With all the hype about the Red River Shootout this weekend, I was just wondering if UT fans now consider OU a bigger rival than A&M? I know that the Horns/Aggies rivalry goes back further, but with OU's return to national prominice, this game now seems to be a year round topic.
Both games will always be rivalry games, but TX OU is BIG right now. I don't think UT A&M have ever played when both teams were in the top 5. Right now I consider OU the bigger rival, not only because OU is a much better team than A&M, but also because the Bonfire tragedy has minimized the fighting b/w the schools around the game. TX OU has a better history than UT A&M. Until the 80's, A&M sucked in football. OU has 7 national titles. UT Arkansas was another rivarly, probably big at one time, but unfortunately we don't play them yearly.
during my freshman year at UT, Texas and A&M played for the first ever Big 12 South title. that was a pretty big deal. and of course I remember reading about the Texas vs. A&M matchup in the late 70s when Texas was ranked No. 1 and Texas A&M was No. 12, with the SWC championship on the line. Earl Campbell rushed for over 220 yards and several touchdowns in a Texas route but of course the TX vs. OU matchup has had many more compelling games and both teams were ranked very high in several matchups over the years. having said that, i think its basically about rankings that decide which of the two games (OU or A&M) is a bigger rivalry in any given year.
I've been trying to convince my fellow Ags that we need to focus more on Tech until we can put together a respectable team. In my two short years here they have already robbed us of 2 games we should have won. If we do become big rivals with Tech, we may have to change the fight song since it has to be strictly about our football rival and barely about the school. But it's a tradition and you know how that goes. . .
The strength of rivalries goes up and down. I'm sure UT A&M was big at one time, but it's not anymore. Doesn't mean it won't be once again. Ever since I've been at UT, the A&M game hasn't been the same. For example, I've never been to a Hex Rally, but I have gone to two Torchlight Parades down Guadalupe with everyone chanting "OU Sucks!". Just a different feel for that rivalry right now. After getting whooped in '00, I wanna beat OU worse than the Aggies.
OU is like the loud neighbor you just can't shut up. He does annoying things such as playing their music too long, gawdy Christmas and Halloween decorations and never mowing their lawn. ATM is more like the little brother you would feel sorry for if he didn't run his mouth all the time for no reason.
i originally posted this in the UT/OU smack thread, but i'll crosspost it here too. i remember a thread started by someone about which was the bigger rivalry, OU v. UT or A&M v. UT well, CNNSI has chimed in: Border complex OU-Texas animosity runs much deeper than football Texas linebacker Lee Jackson's indoctrination into the Texas-Oklahoma rivalry came as soon as the team bus reached the Cotton Bowl his freshman year. "There was a 70-year-old woman giving us the finger," he said. Welcome to the Red River Shootout. Plenty of other games, like this weekend's Florida State-Miami, are billed as "hated rivalries," when in fact they are merely football games. Football only begins to explain the Texas-Oklahoma antagonism -- much of which flows from one side of the river. "Even though the states border each other, the people are really different," said Jim Dent, author of The Undefeated, a book chronicling the Sooners' record 47-game win streak, as well as The Junction Boys. "Oklahomans have been beaten down by the Dust Bowl; Texans have been ratcheted up by oil. "I don't think there's any group of people in the world who hate another group of people like Oklahomans do Texans." The Sooners and Longhorns have combined to win 10 national championships and five Heisman Trophies. Saturday in Dallas, they will line up as the second- and third-ranked teams in the country. But deep down, this is less about two powerhouse football programs than it is one state's inferiority complex and another's perceived arrogance. Texans wear their pride on their sleeves -- or, more accurately, their license plates, proclaiming to anyone who will listen: "Don't mess with Texas." Oklahomans, on the other hand, have spent the better part of 60 years trying to overcome the forlorn image of their state painted by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath and perpetuated ever since. Just last week in an episode of Friends, Chandler dealt with the horrifying possibility of moving to Tulsa. Low morale was the main reason in 1947 Oklahoma's president hired a promising young coach in hopes of bolstering the school's football program. It worked, as Bud Wilkinson beat Texas nine out of 10 tries from 1948-57. Thus began a vicious, back-and-forth struggle for football superiority, with the 'Horns hiring away Wilkinson protege Darrell Royal, who promptly won eight straight against the Sooners (the first one allegedly made Royal so emotional he retreated to the back of the locker room afterward to vomit), and OU responding with Barry Switzer, whose dominance helped drive Royal to retirement. (Before their final meeting in 1976, President Gerald Ford walked the tunnel with the two coaches; an intoxicated Sooner fan was heard to shout, "Who are the two a--holes with Switzer?") Now, in the latest round of one-upmanship, coaches Mack Brown and Bob Stoops are locked in a struggle for national preeminence, with Texas' Brown scoring the prized recruiting classes but Oklahoma's Stoops delivering a Sears Trophy in just his second season. "As far as traditional rivalries go, it's certainly among the top five or six, with Army-Navy, Notre Dame-USC, Ohio State-Michigan and, in the last 15 years, Florida State-Florida and Florida State-Miami," said Bernie Kish, executive director of the College Football Hall of Fame. "I think the main reason for it is because football is a way of life in that part of the country." Sooners QB Nate Hybl can certainly attest to that. He is the rare player who's been involved in two of the nation's most prominent border wars, transferring to Oklahoma after a season at Georgia, which travels annually to Jacksonville, Fla., for its showdown with the Gators. "I think Oklahoma and Texas fans single this out more than where I grew up [in Hazlehurst, Ga.]," said Hybl. "The Georgia-Florida game was a time for the university to party together. To me, this is about horns raised and horns down, just non-stop. It's a big contrast." Those upside-down horns are a year-round sight in Norman, on T-shirts, on windows and, in the case of at least one recent Sooners player, on tattoos. But besides throwing the occasional "OU sucks" lyric into "Texas Fight" at games, Longhorns don't seem quite as obsessed with their neighbors to the north. Receiver Roy Williams declared this "just another week." Defensive end Cory Redding said it's "one of the big games of the year." Running back Cedric Benson observed how "everybody talks about this game from the beginning of the football season until the end." Therein may lie a primary reason why, despite the teams' comparable talent levels, the Sooners have squashed the 'Horns the past two seasons. At Oklahoma, it's the big game of the year. And everybody talks about it from the beginning of the football season until the end of ... well, time. "I don't know if there's the feeling that Texas just has to beat Oklahoma," said Wendell Barnhouse of the Fort Worth Star Telegram. "Texas fans, if they lose, there's a week or two where they're down, but it's not like they have to carry this burden around listening to Oklahoma fans giggle about it. Also, Texas has got Texas A&M. That's a little bit more like Alabama-Auburn, they're much more likely to run into A&M people in an elevator." Any disparity in passion, however, will disappear by this weekend. Tough the days of rowdy, often violent street parties -- where crowds had to be dispersed with riot police and fire hoses -- are now a distant memory, opposing fans will still flood the Dallas bars Friday night, jam the midway Saturday morning. The crowd, as always, will be split 50-50 crimson and orange. And once again, the teams will run out of the same dark tunnel into the sparkling daylight. "I've covered 17 Super Bowls," said Dent, "and I don't think I've ever felt that kind of electricity you feel in the Cotton Bowl when it's Texas and Oklahoma." . . . No Love Lost The top five present-day rivalries, based purely on venom: Game 1. Oklahoma-Texas OU fans live to rub it in UT's face. 2. Florida-Florida St. Last time out: Darnell Dockett StompGate. 3. Oregon-Washington Mutual loathing begins with the coaches. 4. Tennessee-Alabama NCAA investigators involved in this one. 5. Texas Tech-Texas A&M A&M media guide: Tech 'classless clowns.' no mention of UT vs. A&M, but instead, they have Tech vs. A&M now who was it that was saying that Texas is more obsessed with OU than OU is with TX????
That's the point, half of the song, if you don't count "Saw Varsity's Horns off," is about TU. TU's song only mentions A&M once, one line, barely. You probably don't care since it's a tradition, but I have an open mind and I call em like I see em.
