11/17/2021 (Writer's note: I had fun penning the article below dated 11/24/2017. In 2017 I wasn't interested in playing A & M in a bowl game or a resurrected series.
They left the Big XII and I felt -- as outlined in the opinion piece below -- that there has never been much to gain by beating A&M, just much to lose by falling to that crew.
Truth be told, I had been disappointed that UT opted not to go to the SEC when that conference really, really wanted Texas, not Texas A&M...or at least wanted both schools. But A&M did the right thing for themselves and it has paid off, though they have taken their lumps.
Hindsight regularly provides more clarity but I believe most would agree now that Texas certainly would have been better served by absorbing big bumps and bruises in the SEC over the past decade, than by getting slapped around in the Big XII, a.k.a. the little ten.
Whatever the case, just one of the big benefits to UT's impending membership in the SEC will be the renewed meetings with Aggy. When you're in the same conference, you're supposed to duke it out every year. And, even if there has seldom been much to gain in those Thanksgiving week matchups, heck, there's nothing to be gained except pounds from all that turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie. But it sure is fun to dive in, always. And face it, it's been too long since Longhorns and Texas fans got the grand enjoyment of watching Justin Tucker blast Aggy with a perfectly-timed kick right between the uprights.)
Goodbye to A&M: No reason for Longhorns, Aggies to play again
ByLARRY CARLSON Nov 24, 2017
The desire of many, many Longhorn fans to resume the football rivalry with the cow college over at Malfunction Junction is beyond me.
I don't get it.
Then again, I don't hear the calling for craft cocktails or tacos with mango chutney, as so many in Austin do.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently became the latest in a steady stream of bigwigs and nobodies to lobby for renewing pigskin rituals between the Longhorns and the Aggies.
"My next goal as governor is to reunite the Texas-Texas A&M football rivalry, " the governor said.
"Hook 'em Horns," he added.
Okay, I like that footnote. Beats what Rick Perry would have chimed in with.
If you're an Aggie, I get it. You need your big brother for a chance to validate yourself. You long for a rivalry that makes sense, that heeds the siren call of tradition.
You want a chance to beat Texas and feel good about yourself the way you sometimes did in the Southwest Conference and the Big 12 before you helped it become the “little ten.” You want something to ease the misery of life in the SEC West, where the real water moccasins just keep on biting.
For Longhorns, there's no longer any upside. There hasn't been for decades. Now, it's a simple and stupid case of all risk, no reward.
Not a good selling point. Please stay out of this one, Mr. Governor.
For Texas, whipping the Aggies in football was long just an annual rite of November, like eating leftover turkey sandwiches and putting off Christmas shopping.
But the payoff was never that satisfying. Longhorn squads were doing what was merely expected.
There's only so much fun in beating up your jerk of a younger brother, of roughing up those toy soldiers and putting noogies to the Jarheads of the Blacklands. It's been done 76 times, after all.
Justin Tucker
When Justin Tucker's talented right foot put a kick to the head of Mike Sherman's college coaching career and hushed boorish, loudmouthed Aggies about their supposed prowess at Kyle Field, it really was "…goodbye to A and M.." and should remain the final, triumphant blast from Gabriel's horn in what was always a football version of Coke versus Pepsi.
There's simply no reason for Coca-Cola to acknowledge its antagonist of more than a century, always with the whining, the whooping, the futile sputtering about taste tests and comparison shopping.
Last I checked, Sherman was serving as a volunteer high school coach somewhere in New England and the Aggies had lost their seventh straight SEC West matchup played at Kyle.
So be it. Put that in your plastic bottle of Crystal Pepsi.
Okay, full disclosure. As a typical burnt orange-blooded Texas fan, I grew up with beating A&M as my birthright. The Horns would carve up the goofy Aggies of joke infamy every Thanksgiving on TV, right after Daddy (UT '47) gave my family the okay to dive into the turkey and dressing Mom had prepared, with a hearty grace note of "... and Lord, make us good winners."
As a kid, then a teenager, then a collegian, all in the Darrell Royal era, I watched Texas drum the hapless, hopeless Ags in 17 of DKR's first 18 tries. Like candy from a baby. Or a little brother. It just got tastier as the years passed.
The average UT victory score in the first seven years of the aptly-Thanksgiving-named wishbone era was a neat, clean break of 40-10. Burp.
It had pretty much been the same way while my father grew up. A&M's futility in Austin was bust-a-gut laughable. Between 1922 and 1976, the Ags beat Texas exactly once in the shadow of the Capitol. And even that moment of glory for the morons, er, maroons, deserved an asterisk.
It was UT's all-time worst season, 1-9, and A&M's second-best ever, to this day. As rare successes have been wont to do in the case of the Aggies, it brought NCAA punishment for recruiting violations and sent Bear Bryant back home to Bama in what might very understatedly be referred to a sharp, sharp upgrade.
Since the Ags' only other peak in 1939, Texas went 31-3-1 against the Farmers through 1974. It wasn't really what most folks would call a rivalry.
But in the '70s, like bad haircuts, bad clothes and bad presidents (Nixon AND Carter cover that quite well) continued, the Aggies began to evolve from their cave-dwelling past.
Now, I can fault the Aggies for plenty of things. Like childish college-age guys who dress up like soldiers but don't have to follow school days with mandatory military service. Like a band that brags of "never losing a halftime" but allows some of its august group to merely march and carry -- but not play -- an instrument while trotting out "When Johnny (Manziel?) Comes Marching Home" again for the two millionth rendition. Like ugly, burr-headed clowns swapping spit with even uglier women in marking touchdowns against prestigious foes such as Louisiana-Lafayette and Sam Houston State. Like guys in ice cream vendor suits who perform weird, cultish hand gestures together, then bathe each other in end zone fountains for celebratory jollies.
But I can't fault the Aggies for trying to level the playing field some fifty-odd years ago, by ending compulsory duty in the corps of cadets and opening the school's doors to female students. Within the span of one decade, Texas A&M went from a college of fewer than 10,000 students to a university of 40,000. And today there are some 60,000 students on the campus at College Station. Why, I cannot say. Some things remain mysteries. How did the Mayans invent the iPhone? Why do tortillas in my hometown frequently, eerily come off the griddle bearing the likeness of Tim Duncan? Life has its share of permanent cold case files.
But back to the Aggies and their evolution.
Shortly after discovering women who did not all work in one rambling white farmhouse outside LaGrange, they started cheating in earnest. Real football players began arriving on the banks of the Brazos. Blue-chip recruits with names like Bubba Bean, Skip Walker, Lester Hayes and Garth Ten Napel. I remember a stud receiver from my old high school who signed on with the Ags, even though they never threw the ball. But he suddenly had a nifty Dodge Charger for the last few months of high school and beyond.
Stud linebacker Ed Simonini's presence stood out more than most. He had made the natural progression of leaving Las Vegas for the bright lights of College Station. A fellow varsity athlete and pal of Simonini's recalls shooting pool with Ed at Cain Hall, A&M's splashy, famously opulent athletic living quarters, and asking the All-American defender to put a dollar wager on the table. A grinning Simonini whipped out his wallet and demonstratively peeled off a series of Benjamins from a fat roll of green.
Where the heck did that come from, Simonini was asked.
"We had a game Saturday, didn't we," he smirked.
So the Aggies almost immediately got pretty good, then became even better. Suddenly they were playing the Longhorns on even terms, then dominating them and, amazingly, the NCAA didn't really come-a-calling until college football's highest-paid coach, Jackie Sherrill, had led A&M to several SWC titles and a heretofore unthought of five straight wins over the Steers.
It was time for Jackie to light out for Starkville, Miss., leaving A&M to face some wrist-slapping probation penalties while SMU received the NCAA's lethal injection. I always felt it was if the Aggies robbed Fort Knox of $100 million and had only to pay taxes on the ill-begotten bounty.
Once you're that rich, it's hard to ever get poor again. And the Aggies have stayed in the "pretty well off" category for the three ensuing decades. Have they frequently been underachieving? Hell, yes. But never shy of pocket money and wins.
Consider this: The Gaggies had a pitiful 25 losing seasons between 1942 and Jackie's first season, 1981. In that same span, UT had only two losing records. But since Sherrill hit his stride in year two, the Ags have posted only four losing seasons. Texas has had nine.
Ouch, that smarts.
Head-to-head, Texas has a paper-thin 18-17 edge over A&M since Saint Darrell hung 'em up. Compare that to the Horns having won 31 of the previous 35 games against the guys in maroon.
Sadly, incredibly, only one Texas coach since Royal earned a winning record against A&M. Mack Brown was a big 10-4, good buddy. Fred Akers broke even and David McWilliams and John Mackovic came up short on the ledger.
The Aggies have enjoyed their wins over Texas a lot more than vice versa. And the minor, periodical punishments that have placed A&M on the "most wanted" list of the NCAA's repeat offenders, along with the usual suspects including Oklahoma, Auburn, Miami and USC, have served only as a trifling inconvenience rather than a real deterrent or penalty.
So I look at it this way. Texas already has its hated rival with an unscrupulous rep and an annoying manner in Oklahoma. To Texas fans in the modern era, A&M was just an afterthought, a pesky band of mosquitoes that brought no prestige in swatting but who could really sting you with a loss and the itching that would keep bothering you all year.
Again, plenty of risk, zero reward.
Nobody in Burnt Orange ever got any real bragging rights by flushing the Aggies each November. And certainly, nobody wants to take the stagecoach to College Station every other Thanksgiving to mingle with the toothless crowd at the Dixie Chicken.
The great Bear Bryant left Brazos County after only one encounter with Darrell Royal at Texas, a loss in 1957. After that, his Bama teams went 0-3-1 against Royal's Longhorns. My buddy Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman collected a classic nugget from Coach Royal while visiting and interviewing the legend. Darrell reflected on the fact that his friend, the Bear, had never beaten him and maybe the best part of it all was that he never would.
The Aggies of today left Texas for SEC pastures far greener in cash doles and prestige than what Texas is stuck within the Big 12. Should the Aggies have their cake and get a chance to beat the Horns, too? I say no.
The latest generation of A&M students and nouveaux followers have never beaten Texas. I'd like it if their successors never will.
Larry Carlson saw his first Longhorn victories in 1960 and grew up in a bedroom that was painted burnt orange. He was the sports director and host of "Longhorn Locker Room" for KVET radio from 1977-79 and later co-hosted "Longhorn Pipeline" on San Antonio's ESPN Radio affiliate from 2008-2011. He has been teaching broadcast journalism at Texas State University since 1984 and resides with his wife in the Alamo City.
Write to Larry Carlson at lc13@txstate.edu
