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  * Non-conference games

  * Non-conference games

Coming off of a decent 1901 season, the Farmers were hoping to build on the positive momentum they had gained at the end of the season after the walloping of Guilford and regional powerhouse Davidson. By September 25th, North Carolina A&M decided to leave the fledgeling North Carolina Athletics Association and remain and independent team again, partly due to the Association's stringent rules on inter-college sports transfers, but officially because of the Association's favoratism towards "prep schools," because there was just one other college in the state of North Carolina in the league, and, finally, because "having outgrown preperatory schools, [we] think we ought to belong to an association of colleges and universities" (Red and White, Vol. 1 No. 4 (October 1902), p. 11; The (Raleigh) Morning Post, September 25th, 1902, p. 5).

The Red and White football team was coached by pro-baseball player Arthur Devlin, who was coaching football for the first time. A former football player at Georgetown and, more recently, a player on the city teams of Wilmington and New Bern, Devlin ended up playing in roughly half of the games the Farmers played in 1902, taking the place of the injured captain, O. Max Gardner, who was hurt during the VPI game and proved unable to return to the gridiron for the remainder of the year. Delvin was assisted in coaching the team by W. F. McCanless, who had played LE on A&M's 1900 football team but appears to have subsequently dropped out. The team was managed by C. L. Creech, who was himself assisted by Hill M. Hunter, who would go on to be the captain of the 1903 team.

By September 11th, football was "beginning to assert itself" on campus, with about 40 students attending workouts for the team about a week later. A full exhibition game was played by the students trying out for the team on September 23rd in preperation for their canceled game against the Gate City Guards (The (Raleigh) Morning Post, September 11th, 1902, p. 7; The (Raleigh) Morning Post, September 19th, 1902, p. 5; The (Raleigh) Morning Post, September 23rd, 1902, p. 6).

Despite the early start and the ample coaching, the article written in Red and White by Capt. Gardner was decidedly bleak in tone. "It looks as though too much has been said about our team," wrote Gardner, "before such remarks were justifiable. We say this not disparigingly, but to warn our friends of the team, nor [sic] to expect too much of the '02 foot-ball team." Gardner went on to explain that, as the youngest college in the state, the team should naturally be behind in the learning curve, and that the team had also scheduled stronger teams that the Farmers had ever faced before. Despite this, Gardner added that the team would be better represented than ever before, owing to the learned coaching of Arthur Devlin, and the fact that the men would be "better equipped in the best foot-ball garb" which the team had lacked in years past. On September 10th, the A&M football team donned football uniforms for the first time (The Agromeck, Vol. 1 (1903), p. 146). These uniforms had for the first time the stylized "A. M. C." logo, which were "used as a mark of distinction" for the football players (Red and White, Vol. 4 No. 3 (November 1902), p. 15).

Early candidates for the team were Gaither and Hadley for the center, Neal, Carpenter, Carraway, and Koon for the guard spots, Gardner and Beebe for tackle, Gulley and Tucker for the ends, Asbury and Ross for the position of quarterback. The most certainty seemed to be in the halfbacks and fullbacks, who were described with "no hesitancy... the best in North Carolina for speed, line bucking, tackling, interference, and general team work." Those spots were to be filled by Darden, Shannonhouse, Roberson, and Welch, who was not initially expected to return to college. Many of these men did indeed end up making the starting roster. Reportedly, the average weight of the team was about 160 lbs (Red and White, Vol. 4, No. 1 (October 1902), pp. 8-9, 19; New Bern Daily Journal, October 19th, 1902, p. 1).

In his summary of the 1902 football season, Gardner took on a more optimistic tone than his early Red and White article, writing "The prospects of a strong team at the opening of College was comparatively bright. Contrastingly, the season opened rather slowly, with the Farmers failing to accrue a single win in their first 4 games, though it should be noted that Clemson's team lost only one game in 1902 (going 6-1 with an overall score of 152-22 against a schedule of all college teams), while Virginia Tech's team tied UNC and lost only in a controversial tie game against Washington & Lee due to crowd interference and to Southern powerhouse Virginia. Furman's team was not a pushover, either, though the Red and White did end up being half of Furman's wins en route to a 4-2-2 record. The upsetting start to the season only got worse when team captain and clear star of the team Gardner injured his leg against VPI.

Thankfully for the Farmers, a capable replacement for Gardner was quickly found in the form of Coach Devlin. After Devlin stepped in, the Farmers went 3-1-1, though this was in part due to the nature of their schedule, which featured most of their more difficult games early in the season. After a scrappy win over Radford, Virginia's St. Albans school which ended in an all-out brawl, the Red and White went on to decimate a perennially-weaker Guilford in front of a State Fair crowd of between two- and five-thousand spectators.

The biggest game of the seasoun, though, was not a win; it was a tie against then-powerhouse North Carolina. The scoreless tie represented the first time the Farmers had ever kept the Tar Heels from scoring, and represented just the third non-loss against the Chapel Hill boys (second, disculding an 8-6 win over their scrub team in 1896), and gave the Raleigh boys the chance to claim right to the title of State Champion until they lost the following game to Davidson, likely due to their inflated machismo after the UNC win. The Farmers closed their season with a definitive win over a Richmond team who had a mediocre record but was reported to have had a strong team in spite of it.

In the end, 1902 was widely considered the most successful season in A&M history up until that point.