Texas and Texas A&M is so much not a rivalry (according to certain fans on both sides who like to declare themselves too big to care) that both schools have refused to play each other in the sport of football since A&M jumped from the Big 12 to the SEC in 2012. But who cares about that? It’s not even a rivalry.
A brief history of Texas and Texas A&M doing rival-like things since splitting up
Despite not being a rivalry, according to the loudest Aggies and Horns on the internet.
Which brings us to the Austin-hosted regional round of the 2018 NCAA baseball tournament.
Texas A&M has traveled to Austin in hopes of advancing into a super regional round that’s been paired with the Oxford regional, hosted by Ole Miss, which — like both Texas and Texas A&M — has no known rivals in the state of Texas.
A&M plays Texas on Saturday night in a winners’ bracket game. It’ll be broadcast live at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2, not LHN, a network dedicated exclusively to UT sports and which has no care for Aggie sports.
Despite not scheduling each other in football or basketball, they’ve met a few times since their alleged non-rivalry officially ended.
Those who assure you UT-TAMU is not a rivalry would advise you to ignore both benches coming out to the diamond to mill about for a while after a 2016 Aggie walk-off homer as A&M fans chanted about the SEC.
That there are two groups of young men with such a deep lack of malice for one another that they view this relationship as in no way a rivalry.
They’ve met once in men’s basketball, in the 2015 Battle 4 Atlantis tournament, which they both entered despite the possibility of having to play each other.
There were no reports of Bahamas bench-clearings between these two athletic programs that definitely do not spend all their time thinking about each other. The Aggies won.
They also had a good chance to meet in 2016’s March Madness.
The Horns talked about making sure they didn’t look past Northern Iowa to the second-round game against the Aggies — why would a non-rival ever look ahead to a non-rival anyway? — but lost to Northern Iowa. A&M’s QB reacted:
Sure, in 2014, A&M hit Texas with a Horns Down, the traditional hand signal of people who hate the Longhorns, but that doesn’t mean they hate each other enough to play football.
How better to troll your non-rival in a pivotal regional elimination game than to dismiss your non-rival as not having horns, when your non-rival’s entire ethos is built on steer horns? At some point that evening, the Aggies also gathered to sing about sawing Texas’ horns off, which is a typical thing to sing about a non-rival.
Oh, and Horns Down happened in that 2016 dustup too.
The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry appears to be hot online, but don’t be fooled.
For example, there was that time TexAgs.com (a Texas Longhorns site) and Orangebloods (a Texas A&M Aggies site) got into an epic 2016 spat over this or that recruit who did or didn’t decide to sign with this or that school, which doesn’t really matter, because who really cares about this or that school?
There are plenty of other examples of these non-rivals sure acting like rivals since 2012, such as that time A&M’s chancellor found a way to trash talk the Horns on the subject of UT selling beer at games:
But this is not rivalry behavior, though. Because reasons. Moving on.
The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry runs so shallow that even club Quidditch brings out the best in both sides.
You have to watch the last two minutes of this video.
Texas came out on the winning end, though I’m not entirely sure how that transpired, since the rules of Quidditch are arcane. Either way, the team holding brooms in their crotches and wearing orange celebrates what appears to be a significant victory over a non-rival wearing maroon and also grasping broomsticks in their crotches.
This is gonna be a good one.
Both teams are staffed with stellar pitching arms and powerful bats. They’re playing in Austin. They played once this season already, with TAMU stealing off a 6-5 win. There’s probably no revenge narrative here for the Horns, who don’t even consider this a rivalry with A&M, who also don’t even consider this a rivalry. You probably shouldn’t even tune it for it.
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