Texas–Texas A&M football rivalry

The Texas–Texas A&M football rivalry was an American college football rivalry between the Texas Longhorns football team of the University of Texas and Texas A&M Aggies football team of Texas A&M University.

History
The first meeting between the football squads of the University of Texas and Texas A&M University was in 1894, a 38–0 win for Texas. In fact, Texas won its first seven games against the Aggies, all of them by shutout. By 1915, Texas held a 15–4–2 advantage against the Aggies. The game was a back and forth affair for the next twenty years as the home team usually took the victory in the game, however Texas still maintained the series lead. In 1940, Texas shutout the Aggies 7–0 and kept them from receiving the Rose Bowl bid that year. From that year forward Texas would go on to win 33 of the next 38 games over A&M. It was not until the mid-1980s that A&M developed a win streak over Texas and in the late 1990s and 2000s the rivalry would again go back to Longhorns. The Texas–Texas A&M football rivalry has given rise to several stereotypes on both sides: Texas A&M is generally portrayed as the rural smaller school while Texas is portrayed as the urban-wealthy larger school. With the exception of the 1994 game, when A&M's probation restricted the Aggies from being televised, the annual football game with Texas A&M traditionally takes place on Thanksgiving Day or the day after each year. This rivalry is often considered one of the top college rivalries of all time. In July 2011, Texas A&M elected to join the Southeastern Conference beginning in 2012. The move to switch conferences resulted in the ending of the 118 year rivalry between the two schools. On November 24, 2011, Texas faced Texas A&M in College Station in the final scheduled meeting of the rivalry as of January 2012. Texas defeated Texas A&M 27–25 on a last second field goal to win the final meeting. In an attempt to generate more attention for the rivalry in sports other than football, the two schools created the State Farm Lone Star Showdown in 2004. Essentially, each time the two schools meet in a sport, the winner of the matchup gets a point. At the end of the year, the school with the most points wins the series and receives the Lone Star Trophy. Aspects of the rivalry include: Each school mentions the other in its fight song ("and it's goodbye to A&M" in Texas Fight, and the entire second verse of the Aggie War Hymn is about Texas). The football series was the third longest running rivalry in college football. Since 1900, the last regular season football game was usually reserved for the matchup. Each school has elaborate pre-game preparations for the annual football clash, including the Aggie Bonfire and Hex Rally. Texas has a unique lighting scheme for the UT Tower after beating Texas A&M.

Series record
''Texas victories are colored ██ burnt orange. Texas A&M victories are colored ██ maroon. Ties are white.'' t - Thanksgiving Day game

In popular culture
In October 2006, General Mills announced they would honor the then third-longest running college football rivalry with a special edition Wheaties box. The box featured the helmets of Texas and Texas A&M and their respective home stadiums, Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and Kyle Field, on either side. Although several individual college basketball and football teams had been featured previously on special edition boxes, this was the first time Wheaties had honored a rivalry series.