Posted: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 10:31 AM - 10,417 Readers
By: Kirk Bohls
photography by Jay Janner
To a man and presumably a woman if I had asked one on Monday, everyone will be sad to see the Texas-Texas A&M football game go.
Mack Brown's sad. So's Mike Sherman. Bevo's sad. Reveille's sad. Heck, I'm sad.
"It's a great rivalry and I hate to see it go," Texas guard David Snow said. "If it goes away, we'll have another game that's important too."
Important, maybe. Imperative, not a chance.
College football needs Texas-Texas A&M just like it needs rivalries like Ohio State-Michigan and Auburn-Alabama and Texas-OU and Lane Kiffin-NCAA. They're as much a part of the fabric of college sporting life as Beano Cook, the Rose Bowl parade and Lee Corso's costumes. Take ‘em away, and college football isn't nearly as compelling.
And a lot of people are sad now that A&M's gone to the SEC, and Texas-A&M is probably dead.
But John Sharp's beyond sad. He's borderline mad. Or he at least halfway sounded like it. Good for him.
"We want to make it abundantly clear we will play the game anywhere, any time," the new Texas A&M chancellor told me Monday morning. "If that game dies, it will not be on us. That game is bigger than Texas and bigger than A&M. That game belongs to the people of Texas, and if it goes away, it's not going to be on our watch."
The Aggies are on record as saying they want to continue the series, come rain, shine or the Longhorn Network. A&M's president and chancellor both say they want to play Texas every year.
Well, maybe. R. Bowen Loftin's and John Sharp's job security don't rest on how A&M does in the red zone.
On Monday's conference call of Big 12 head football coaches, Sherman all but pronounced the series dead. Regretfully, so.
I think Sherman is as honorable a man as there is in the profession, but I don't really think he wants to play the Longhorns every year as icing on an SEC cake that could be very hard to swallow.
That's why Texas should call A&M's bluff and insist upon playing every year. See if A&M will blink.
Trouble is, Mack Brown says he has "minimal input" in decisions like this — wink, wink — and surely wouldn't want to play A&M in the same season it does USC or Notre Dame, both of whom show up on Texas' schedule this decade.
Asked point blank if he wants it, Mack said, "I haven't had time to think about it."
Bottom line: probably neither football coach wants it.
Both sides are talking about how difficult it will be to fit in that game with conference schedules and all. Poppycock. Isn't A&M in the third year of a 10-year series with Arkansas? Well, that will become an SEC game, which opens up a spot for Texas. Weren't the Aggies and Longhorns supposed to play every year until the end of time or Joe Paterno's next birthday? So now it's a non-conference gig like all those pre-Big 12 Texas-OU shootouts in Dallas, no problem.
You see how easy it is.
Do not let pride and ego and raw emotion get in the way of the best thing in sports since the State Fair corny dog.
But DeLoss Dodds doesn't sound as if he'll budge either.
"As we have said before, scheduling them would be problematic," the Texas athletic director said. "We have contracts for three non-conference games each year that run until 2018. We also don't know what the configuration of the Big 12 will be."
Then, DeLoss adds this for a zinger:
"We didn't leave the conference. They did," he said. "We'll make a decision that's best for Texas."
Fine. He should.
But can't someone make a decision that's best for college football and the restoration of a rich history that is so gripping, so enthralling that it beats the pants off the NFL and is so good that television networks are just throwing money at college conferences?
"It's a great series and has been for so many years," Sherman said. "I will be sad to see that end. Year in and year out, people mark their calendars by that ballgame. But new rivalries come out, and you start circling other games on the calendar."
Uh, no, you don't. You can circle games till your pen runs dry, but that doesn't mean you'll replace A&M-Texas with another gem like that.
Ask Arkansas. From afar, it still doesn't appear the Razorbacks have a suitable rival worth hating half as much as the Longhorns. You can't manufacture good ol' fashioned hate.
Ask Nebraska. Since the Cornhuskers and Sooners couldn't agree that their traditional rivalry needed to continue, Nebraska and OU let it slip away. Those games weren't good games. They were classics. They were Johnny Rodgers and Billy Sims. They were every year.
Now they're gone.
I understand why stability-craving A&M left for the SEC. As Sharp told me, "This is for the next 100 years. We're not convinced the Big 12 is a 100-year conference."
Neither am I. I'm wondering it it's got 100 days in it. But that doesn't mean Texas-Texas A&M should be thrown out.
Who needs it?
College football does. Badly.
Git 'er done.
