Every year on Thanksgiving Day from 1915 to 2011 (96 years)….one of the greatest football rivalries in college football took place on the gridirons of Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin or Kyle Field in Bryan-College Station,TX….as Texans who bled burnt orange or maroon and white all over the State of Texas would fill-up with “turkey and dressing and all the fixins” only to unbutton their pants and settle-in with the family around the television for this annual war between the two premier universities in the great State of Texas.
The Texas–Texas A&M football rivalry was an American college football rivalry between the Texas Longhorns and Texas A&M Aggies. The rivalry was played every year between 1915 and 2011, until A&M left the Big 12 Conference to join the Southeastern Conference. Texas leads the series 76–37–5.
The first meeting was in 1894. By 1911, Texas led the series 15–4–2. The series went back and forth until 1939, but Texas still led 27–15–4. After that, Texas went 36–7–1. A&M then won 10 of the next 11 games in the series. Texas then won 12 of the last 17 games in the rivalry.
In July 2011, A&M elected to join the Southeastern Conference beginning in 2012. The move to switch conferences resulted in the ending of the rivalry. On November 24, 2011, Texas faced A&M in College Station in the final scheduled meeting of the rivalry. Texas won 27–25 on a field goal as time expired. In January 2013, a Texas state legislator filed a bill that would require them to play each other every year.[1] The bill was referred to the House Committee on Higher Education on February 18, 2013
Each school mentions the other in its fight song (“and it’s goodbye to A&M” in Texas Fight; the entire second verse of the Aggie War Hymn is about Texas). The football series was the third longest in college football. The last regular season football game was usually reserved for the match-up. Each school has elaborate pregame preparations for the annual football clash, including the Aggie Bonfire and Hex Rally. Texas has a unique lighting scheme for the UT Tower after beating Texas A&M.
In October 2006, General Mills announced they would honor the then third-longest running college football rivalry with a special edition Wheaties box. The box featured the helmets of Texas and Texas A&M and their respective home stadiums, Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium and Kyle Field, on either side. Although several individual college basketball and football teams had been featured previously on special edition boxes, this was the first time Wheaties had honored a rivalry series.
The game’s tradition figures into the plot of the 1978 stage musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and its film adaptation; in the show, each year the game’s winners (in the story, the Aggies) would celebrate at the “Chicken Ranch,” until an overzealous news reporter (a character based on Marvin Zindler) endeavors to close the legendary brothel.
