Colt McCoy on Texas vs. Texas A&M rivalry renewal: 'It's great for everybody'

The official coupling of Oklahoma and Texas with the SEC this fall will mean the rekindling of a few former rivalry games that will have everyone from Longhorns to the casual college football fan salivating.

Chief among them is a rivalry that took on some renewed spirit just in the last few days with the departure of Texas A&M baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle for the Texas job. And, sure, while the move isn’t football-related, it will ratchet up the intensity of the fans considerably.

Having the Texas and Texas A&M football game back on tap for the first time since 2011 will be a real treat.

“Texas vs. Texas A&M is not only a great game for college football, it’s great or the state of Texas,” former Texas quarterback Colt McCoy said on the McElroy and Cubelic in the Morning radio program. “I mean, listen, UT and A&M are two awesome schools. They’re massive. There’s 50,000-60,000 undergrads. I mean the magnifications of what that game does just in the state of Texas is unbelievable, so to have that game back is great for everybody. And it’ll be great for the SEC.”

It’ll certainly be highly anticipated.

The two teams are scheduled to meet on Nov. 30, at season’s end, so there’s a long time to get hyped up in anticipation for that one. But there are other games on tap that have McCoy excited.

“On top of that, I’ll tell you why I’m so pumped for Texas,” McCoy said. “It’s because we get three rivalries back. Think about Texas-Texas A&M, we just talked about it. Texas and Oklahoma is one of the best games ever, playing in the Cotton Bowl, halfway between Austin and Norman. Everybody knows that game, we talk about that game.

“But then the old Southwest Conference rivalry with Arkansas. I only played Arkansas once while I was in college and it was kind of just another game on the schedule, to be honest, for us as players. But when we got to that week it was a huge deal for our fans, our coaches. Like you could feel the old-school rivalry, the emotions of that game. The guys who called in, the beat writers, like it was big.”

Texas currently boasts a 56-23 overall record in the series against Arkansas, with the last game played in 2021, a 40-21 Arkansas win. The last four games have been split dead down the middle, while the last 10 are also a 5-5 split.

That promises plenty of intrigue, even if it isn’t on the level of Texas-Texas A&M.

“The thing I’m most excited about is we get those three games in one season,” McCoy said. “It’s unbelievable.”