It’s finally official: Texas and will play in 2024 at Kyle Field.
The SEC confirmed that on Wednesday night when the league announced the home and away opponents for each conference team in the 2024 season, the league’s first as a 16-team entity.
We don’t yet know when the game will take place — here’s hoping the game returns to its Thanksgiving weekend tradition — but at least we know that we’ll go only one more season before these heated rivals meet for the 119th time (Texas leads the series 76-37-5).
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That it took a dozen years to reach this point is a shame. Forget whose fault it is; supporters of both programs have done plenty of finger-pointing at each other while administrators at each school have bobbed and weaved, giving the rivalry plenty of lip service and little else. The schools have met in other sports, and that’s great, but in the state where football is king, the absence of the game has left a giant void in the late November college football calendar.
In the course of reporting for a piece in 2021 about the 10th anniversary of the last game between the Aggies and Longhorns, one common sentiment prevailed among those interviewed who were at Kyle Field for Texas’ 27-25 win in 2011: They missed it.
“It feels like something has been missing in the state of Texas the last 10 years without us playing against A&M,” former Texas tight end Blaine Irby said then.
“I’d love to see it come back,” former Texas A&M quarterback Ryan Tannehill said. “You hated to see it end to start with.”
ESPN “College GameDay” host and play-by-play commentator Rece Davis, who called that game, put it best when we spoke in November 2021.
“This sport requires some investment from an historical point of view. And when we just throw those away, I think that both sides lose a lot and the sport loses a lot,” Davis said. “The cost is greater than breaking the contract or reworking a contract with someone else so you can continue to play.
“It’s important to have rivalries with some texture and history, context and some bitterness. The type of rivalry that when you win it, it feels good a little bit every day for an entire year. And if you lose, you just can’t wait to get back and get another shot.”
That’s what the Aggies and Longhorns share: history, texture and bitterness. They’re the two largest, most prominent programs in a state that eats, sleeps and breathes football. They’re separated by roughly 100 miles. “It was a game that showcased Texas high school football across the country,” former Texas coach Mack Brown told The Athletic in 2021. “That was very important.”
The fact that one of college football’s best rivalries returns in 2024 is worth celebrating. Conference realignment has robbed the sport of plenty of rivalries, including this one, but thankfully, the domino effect led to its reunion.
Texas A&M vs. Texas: over 100 years of passion.
The game is back.
And it's coming home.#GigEm pic.twitter.com/j5sYL48AM2— Texas A&M Football (@AggieFootball) June 14, 2023
Now let’s hope that, eventually, SEC members come to their senses and approve a nine-game conference schedule for 2025 and beyond, ensuring that this rivalry never takes another year off for the foreseeable future. The Longhorns have slotted various opponents into Thanksgiving weekend since 2012, but none ever stuck. Texas A&M and LSU started playing that week consistently in 2014 and have done so in every year since except for the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. And although the Aggies and Tigers have engaged in entertaining battles and will likely continue playing annually, having Texas-Texas A&M in that slot would have been a lot more fun.
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So much has changed at each school since the teams last met in 2011.
The Aggies joined the SEC in 2012 and caught lightning in a bottle in Year 1, going 11-2 behind Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Johnny Manziel and coach Kevin Sumlin. That season drastically changed A&M’s outlook, led to an uptick in recruiting and prompted a substantial financial windfall via donations that made possible the $485 million redevelopment of Kyle Field, among a host of other infrastructure projects. The school hired Jimbo Fisher, who won a national championship at Florida State, to a record-setting contract in December 2017, and in 2020 the Aggies recorded their second top-five finish in the Associated Press poll since joining the SEC.
When Texas kicker Justin Tucker’s game-winning field goal silenced most of the nearly 90,000 in attendance at Kyle Field on Thanksgiving night 2011, nobody knew the depths to which Longhorn football would later sink. At the time of the breakup, Texas was only two seasons removed from its last national championship game appearance, but coach Mack Brown would be pushed out two years later, following the 2013 season. Brown’s successor Charlie Strong lasted only three seasons — each with seven losses — before being fired. Tom Herman lasted four before his ouster, even though his tenure included a Sugar Bowl win and the Longhorns’ only 10-win season since 2010. Steve Sarkisian, Texas’ current coach, is the Longhorns’ third in the post-Brown era.
Now the programs appear to be on different trajectories. Sarkisian, who endured a rough 5-7 debut season, has positive momentum on the Forty Acres after last year’s 8-5 showing. Texas has signed consecutive top-five classes, has smartly built up talent on the line of scrimmage, added a host of skill position talent and has an improving defense. The roster is in good shape, and Texas could be tabbed as the Big 12 favorite for the first time since the league went to a divisionless format in 2011.
The Aggies, who flirted with the College Football Playoff in 2020, have gone in the opposite direction. They went 8-4 in 2021, but they beat Alabama and entered 2022 with momentum after signing the highest-rated recruiting class in the internet rankings era. Then last year went sideways, a 5-7 season held back by injuries, offensive ineptitude, discipline issues and youth that promptedquestions about the program’s future under Fisher.
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The 2023 season is pivotal for both programs. Texas wants to win the Big 12 on its way out. A&M wants to steer the train back onto the tracks and accomplish something of significance in the window it has with a massively talented roster.
So much can change in the next 17 months. Who knows what these programs will look like when they see each other? But after more than a decade of the rivalry being relegated to message boards and social media, the fact that they will actually play football next year is a welcome change.
It shouldn’t have taken this long to happen, but when the ball is kicked off in Aggieland before 100,000-plus screaming fans next fall, the reunion of Texas and Texas A&M will be a moment to cherish.
(Photo: Darren Carroll / Getty Images)
Sam Khan Jr. is a senior writer for The Athletic covering college football and recruiting primarily in Texas. Previously, he spent eight years covering college sports at ESPN.com and seven years as a sports reporter at the Houston Chronicle. A native Houstonian, Sam graduated from the University of Houston. Follow Sam on Twitter @skhanjr
