The State Farm Lone Star Showdown, while a novel idea, may very well be superfluous – absolutely surplus to requirement.
No one in the great state of Texas needs an insurance company to keep track of who wins in what sport, especially when it comes to football.
“The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry is part of the very fabric of the state of Texas,” said University of Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds. “Alumni take great pride in tracking the results of any contest involving the Longhorns and the Aggies, be it football, basketball, baseball (or) soccer. I would venture that even the university debate teams carry a spirited rivalry.”
The Aggies and Longhorns have battled for state bragging rights 110 times since 1894. The 2004 edition sees A&M trying to make ground on Texas’ commanding 71-34-5 edge in the series.
The teams played the first game in the series in 1894: The Horns, or “Varsity” as they were called at the time, set the tone for the budding rivalry by walloping the Ags 38-0.
A&M didn’t field a team in 1895 and did not play against Varsity again until 1898, another Texas win. The Aggies, in fact, did not score a point against Texas until the eighth meeting, which resulted in an 11-0 win in 1902.
The rivalry didn’t get really serious, though, until 1911. The Aggies, who rode a three-game win streak in the rivalry, played Varsity in Houston. The actions of some disgruntled A&M cadets changed the face of the friendly rivalry forever.
According to the 1913 A&M yearbook, two trainloads of cadets traveled to Houston confident that their Aggies would defeat Varsity. Texas didn’t comply, however, handing the Ags a 6-0 defeat.
“When we went down in defeat in the game with Varsity,” a yearbook writer reported, “we rallied around our unconquerable Lindy (Millender, head yell leader) and gave a demonstration of ‘pep’ such as was never heard or seen before.”
This “pep” came in the form of the Aggies forcibly taking possession of downtown Houston. All athletic relations between the two schools were halted until 1915.
The series has suffered somewhat from a cyclical disparity in the talent of the two teams. When the Aggies have been up, the Horns have been down and vice versa. Historic Aggie teams like the ones in 1919 (who shut out all their opponents) and 1939 (who won the national title, despite what any revisionist historian at University of Southern California thinks) faced Texas teams that went 6-3 and 5-4.
The great Darrell Royal Longhorn teams of the ’60s and ’70s regularly trounced the Aggies. The trend reversed in 1984 when Jackie Sherrill’s Aggies started reeling off Southwest Conference Championships at the expense of Texas head coaches Fred Akers and David McWilliams. R.C. Slocum similarly owned McWilliams before the series started to even up with the Longhorns’ hiring of John Mackovic.
Most recently, Mack Brown has had the Aggies’ number. With the exception of the 1999 Bonfire game, Brown has yet to lose to either Slocum or current head man Dennis Franchione.
This rivalry transcends the players and the coaches involved. The burnt orange has always clashed with the maroon. Long after Reggie McNeal is done playing on Sundays and after Jovorskie Lane or Stephen McGee hangs up the maroon helmet for the last time, the Longhorns and Aggies will still be here, trying their best to ignore Texas Tech.