COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Texas and Texas A&M first met on the football field in 1894 in a rivalry that would cut across the state and through families for generations.
But a bitter breakup would eventually come between them.
In 2011, Texas A&M announced it was leaving Texas and the Big 12 behind to join the Southeastern Conference, determined to focus only on a bright future, not dwell on a sentimental past.
Resentful finger pointing and hard feelings eventually gave way to shrugs of indifference and mutters of “good riddance.”
Thirteen years later, the family feud has reignited. Texas is playing in the SEC this season, and the No. 3 Longhorns and No. 20 Aggies finally meet again Saturday night in College Station with new intensity: A berth in the SEC championship game is on the line.
“I’ve missed this. It’s too good of a game not to play,” said Dan Neil, a former Texas All-American offensive lineman who played in the rivalry from 1992-1996.
Neil called the breakup a “shame.” Former Texas quarterback Case McCoy, whose crazy-legs scramble set up the Longhorns’ game-winning field goal in 2011, was more blunt about the lost years of a treasured rivalry.
“I feel like it was stolen from the last generation of football players,” McCoy said.
The breakup
The split came amid a tumultuous period of conference realignment across the country that had Texas in the middle of it all.
The Big 12 had already lost Colorado to the Pac-12 and Nebraska to the Big Ten. Texas had also flirted with joining the Pac-12 and taking longtime rival Oklahoma and other Big 12 schools with it. Texas A&M meanwhile, briefly looked eastward toward the SEC.
The boat was still rocking a year later when Texas and ESPN effectively flipped it over with a 20-year, $300 million deal to launch the now-defunct Longhorn Network. Big 12 rivals bitterly complained the swaggering Longhorns were stomping over the rest of the league.
The Aggies had enough. The two schools played in the same conference since 1915, but A&M saw a chance to strike out on its own. The SEC was the most powerful football conference in the country and promised more money and more respect and a big leap out of Texas’ shadow.
When Texas A&M informed the Big 12 it was leaving, then-President R. Bowen Loftin called it a “100-year decision” the school had addressed “carefully and methodically.”
Years later, he described a simple desire to get away from Texas.
