What I saw at Texas-Texas A&M: Scenes from an essential college football rivalry’s return
David UbbenDec 1, 2024
55
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — As Aggies silently filed out of Kyle Field, Texas fans in burnt orange filling the southeast corner of The House That Johnny Built rubbed salt in their wounds with three letters.
“S-E-C! S-E-C!’ they chanted
Traditionally, the chant has been reserved for programs expressing their superiority to teams that don’t get to wear the patch on their jerseys. Both Texas and Texas A&M wear it now. And Texas capped its maiden voyage through an SEC schedule with a 17-7 win over A&M for the right to do something A&M has never done: Play for the SEC title.
“Let’s take this s— to Atlanta!” a member of Texas’ equipment staff yelled as they packed up gear on the sidelines in the game’s final minute.
Texas is here. And A&M is left dealing with the fallout of a nightmare resumption of one of college football’s most storied rivalries after a ludicrous 13-year absence fueled by the same pettiness that makes the rivalry so unique and special.
“You’re little bro!” yelled senior linebacker David Gbenda, who made three tackles for a defense that didn’t allow a point to Texas A&M’s offense in the win. Texas A&M’s only points came on a pick six off a Quinn Ewers pass that was tipped at the line of scrimmage.
Texas minister of culture Matthew McConaughey, who moonlights as an A-list Hollywood actor, didn’t need to say a word as defensive lineman Vernon Broughton pounced on a game-sealing fumble. He turned to the crowd and flashed a horns up.
Minutes earlier, a loud bang rang out from inside a suite as the Longhorns stuffed Amari Daniels for a 3-yard loss on fourth-and-1 on the goal line, keeping the Aggies’ deficit at 10 with 4:36 to play.
“Son of a bitch!” a voice echoed through the hall as elevator doors opened.
Thirteen years of waiting ended with Texas’ fight song echoing into the chilly Aggieland night.
“It sucks,” Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed said.
Quinn Ewers accounted for one of Texas’ two TDs. (Troy Taormina / Imagn Images)
Ewers cradled the game ball and smiled as he walked up Texas’ tunnel, unwilling to let anyone else lay a hand on it.
“A win is a win,” he said afterward, downplaying the significance of a ball that might be sitting on his mantle a half century from now, marking the only time the senior will ever play his alma mater’s most hated rival.
Does Ewers keep the game ball from every win?
“I don’t,” he said. “But for some special ones I like to.”
All three decks of the east side of Kyle Field are almost full by the time Kanye West’s “Power” kicks in on the PA system, signaling the team’s entrance for yell practice.
A&M moved the tradition from midnight to 5:30 p.m. Friday to accommodate the football team’s schedule and allow it to attend. It brings plenty more fans out to the stadium, too.
Josiah Brantley, one of five Aggie Yell leaders and a senior at A&M, says Friday night is different from all the yell practices he’d attended before.
Texas A&M president Mark Welsh III tells the crowd that 58 suite holders asked for their suites to be open for yell practice, which concludes with a lengthy fireworks show.
“Tomorrow we get to beat the hell out of Texas,” he says. “I’m not sure life gets better than this.”
Yell leaders, per tradition, take their turns ribbing their rival ahead of Saturday’s game.
“Who trashes their own field?” Jake Carter, head yell leader, asks the crowd, referencing Texas’ loss to Georgia earlier this year when Longhorns fans threw garbage onto the field following a controversial call that was later reversed.
“Coach Schlossnagle never belonged here anyway,” says yell leader Kyler Fife, igniting the crowd with a shot at the baseball coach who left A&M for Texas this summer.
“Tomorrow is personal,” yell leader Grayson Poage says after referring to Texas’ mascot Bevo as a glorified hamburger. “It’s about who runs Texas.”
Sweet-smelling smoke wafts through the air from barrels welded into homemade smokers. If the state of Texas had an official smell, it would be beef being cooked low and slow.
The closer one gets to Kyle Field on Saturday, homemade smokers dwindle and food trucks take their place. Signs acknowledging every family member’s graduation date hang over many of the tents filling Aggie Park east of the stadium.
These two rivals first met in 1894. The old and new clash in a buzzy tailgate scene 130 years later.
A QR code hangs on a sign outside the stadium for fans to enroll in a rewards program. A 12th Man sign sponsored by Valero — oil money does make much of what success A&M and Texas enjoy possible — offers an enticing backdrop for Instagram photos.
A pop-up store sells Lucchese boots, complete with a singer crooning George Strait’s “Amarillo By Morning” through a small speaker. Another sells Mizzen+Main merchandise alongside a banner featuring Texas A&M quarterback Conner Weigman — who was benched last month — as a pitchman.
A field is blocked off with “no tailgating” signs. It serves as a fitting playing field for a fitting prologue for Saturday night’s game. There’s no need to pick teams. One side features kids in burnt orange Arch Manning and Quinn Ewers jerseys. The other: Kids wearing maroon 12th Man and No. 2 Johnny Manziel jerseys.
Texas and Texas A&M hadn’t met since 2011. (Sara Diggins / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
The silence of fans walking up the ramp leading to the northwest corner of the stadium is occasionally interrupted by an A&M fan drumming the familiar rhythm of “Hullabaloo, caneck, caneck!” — the opening words of the “Aggie War Hymn” — on a light post along the sidewalk.
Reflexively, any Aggie fan in earshot responds with a “Whoop!”
Oscar Torres Jr. graduated from Texas A&M in 1977. He went there because he liked the engineering program. He convinced his younger brother Jorge to attend A&M, too. Jorge graduated in 1990. Another brother graduated in 1986.
Ten more nephews from the family later graduated from A&M, all convinced by Oscar Jr. On Saturday, he drove five hours to Aggieland from Laredo and sat outside the west side of Kyle Field with a handful of family members drinking Miller Lites and embracing a game they waited more than a decade to see.
Oscar Torres III was 19 the last time the two rivals played and remembered sadly walking out of the stadium as Texas fans celebrated. He’s 32 now and graduated in 2014.
“This game just permeates everything,” he says. “My neighborhood has a group chat and nobody ever talks sports. But when this game comes around, it’s all everybody is talking about.”
Mike Speller, a banker, graduated from Texas in 1991 and flew down from Connecticut in part to see family for Thanksgiving, but also to go to the game with his son, a ninth-grader whose dream school is Texas.
They paid $3,600 for a pair of tickets.
“We waited to see if tickets were going to get any more reasonable,” he says. “They only got more unreasonable.”
Mark Rhodes, a psychologist and 1991 graduate of Texas A&M, brought his wife Trish to the game on Friday from Amarillo. They paid $1,600 for their pair on the secondary market. As soon as Texas’ SEC arrival signaled the rivalry was coming back, they decided they were going to be at the renewal.
“We would have paid pretty much anything to come to this game,” Trish Rhodes says. “It didn’t matter.”
They aren’t alone in their desperation. Texas A&M police say they arrested one fan who ran past security at an entrance. Two more came to the game dressed as construction workers with fake credentials, hard hats and reflective vests. They are arrested for criminal trespassing. Another is removed from the stadium after gaining access with a fake ticket.
Outside the east side of Kyle Field around 90 minutes before the game, a group of Stormtroopers fresh off a tour of Tatooine walks by waving an A&M flag. An A&M fan in a maroon shirt looks at them and smiles. His shirt featured scripture: Psalm 75:10.
“All the horns of the wicked I will cut off,” it reads.
Before the game, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte chats with McConaughey, who paces across the field and pauses to talk briefly with ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, who brought his dog Peter to witness history, too.
“When I first took the job, my thought was we have to bring this rivalry back,” says Del Conte, who left TCU to become Texas’ AD in 2017. “Everyone loves the game. It’s part of history.”
“The SEC was natural for lots of reasons but one of those was rekindling this rivalry,” Texas president Jay Hartzell says. “We started this journey back in 2020. The Longhorns wanted to get this rivalry resumed. To see it finally coming to fruition is fantastic.”
Texas dominates the first half 17-0, then holds off the Aggies’ comeback bid in the second. After singing “The Eyes of Texas” with the band after the win, some Texas players sprint to midfield and prepare to celebrate on the A&M midfield logo. Security and coach Steve Sarkisian quickly shoo them away.
Another Texas cheerleader, seeking space, runs toward midfield with a giant Texas flag. Security stops him.
“We’re not planting that!” a Texas support staffer yells.
“I’m just waving it. I know better than that. I wave it after every game,” the cheerleader says, before doing so.
“I just watched Ohio State and Michigan get in a full-fledged brawl in my hotel room today and I just didn’t think it was right,” Sarkisian says. We shouldn’t be on their logo. Shouldn’t be planting any flags on their logo, and I’d like, whenever that day comes, to get the same respect in return.”
The fight songs of both schools take a moment to insult the other. A&M’s ball boys wear white “Saw ’em off” hats on the sidelines. The band’s name tags all read “BTHO t.u.”
The prevailing tone, however, radiates far less hate and much more excitement. Aside from a few A&M and Texas staffers needing to be separated in pregame warmups, Saturday’s game lacks the fisticuffs and ugly scenes that color much of Rivalry Week elsewhere in the sport.
Most of the 109,028 fans who arrive as part of the third-largest crowd in Kyle Field history eventually leave disappointed. One of the wildest weekends in A&M history — in a game with stakes as high as almost any ever played on that field — ends in sadness at the hands of its most hated rival.
But so much of this rivalry’s existence necessitates this game actually being played. Finally, after 13 long years, it was.
