn’t always better; at least not when you’re talking about enrollment in relation to results on the football field. If that were the case, Texas A&M would rule the SEC.
There are far more Aggies than at any other SEC member school, according to collegeapps.about.com.
And the disparity between Texas A&M, at the top of the SEC enrollment chart, to Vanderbilt, the only private school, which not surprisingly sits at the bottom of the chart, is astounding.
There are 47,093 undergraduate students enrolled at Texas A&M for the fall 2016 semester. That’s more than 40,000 more students than attend Vanderbilt.
When you consider that during the offseason the football roster totals 105 players, at least 1 in every 65 undergraduate students at Vanderbilt is a football player. Only 1 in 449 is a football player at Texas A&M.
| University | Undergrad | Total Enrollment |
| Texas A&M | 47,093 | 61,642 |
| Florida | 32,829 | 49,459 |
| Alabama | 30,752 | 36,047 |
| Missouri | 27,642 | 35,425 |
| Georgia | 26,882 | 35,197 |
| LSU | 25,572 | 31,044 |
| South Carolina | 24,866 | 32,971 |
| Kentucky | 22,223 | 29,203 |
| Arkansas | 21,836 | 26,237 |
| Tennessee | 21,664 | 30,386 |
| Auburn | 20,629 | 25,912 |
| Ole Miss | 18,101 | 22,503 |
| Mississippi State | 16,536 | 20,138 |
| Vanderbilt | 6,851 | 12,686 |
Texas A&M also is the fourth-largest university in the country and largest university in Texas. Its move to the SEC coincided with several large expansions.
Since making the jump from the Big 12 Conference in July 2012, Texas A&M has grown immensely. In 2013, the Texas A&M Health Science Center was merged into the university. In August of that year, the university purchased Texas Wesleyan University School of Law and renamed it the Texas A&M School of Law.
How big is Texas A&M by enrollment? Ole Miss (18,101) and Mississippi State (16,536) combined still don’t have anywhere near the undergraduate enrollment of Texas A&M. Even if you added in Vanderbilt’s undergraduate enrollment to the equation, it’s still 5,605 students fewer than Texas A&M.
No, bigger isn’t necessarily better, but it doesn’t hurt to be among the largest campuses in the SEC, either.
Look at the top four by enrollment: Texas A&M, Florida, Alabama, Missouri and then look at the past three SEC football seasons. Three of the four schools either won or tied for division titles in all three seasons.
Glenn Sattell is an award-winning freelance writer for Saturday Down South.
