College Football Playoff campus was scene of devastating fire which killed 12 after tradition went wrong
Postseason football is finally coming to Texas A&M.
The No. 7 ranked Aggies have made the College Football Playoff (CFP) field for the first time in 2025.
Boasting a regular season record of 11-1, the program’s best since 1992, A&M have been rewarded with home field advantage in the first round of the CFP against Miami (10-2), amid debates over the ‘rigged’ bracket.
The match up will mark the first postseason playoff game at historic Kyle Field, which has hosted the Aggies for nearly 100 years, and saw two Heisman Trophy winners (John David Crow and Johnny Manziel) grace its turf.
In 2025, A&M were a perfect 7-0 for the first time at Kyle Field — which underwent a $485 million renovation a decade ago — and set a single-season home attendance record, averaging a ridiculous 106,159 fans per game.
Few teams in college football have support quite like the Aggies, and the game against Miami will undoubtedly provide a boisterous and electric atmosphere that could help propel the program to a Cotton Bowl showdown with No. 2 Ohio State on New Year’s Eve.
Some of those associated with the team will also be carrying, perhaps, the memory of a terrible campus tragedy that unfolded 26 years ago.
Bonfire tragedy rocked Texas A&M
Long before the CFP was even established, the highlight of the Aggies’ calendar was an annual rivalry game against the University of Texas at Austin.
As part of festivities surrounding the clash, A&M students would build the ‘Aggie Bonfire’ each year, which symbolized their ‘burning desire to beat the hell outta T.U.’
In the early hours of November 18, 1999, 10 students, and one former student, were killed while working on the fire.
The 59-foot-high stack, which consisted of about 5,000 logs, collapsed during construction.
A further 27 people were injured in the incident.
Immediately after the collapse, emergency medical technicians and first responders of the Texas A&M Emergency Care Team (TAMECT), a student-run volunteer service that staffed each stage of construction, rushed to administer first aid to the victims.
Texas EMS, fire and police departments, as well as members of the state’s elite emergency response team, Texas Task Force 1, later arrived to assist the rescue efforts.
Operations took over 24 hours, and the pace was slowed by the decision to remove many of the logs by hand, amid fears that using heavy equipment to remove them would cause further collapses to the stack.
Students, including the entire A&M football team, also assisted rescue workers with the manual removal of the logs.
Word of the horrific accident quickly spread through the local community and far beyond.
Before sunrise, the accident was the subject of news reports around the world and within hours, 50 satellite trucks were broadcasting from the Texas A&M campus.
What happened in the aftermath of the Texas A&M tragedy?
Of the 58 people working on the bonfire stack, ten students and one former student were killed in the initial collapse. Another died in hospital the next day.
John Comstock was the last living person to be pulled from the stack. He spent months in the hospital following amputation of his left leg, and returned to A&M in 2001 to finish his degree.
Following the collapse, students held an impromptu prayer service on campus, and an official memorial service was held less than seventeen hours later.
Around 16,000 mourners packed A&M’s Reed Arena to pay tribute to those who died, and those who had spent all day working on rescue efforts.
On November 25, 1999, the date that the bonfire would have burned, Aggies held a vigil and remembrance ceremony.
More than 40,000 people lit candles and observed up to two hours of silence at the site of the collapse, before walking to Kyle Field for yell practice.
One day later, the 24th-ranked Aggies upset the 7th-ranked Longhorns, winning 20-16 in an emotionally-charged game.
It began with a flyover of F-16 jets and featured a half-time performance from the Texas Longhorn Band, which ended with a rendition of Amazing Grace and Taps.
What happened to the ‘Aggie Bonfire’ tradition after 1999 tragedy?
For nearly 100 years, A&M students had built a bonfire on campus each autumn ahead of the annual rivalry game against Texas. The fire was traditionally lit around Thanksgiving.
Early bonfires were little more than piles of trash, but over the years, the event grew to an immense size and even set a world record in 1969.
However, the accident 30 years later led A&M to declare a hiatus on an official bonfire.
Since 2002, a student-sponsored coalition has constructed an annual unsanctioned, off-campus ‘student bonfire’ in the spirit of its predecessor.
A memorial was also constructed on the university polo fields, the site of the accident.
This year’s student bonfire was lit on November 25, days before the Longhorns upset the Aggies 27-17, and ended their unbeaten season.
But it’s A&M that go on to the CFP this year, with a chance to lift the National Championship for the first time.
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