Some momentum for Texas-Texas A&M to resume rivalry

By now, it has become an evergreen topic in the Lone Star state: Will the Longhorns and Aggies ever play again?

We’d like for it to happen, say the presidents at Texas and Texas A&M – and overwhelming majorities of the students at both schools. It needs to happen, says Texas’ governor. Let’s make it happen, a couple of state legislators have suggested – and a bill has been filed to that effect. 

Is there actual momentum to resume the historic football rivalry? Maybe. But significant logistical hurdles remain.

Texas coach Tom Herman says he “absolutely, unequivocally” would like to play Texas A&M, and rattles off a list of in-state rivals that play annual nonconference games. But Herman can also recite a list of marquee nonconference opponents the Longhorns already have on future schedules. Texas A&M has a similar list of nonconference series with big-name opponents, scheduled out well into the next decade.

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Last spring, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte called Texas A&M athletic director Scott Woodward to inquire about Texas A&M’s availability for 2022 and 2023 (Ohio State had asked Texas to push a series back). 

“I think it’s important,” Del Conte says. “College football, at its core, we’re running an enterprise that’s based on people’s passion, right? … Athletics is about rivalry games. Can you imagine South Carolina not playing Clemson? Georgia Tech not playing Georgia?”

But the Aggies were already scheduled to play Miami in 2022-23; Del Conte signed up Alabama instead. In addition to Alabama, Texas hosts LSU this year and travels to Baton Rouge in 2020. Other future series include Arkansas, Michigan, Ohio State and Georgia.

Texas A&M travels to Clemson next September, returning the game it hosted in 2018. The Aggies have series scheduled with Colorado, Miami, Notre Dame and Arizona State. 

“If it’s accommodating,” says Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher of playing Texas. “If it’s a good thing for us.”

But Fisher is viewing the prospect through the prism of all of those other nonconference games, as well as the Aggies’ annual eight-game SEC schedule. 

“We’re worried about Alabama and LSU and all those guys,” says Fisher, adding he has not thought much about how the rivalry could or should be resumed.

Going on eight years now since the last time the rivals played football against each other – a 27-25 Texas victory at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field in 2011, the last season A&M was in the Big 12 – there remains a sense among some, at least, that perhaps the Aggies don’t need the rivalry (while correspondingly, the theme goes, the ‘Horns do).

Texas A&M president Michael Young, after telling the Austin American Statesman last month he would like for the series to resume, received emails from several unhappy fans who did not want to play Texas. His response, according to the Dallas Morning News, was that it was “unlikely to happen,” citing logistics. The newspaper reported that one email to Young suggested Texas should “die in their pathetic conference and irrelevant schedule.”

But A&M’s current students voted overwhelmingly this week to bring back the rivalry, and there’s other tangible evidence the Aggies’ focus on Texas has not really changed much.

For only $17.99, you can get a maroon-colored t-shirt with a phrase from Psalm 75:10: “I will cut off the horns of all the wicked …” And when A&M students lock arms and sway during “The Aggie War Hymn, ” they’re still singing: “Saw varsity’s horns off … Varsity’s horns are sawed off.”

By the way, the war hymn begins: “Good bye to Texas University, so long to the orange and the white.”

That’s what happened when Texas A&M left the Big 12 to join the SEC. A great rivalry went dormant. 

The schools’ approach to scheduling nonconference series long years in advance, which is the norm in college football, isn’t changing anytime soon. And it seems improbable the rivalry would resume with a restart date 10 years out; more likely would be the schools agreeing to play, then buying out of already scheduled contracts.

(They could afford it: Texas ranks No. 1 on USA TODAY Sports’ database of total athletic revenue, at nearly $215 million last year; Texas A&M ranks No. 2 at nearly $212 million.)

Both sides would have to cut through the clutter and get it done, which is why it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon – unless, perhaps, it gets a nudge or two. Lyle Larson, a state representative from San Antonio (and an Aggie), filed House Bill 412 last November that would require the teams to play annually. Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott threw his support behind the proposal during his annual state of the state address.

There’s also the unofficial endorsement from both schools’ student bodies. In 2017, almost 97 percent of Texas students favored playing Texas A&M. And in a survey conducted Thursday and Friday, more than 15,000 Texas A&M students voted on the same question; 88.7 percent favored playing Texas.

“I don’t know,” says Herman of how to make it happen, “but Clemson and South Carolina find a way to do it every year. Georgia and Georgia Tech find a way to do it every year. Florida and Florida State find a way to do it every year. Iowa-Iowa State finds a way to do it every year.”

Texas and Texas A&M could find a way, too, if they want to. It’ll never return to Thanksgiving weekend, but an annual date earlier – say, in Week 2 – would make sense.

“These are long-standing rivalry games that mean so much,” Del Conte says. “In the state of Texas, where you have the long history of the Southwest Conference, the Big 12, and you have such passionate fan bases for both schools, it is just a natural thought that at some point in time both programs should play because of what it means to college football in the state.”