10 Things for Tuesday is sponsored by Brent Campbell, Fighting Texas Aggie Class of 1998. Brent is a Commercial Real Estate Broker, serving all of Central Texas and specializing in sales, leasing & development. He leads a retail acquisition and sales team and was recognized by the Austin Business Journal as a Commercial Real Estate Heavy Hitter in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020 & 2023.

In the last 22 years, he has closed deals with a total transactional value of over $375 million and has leased more than 4.5 million square feet. Brent currently serves as the president of the board of directors for Habitat Homes, Inc. and Pathways Youth and Family Services. He is a former president of the Heart of Round Rock Neighborhood Association and a former member of the Round Rock Zoning Advisory Committee, the Round Rock Business and Retention Committee, and the City of Round Rock Ethics Commission, which has led him to begin developing in Williamson and Travis County.

An Austin native, Brent lives in Round Rock where he and his wife have raised four boys. Brent works for Don Quick and Associates, Inc. in Round Rock, TX and can be reached at brent@donquick.com.

One thing that Texas A&M coach Mike Elko brought up when he talked to members of the A&M press corps and the larger group at media days was that he was pleased at how "quiet" the offseason was. And he's right; there wasn't any melodrama between April and July. The team lost a few players, but added their replacements quickly (or already had them). There weren't any negative headlines -- in fact, there weren't any headlines at all, and that's just what he wants.

Elko has said more than once that he wants the team to be about the work. If they can avoid attention as much as possible, he'll be just fine with that. He's been able to install his approach and got strong buy-in from his players, so now it's just a matter of getting his team on the field and winning.

Elko knows he has plenty of talent on the roster. He also knows that A&M has not played up to that level of talent for several years. But he seems to think his team's got the right mindset and is approaching things the right way. Add in that plenty of talent and he definitely can be quietly confident.

I would give Elko a strong A for how he's done things to this point. But this is also just window dressing. What you truly get judged for begins Aug. 31.

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian isn't intimidated by the SEC, it would appear. He definitely talked a good game at media days and wasn't opposed to throwing smack walking in the door, as he dissed Arkansas' fanbase. "Arkansas fans hate Texas more than they like themselves," he said.

He stayed well away from saying anything negative about Mike Elko, A&M or Aggies in general. Smart move, because A&M has a much better chance of beating Texas than Arkansas does.

It's been 13 years since A&M and Texas faced off. That means they missed Johnny Manziel, Mike Evans, Myles Garrett...you get the idea. It's been a minute. So long, in fact, that even the oldest Aggies and Longhorns were little kids the last time this game was played.

Still, the hate's there. Shemar Turner had to take more than a minute to figure out whether he hated Texas more than he likes A&M; Quinn Ewers said his dad told him that the A&M game was bigger than the Red River Rivalry. Trey Zuhn, who comes from a family of Aggies, has a Longhorn upside down in his room.

But some players don't need their parents to provide motivation in this one. Taurean York said bluntly, "I don't talk to anybody from Texas."

Texas players are not looking at A&M like little brother. A&M players want to pop them in the mouth. There's going to be hitting in this one.

That doesn't change the fact that LSU had a bad defense last season and they lost a ton on offense, including Heisman-winning quarterback Jayden Daniels. The defense should be better this year, but Kelly can't be blamed if he's just a little bit nervous going into this season. He's still got a lot of talent, but is it more than last year's team? Probably not.

To say it's make or break time for Billy Napier at Florida would not be an understatement. He says he likes his team, which returns 17 starters who have combined for 463 starts and 41,000 snaps. We know this because he mentioned it. He even threw in a, "It's not the size of the gator in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the gator."

By the end, the phrase "Thou doth protesteth too much" had come to mind. Multiple times. No matter the size of the fight in the gator, they were still 114th in sacks allowed last season and 69th in total defense. If they don't figure that out, the Gators will just be thrashing at the end of a line held by the rest of the SEC.

But Napier believes in his team. Really. He truly does.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and dang, was new Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby desperate. He returns a grand total of two -- count 'em -- starters from last year, and none on offense. The Bulldogs were plenty bad last year, but Lebby has an extraordinary task ahead of himself. Just getting a team with that much of an overhaul on the same page will be no mean feat.

Beamer has a habit of talking a whole lot during his introductory statements. He easily took the title again this year, talking at least another five minutes after recounting that his daughter had told him to keep it short.

"I really, really, really like our football team going into 2024. Most you don't; that's okay. When you guys do your picks or Thursday we'll be picked 14th, 15th, 16th I'm sure, but I'm excited about this group," he said.

That may be the last great defiant act for Beamer. His Gamecocks team lost its two best offensive players and just doesn't look that impressive overall. Beamer will have to do one heck of a job to make sure he is able to do another stemwinder of a speech next July in Atlanta.

Oh, by the way: South Carolina was picked to finish 13th.

Another coach who had to sell the positive even if he didn't fully believe it was Arkansas coach Sam Pittman. Like Beamer, he's lost his two best offensive players and had a lot of attrition through the transfer portal. He added a potentially excellent offensive coordinator in Bobby Petrino (and he will, rest assured, stay out of Petrino's way), but their talent level seems very...meh.

But Pittman has a plan. His team has to embrace the Hog.

"Our focus is to embrace the hog, which means we need to be tough, we need to be together, we need to be consistent, accountable, and do it with pride."

When you start coming up with gimmicks like "Embrace the Hog or the size of the fight in the gator," you're usually in trouble. When you challenge your team's personal pride, you're really up a creek.

And Arkansas has A&M, Texas, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Missouri on its schedule. That may be why they were picked 14th.

There's always one coach who gets up there and is, well, for a lack of a better term, boring. Eli Drinkwitz had the best opening of any coach, praising the late Monte Kiffin and advocating for Mike Leach's inclusion in the College Football Hall of Fame, but lost his momentum after that. His dulcet tones, along with a nearly complete repetition of his two-deep, were just a little much. But he's got a good team this year, and maybe he just wanted to show off a little.

Auburn's coach talked about a lot of the same stuff everyone does -- how his team is excited, they've worked really hard, they've got good character guys, blah blah blah. But he seems to like the direction the Tigers are heading. He just doesn't know how fast they'll get there.

"I think we've upgraded our roster. Now a lot of that roster is young kids. Certainly can't predict exactly how they'll adapt to playing in this difficult conference," he said.

There was a lot of "I think" and "I believe". When he said he thinks the strength of the team will be the running game, he added, "It may be me wishing that and hoping that."

Now that may just be Freeze's version of understating things. I haven't paid enough attention to him in the past two know. But I think (oops) that he will be just as interested as the fans to see what this team looks like.