Jordan Meserole – Denial is something they must teach Longhorns at Camp Texas, or maybe it’s ingrained into Austinites, because for the last few years, many Texas fans have denied that the post-Thanksgiving game against Texas A&M is anything to really call a rivalry.
The denial of anything and everything A&M even reaches all the way to their mascot. Longhorns can conjure up all the best stories about Bevo’s name coming from a popular beverage or from a news writer’s article, but face the facts: We branded a 13-0 on the side of your precious pet steer, and you had to come up with a creative way to make it go away.
“But you’re not really our rivals anymore, the Sooners are it now,” cry those clad in burnt orange and white in recent years before the November months.
And after every Red River Shootout is finished, A&M is kind of the bad guy again, but only if we’ve been winning. It’s fine though – while you push the Aggies to the back burner and concentrate more on what to do with Adrian Peterson next season, we have just that much more time to figure out how to beat you.
Of course, many will bring up the fact that Texas has won the last four contests and beat A&M 46-15 last season, but this team is a far cry from the one last year. This year’s defense has shut down the Heisman hopeful running backs of Adrian Peterson, Vernand Morency and Darren Sproles. And two of those three top running backs had to carry the ball 25 times or more just to break 100 yards in the game (Sproles only gained 61 yards).
And while Oklahoma is the first team to score more than 40 points against A&M this season, the Aggies also posted 35 points in the same game, approximately 35 more than the Longhorns did.
So after Mack Brown and the Texas defense receives an unhealthy dose of Reggie McNeal Friday afternoon and the scoreboard reads in the Aggies favor, don’t be so surprised. It’s probably because you took your eyes off A&M for just a little too long.
Eric Ransom – State Farm bought the rights to the Lonestar Showdown, but long before the rivalry had a title or a trophy, the Aggies and Longhorns never identified with one another.
A Longhorn is an easy mascot to understand. These roaming herds of around 50,000 stampeding cows make a lot of noise early in the fall, but usually wind up in San Diego by bowl season.
But what in the Hullabaloo is an Aggie?
An Aggie could represent the old agricultural and mechanical name the school held back when the men were men. Shoot, the men had to be women, too, until the 1960s, when the doors finally opened to that other gender. No one ever knew that flattops and camouflage skirts went so well together.
Reggie McNeal may have beaten Oklahoma, but he is still more overrated than “Lightning” Leland McElroy and throws about as accurately as Chuck Knobloch. But put 80,000 Aggies behind him, and you have the scariest hootenanny since the cast of Hee Haw reunited.
The game is in Austin this year, the home of steers and queers as Aggies call it. Despite three championships, our traditions can’t compare.
D.X. Bible called down a student from the stands in 1922, and ever since, Aggies have stood ready to suit up for the Aggies. Of course in the past five years, a few Aggie players have scrambled back into the stands to avoid the Thanksgiving beat down. But 20 years after Bible invented the Twelfth Man, even he switched sides to become the head coach for the Longhorns.
Texas will stomp another mud hole in A&M’s surprising season, causing the entire Aggie Network to whoop about life’s unfairness. Sure, Texas has not won a title in 34 years, and with our talent there’s only one Stoopifying reason why Longhorns have not reached the promised land, and it ain’t A&M.
But it sure beats y’all’s 65 years, and Texas will take that until the cows come home.