The Cold War: The things that defined the last 13 years of Texas and Texas A&M's rivalry

It’s Thanksgiving Day and I couldn’t be more thankful that the rivalry in the state of Texas has returned.

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The mere 104 miles of separation between Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and Kyle Field doesn’t represent the magnitude of this rivalry at all, for it seeps into every other square inch of The Great State. The rivalry stretches across friendships, families, neighborhoods and workplaces. College football rivalries are biblical, some feel tribal like warring people groups while others are from the same household like they’re Jacob and Esau.

The rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma is marked by the former, two distinct identities and borders which represent state pride and culture as if the teams are two warring nations. The latter comparison is the Lone Star Showdown. It happens all under one roof, like two remarkably different brothers who never let the competition with one another rest. The fact it’s been gone for 13 years is a damn shame, even if Texas fans did possess a baker’s dozen worth of years of “SCOREBOARD” after Justin Tucker’s kick in 2011. 

The game returns Saturday in College Station after a period absent of games played on or around Thanksgiving and make no mistake, its re-entry into our lives will be filled with more passion, vitriol and angst than ever before. The incredible story by ESPN’s Dave Wilson about the Longhorn band’s touching tribute to the Texas A&M students who lost their lives in the 1999 bonfire got me remembering the rivalry how I remember it when I was a kid. Though it’s always been intense, I don’t remember the rivalry from my youth reaching the level of hate that it’s risen to since 2011. The anecdotes of RC Slocum helping a newly hired Mack Brown about how to navigate the state would never happen today.

Even in my own life, I remember my immediate family rooting for the Aggies against Kansas State in the 1998 Big 12 Championship out of solidarity for our maroon and white toting friends and family. It helped that Ricky Williams clinched the Heisman against them and Texas upset the Aggies that year to be sure, but I can confidently say that’s the first and only time I’ve ever rooted for them. What’s more, there are the infamous shirts that the Aggies made before the National Championship against USC that showed a bandage over Bevo’s “sawed off Horns” and read “Today Only – Gig’ Em Horns.” 

#tbt Never forget Aggies made these shirts to support Texas in the National Championship game vs USC 💀💀 pic.twitter.com/jnlhoCTAte

— University of Tampering (@Doc_Texas) July 11, 2024

All that to say, there was a period of playing nice between the two fan bases, and more importantly the institutions, that can feel as distant as bygone moments of Texas history from the 1800s. The Longhorn Network, followed by A&M leaving for the SEC, ended any pretense of familial niceties. Then, Texas and Oklahoma crashing the Aggies’ SEC party and the theft of Jim Schlossnagle elevated this conflict to full on jihad, especially with the SEC Championship stakes Saturday’s game carries.

But the last 13 years it resembled something more like a Cold War where wins over the other had to be established through recruiting victories, coaching hires and transitive property mental gymnastics. I won’t miss this period, it shouldn’t be how rivalries are remembered.

But it was still memorable just the same. Here are the things that defined the 13 years of the Cold War. 

Johnny Football 

The Aggies left the Big 12 in rough shape, but they took the SEC by storm in their first season because of Johnny Manziel. New coach Kevin Sumlin and offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury took the Air Raid Big 12 offense to the defense focused SEC and lit up the scoreboard. Johnny F’ing Football’s style, brashness and attitude might have flown in the face of everything that defines the traditional identity of Texas A&M has a buttoned up institution wearing overalls, but the Aggies were quick to embrace their quarterback and for good reason. He became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy and upset Nick Saban and Alabama in Tuscaloosa just a year after losing five Big 12 games.

In Manziel, Texas A&M finally had their transcendent player that competed with Longhorn legends like Williams, Vince Young and Earl Campbell. Though he only started two seasons in College Station before heading to Cleveland, the renovations and expansion of Kyle Field, the explosion of recruiting, the hiring of Jimbo Fisher was all groundwork laid by No. 2. While every game of Manziel’s time at A&M felt like appointment viewing, things in Austin were stale as Texas was toddling through a new Big 12, the waning years of Brown’s tenure and ugly offense.

Even though the Aggies kept swaying and singing songs about Texas, it seemed like one of the only times in their history where they weren’t focused solely on the Longhorns.

Recruiting: Kyler Murray and Malik Jefferson

The era of Johnny Football felt like the time where the Aggies really could have pulled away from their archrival. Texas A&M started to recruit like its SEC peers in the wake of Manziel’s Heisman, landing players like Myles Garrett who didn’t even consider taking his talents to Austin. Meanwhile, a failed heist of Saban from Alabama led Texas to hire Charlie Strong from Louisville. Though Strong was flawed, he did possess the ability to at least know what an NFL player should look like.

But Sumlin pulled five star after five star, capped by Allen’s Kyler Murray, an Aggie legacy. There was Daylon Mack and #WRTS (We Run This State). The throughline from Manziel to Murray looked like it wouldn’t skip a beat, a heroic final push from the Longhorns notwithstanding. In 2013 and 2014, the Aggies finished well ahead of Texas in the recruiting rankings and the fanbases online went to war. It was all they had to go off of since the game wasn’t being played. But the results on the field would never match Sumlin’s first season in College Station again and 8-4 after 8-4 seasons followed.

In 2015, when Strong was able to land Mesquite Poteet five star Malik Jefferson after an intense battle with the Aggies on the day forever known to Longhorn recruit-niks as Malikmas, the bleeding was stopped and the Longhorns finished above the Aggies in recruiting once again. Sumlin fumbled the Murray situation and scared him off to Norman, where he went onto win a Heisman Trophy for the Oklahoma Sooners.

The era of Aggie Football that started off with so much promise was officially on ice. Even though Texas finished well ahead of A&M in the 2016 recruiting rankings after TexAgs made a documentary about future Longhorn star and NFL safety Brandon Jones, Strong was a dead man walking after the worst three years in modern Longhorn football history. Texas would still take a page out of A&M’s playbook and hire a man away from the Houston Cougars in Tom Herman. At the time, nobody laughed, nobody but Herman knew that “winning was hard.”

Can’t Pull Away

In this era of Texas and A&M football, to the fans it felt like both teams were playing two games every week. There was your own team’s game AND your rival’s. But despite the weekends where one team would win and the other would lose, the eras of late Brown, Sumlin, Strong and Herman were defined by the inability to pull away from the other in any meaningful way.

The quintessential memory I have of this phenomenon comes from September 2017. Herman has come onto the scene and is recruiting super well to start, now it feels like Texas really is getting “errybody” to come to Austin. But, Herman’s first game starts and it’s a sign. The Longhorns lose to Maryland at home and the Aggie fans online, along with their recruits go wild with schadenfreude.

But that night, Texas A&M would blow a 31 point lead to the UCLA Bruins. Nobody could brag, because the two programs couldn’t stop tripping over their own giant feet. 

Jimbo

Herman’s in-state recruiting would only be unchecked for a little while, because he wasn’t competing against a dead man walking in College Station for long. When the Aggies bolted for the seedier SEC, it seemed so out of character for the “aww shucks” Texas A&M persona that many remember from the 1990s and early 2000s.

The defection for the southeast and the embrace of Manziel showed that A&M would break their stereotypical character for something darker if winning was on the line. But the hiring of Jimbo Fisher from Florida State with a 10-year, $75 million fully-guaranteed contract was the surest sign they would do whatever it takes to finally pull away from Texas.

Texas fans tried to act as if the Aggies hiring a national championship winning coach away from a more traditional college football power wasn’t a big deal while Aggie fans tried to ignore the red flags about Fisher, most notably how his time leading the Seminoles had decayed on and off the field. But when Fisher led the Aggies to a top-five finish after the shortened COVID season of 2020 and Herman was crumbling, it looked like Texas was on the ropes once more. 

Crashing The Party

I still remember where I was when I read the report. I was on a perfunctory work Zoom after a day of living in Zoomatory, still in pandemic adjacent enough times. My mic was muted and I was nodding as if I was paying attention, but I switched to another tab on my browser.

There was a report on Inside Texas that the Longhorns and Sooners were leaving for the SEC. I immediately unmuted and told my coworkers I had to go pick up my son. As I finished the report, I realized college football and my own fanhood would never be the same. Despite the Aggies attempts to squash the move with a premature leak of the report, it was set in stone.

It became obvious why Kevin Eltife and the triumvirate at Texas wanted someone with SEC ties to be their next coach and hired Steve Sarkisian from Alabama. The introduction of NIL had made it possible for Texas to join the conference they once would have never dreamed of joining just a decade after almost leaving for the Pac 12. Former A&M AD Ross Bjork lamented how the SEC identity was unique to the farmers, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. The financial windfall and possibility of the SEC patch on Longhorn jerseys was too enticing for Commissioner Greg Sankey to ignore despite the broken hearts in College Station. Though it wasn’t officially over, the Cold War had an end date. The rivals would meet on the field again. Who would’ve thought at the time that the reunion would be for a spot in Atlanta?

The end of Jimbo, a Texas resurgence

When Texas announced they were leaving for the SEC, they were in no way, shape, or form SEC ready. An early loss to Arkansas exposed just how far Sarkisian had to bring his roster in order to compete, while the thought of Texas’ return caused the A&M donor base to go psycho mode with recruiting. There would be Black Saturday, where Texas blew a 28-7 lead to Oklahoma before A&M would upset Alabama at Kyle Field. That game would send Texas on the way to a 5-7 finish.

A&M would score huge recruiting victories over Texas in landing longtime Longhorn leans Denver Harris and Evan Stewart on their way to the number one class in the history of the recruiting ranking services. But it was never as bad for Texas as it seemed, Sarkisian never flinched and landed a great class of his own that emphasized giant humans like Kelvin Banks and Cam Williams, the two offensive tackles who will start against the Aggies on Saturday night. Even though teams would be playing in the future, the fanbases chirped about which class was better and pointed to average recruit rankings like they had for over a decade.

However, the follow ups to each program’s 2021 season might be the defining moments of the Cold War. Fisher followed up beating Saban and the No. 1 class by starting a blood feud with the GOAT and losing to Appalachian State before going 5-7. It was obvious things were trending down in Aggieland and the blank date on Fisher’s National Championship plaque would never be filled in.

Things were trending up in Austin, Sarkisian landed Quinn Ewers, then Arch Manning and stole Anthony Hill from the Aggies while improving his team to 8-4. While the beginning of the Cold War was marked by Texas A&M being unable to pull away from their arch nemesis, the end of it was underscored by Sarkisian stiff arming Fisher to the ground with a Big 12 Championship and College Football Playoff appearance, something A&M has yet to do.

Now, the return of the rivalry game will now be absent of so many figures that defined the 13 year Cold War, Fisher, Herman, Sumlin, Strong, Manziel and Sam Ehlinger. 

One final declaration of war via the diamond

The final act of the Cold War occurred off the football field, but it was the final sign that the former era of niceties were buried under more than a century of hatred. The temperature of this thing has been turned to a thousand, the blood in bloodfeud is now boiling. Most of the Cold War actions towards one another were indirect, or at best skirmishes like the occasional times the schools met in other sports, but no longer.

When Texas drove the knife into A&M’s back and took Jim Schlossnagle from their rival after the Aggies’ national championship defeat in baseball, it was symbolic of what is about to happen. Now the programs, universities and fan bases are in a new era of conflict with one another. One of unchecked aggression. Saturday Night officially kicks that era off.