After thirteen years, there’s finally a Texas–Texas A&M game. And instead of having to settle for just a couple of games here and there in September—as would have been likely if the Horns and Aggies had ever gotten around to playing as nonconference rivals—the Lone Star Showdown (does anybody actually call it that?) has come back as an SEC game, and on Thanksgiving weekend (if not the day itself) to boot. Not only that, but this year’s matchup is arguably bigger than any Texas–Texas A&M game ever.
How long has it been? When the two teams played at Kyle Field on November 24, 2011, Governor Rick Perry was just two weeks removed from “Oops.” Texas Monthly’s then–freelance writer, now full-time barbecue editor Daniel Vaughn hadn’t yet tried Fargo’s Pit BBQ in Bryan (which closed this year). Glen Powell had recently appeared on an episode of Rizzoli and Isles. Robert Earl Keen wasn’t retired (and now he’s unretired).
The resumption of the rivalry and the chance to claim fresh bragging rights are what matter most to the Horns and Aggies. But with the way the 2024 college football season has played out, the stakes are even higher. At no point during the Big 12 era did the two teams play a head-to-head game where both could still win the conference championship. And while the two schools played with many Southwest Conference titles on the line, that was back when such achievements were determined solely by regular season results. So come Saturday, this Aggies-Longhorns tilt really will “just mean more.” It’s win and you’re in for both programs, with the victor guaranteed a spot in the SEC Championship game, along with a clear path to the twelve-team College Football Playoff.
And the loser? Well, that’s a different story. A&M’s loss to Auburn on Saturday dropped them from fifteenth to twentieth in the Associated Press poll and the latest College Football Playoff rankings, where they were also fifteenth last week. The 8–3 Aggies can’t afford to lose to Texas, period. Things are much rosier for the 10–1 Longhorns, who have been number three in the CFP rankings for the past four weeks (they’re also third in the AP). Losing to A&M would hurt their College Football Playoff seeding, but they’re expected to make the tournament either way.
That makes A&M something of a wounded animal heading into the rivalry game. The Aggies both need a win to stay out of yet another secondary bowl game (Duke’s Mayo, anyone?), and they want to beat the hated Sips as usual.
Texas? To some extent, they can take it or leave it. Of course, burnt orange fans are hyped to beat the Aggies, but it’s not like they’re playing Oklahoma. (Many UT fans will go out of their way to tell you that the Sooners are their biggest rivals, which perhaps proves that their biggest rivals are actually the Aggies.) And there’s no doubt that Texas players and coaches want to win their final game, finish 11–1, and play for the SEC championship just as much as if they were facing Mississippi State.
When Texas A&M first joined the SEC, fans of UT and the other Texas left-behinds eagerly predicted that an Aggies program, which was often no better than fourth or fifth in the Big 12, would be the same or worse in its new conference. Johnny Manziel and the COVID-shortened 2020 season aside, that turned out to be true. (And neither of those teams played in the SEC Championship game.) Of course, Texas didn’t exactly cover itself in glory during a dozen Big 12 seasons without A&M.
But the Horns began preparing for the SEC even before their interest in the conference leaked by hiring Steve Sarkisian, who was fresh off a national championship as Alabama’s offensive coordinator, in 2021. Things have gone not only according to plan but possibly ahead of schedule, with Texas’s first season in the SEC proceeding better than almost anyone could have expected (just ask Oklahoma). After making the College Football Playoff semifinals last season, Texas began 2024 as the fourth-ranked team in the AP poll. Respondents to the conference’s preseason media poll picked the Longhorns to finish second in the league. They stomped defending national champion Michigan in Ann Arbor on September 7, and then, after Georgia lost to Alabama, spent five weeks as the number one team in the country before losing to the Dawgs in Austin. But they’ve just kept winning since then.
Texas A&M began this season with lower expectations after ending 2023 with a 7–6 record and paying $77.6 million to buy out Jimbo Fisher’s contract and fire him as head football coach. The Aggies opened the year ranked twentieth in the AP poll—right where they are now—but SEC media predicted A&M would finish ninth in the sixteen-team conference. And when the squad started its first season under new Head Coach Mike Elko with a home loss to Notre Dame, fans braced themselves for another year outside the national conversation.
But then A&M handled Florida and Arkansas, knocked off a Missouri team that was ranked in the top ten, and pulled off a big comeback against LSU, another top-ten opponent, with redshirt freshman backup quarterback Marcel Reed stepping in for starter Conner Weigman and running for three touchdowns. Suddenly, with Reed nailing down the starting QB spot, the Aggies were tenth in the AP poll, 7–1 overall, and 5–0 in the SEC—their best-ever start in the conference.
That was followed by a pair of conference losses to South Carolina and Auburn that dampened the mood in Aggieland, but thanks to tiebreakers and other SEC favorites suffering upsets, a spot in the conference title game is still there for the taking—and to be taken from the Horns. Georgia awaits Saturday’s winner for the conference championship game.
Both teams appeared to be looking ahead last weekend, and who could blame them? A&M failed to show up in the first half against Auburn, going down 21–0 before coming all the way back to take a 31–28 lead late in the fourth quarter. But the Tigers tied the game and eventually won on the second mandatory exchange of two-point conversions in four overtimes (which also answers the question of how college football has become more like soccer).
Meanwhile, UT led Kentucky 24–7 at the end of the first half, then faltered for a stretch of the second half, with quarterback Quinn Ewers hobbled. But in the end, both the Longhorns’ defense and running game didn’t let the Wildcats back into what ended up a 31–14 win.
Ewers is no longer the Heisman Trophy frontrunner—or candidate—he was in September. Over the past two seasons, the Southlake Carroll product has dealt with multiple injuries as well as frequent calls for the Longhorns to play backup quarterback Arch Manning, leading UT to a 20–3 record in games Ewers has started. But Texas’s defense, led by senior defensive back Jahdae Barron and sophomore linebacker Anthony Hill Jr., is a bigger reason for the Longhorns’ success. UT ranks second in the country and leads the SEC in total defense, and the team is third nationally in scoring defense. That’s the challenge facing A&M signal-caller Reed, who already has the attention of Hill Jr. On Monday the Texas linebacker compared Reed to Baltimore Ravens star quarterback Lamar Jackson.
The Longhorns are six-point favorites over A&M, and that point spread would be closer to ten points if Saturday’s game wasn’t going to take place at Kyle Field. But none of that really matters. In some weird way, the return of the rivalry might have been even more heated if both teams had nothing to play for besides hate and codependency. This is the game that we have long wanted and the one that we deserve. It’s also pretty much the fantasy that everybody held out hope for during the estranged years—that somehow the two teams would meet in, if not a BCS championship or College Football Playoff game, at least one of the major New Year’s Day bowls. Instead, Texas A&M played Oklahoma in the 2013 Cotton Bowl, Texas played Georgia in the 2019 Sugar Bowl, and the two teams made a combined five trips to Houston to play in the Texas Bowl, but never against each other, despite it being a Big 12 versus SEC game. The two fan bases liked to accuse each other of ducking, but it was also suspected that the schools and conferences didn’t want the rivalry to resume in a third-tier bowl game.
They were right to wait. When Texas–Texas A&M returns on Saturday, it will be for all the marbles, even if it’s not the final marble. And it doesn’t have to be the last time they meet this season. If A&M were to beat UT and then knock off Georgia in the SEC title game, it’s possible that somewhere in the course of the twelve-team College Football Playoff, the Aggies would eventually face . . . Texas.
