The Texas–Texas A&M football rivalry was an American college football rivalry between the Texas Longhorns and Texas A&M Aggies…..which was played every year between 1915 and 2011, until A&M left the Big 12 Conference to join the Southeastern Conference….where in Texas leads the series 76–37–5.
The first meeting was in 1894….and by 1911, Texas led the series 15 – 4 – 2…..as the series went back and forth until 1939….but the Horns still led 27 – 15 – 4…..when after that, Texas went 36 – 7 – 1….then A&M then won 10 of the next 11 games in the series…..and then 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 annual rivalry. On November 24, 2011, Texas faced A&M in College Station in the final scheduled annual meeting….which Texas won 27 – 25 on a field goal as time expired.
In June 2017, A&M’s former athletic director, Bill Byrne, was quoted in an article saying, “Their AD (DeLoss Dodds) at the time came out and said we will never play Texas A&M again, and they worked along with Baylor and the conference to have no one in the (Big 12) schedule us… There were other forces at work to make sure we didn’t play.” ….as Byrne was referring to five years before that when he was still A&M’s athletic director and A&M was in the midst of transitioning to the Southeastern Conference.
In December 2017, Chris Del Conte was named athletic director of the University of Texas. Shortly thereafter, Del Conte contacted Texas A&M athletic director Scott Woodward with a proposition to schedule a home-and-home series in 2022-23…..but Woodward declined, as Texas A&M’s non-conference schedule was already filled for those seasons.
Each school mentions the other in its fight song….with “and it’s goodbye to A&M” in Texas Fight….while Texas is mentioned twice in the second verse of the Aggie War Hymn. The football series was the 3rd longest in college football. The last regular season football game was usually reserved for the match-up…..as each school had 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. The State Farm Lone Star Showdown, a full sports rivalry between the two schools, began in 2004, and ended in 2012 when Texas A&M moved to the Southeastern Conference.
This video provides a prelude to the 1986 rivalry game played on Thanksgiving Day as seen through the eyes of ESPN’s sportscasters for the game, Jim Simpson and Paul Maguire….which we at ImaSportsphile are delighted to have in our treasure chest of vintage memories.
