Did you know they used to play football? I swear! They were rivals and everything. What a world.
By college football standards, the rivalry between the University of Texas and Texas A&M is exactly what you’d expect. First played in 1894 and scheduled annually starting in 1915, the Longhorns and Aggies feature all the standard tropes: UT is the liberal arts university in the urban state capital – the snobs – and A&M is the agricultural, military and engineering school – the country folk, let’s say.
Both schools boast an official dislike of each other in their respective fight songs. Both schools built annual game-week traditions on campus before playing each other, usually around Thanksgiving at the end of the regular season. Sometimes it was streaky. Texas holds a significant lead, but A&M dominated in the 1980s and early ‘90s.
If all this feels pretty normal – the preppies vs the hicks, the traditions, etc….that’s because it is, except for one small detail. Both of these schools are rich. Really rich. Stupid rich. It’s Texas, after all, and there’s no shortage of billionaires, plural, funding on-field aspirations and funneling off-field slush funds. Off the field – and in the ledgers – is where the hatred between these two groups becomes one of one, and a rivalry heats up to a Texas side of beef.
So, who’s hungry?
