The Texas/Texas A&M tradition

What do these college football games have in common?

Clemson vs. South Carolina
Colorado vs. Colorado State
Florida vs. Florida State
Georgia vs. Georgia Tech
Iowa vs. Iowa State
New Mexico vs. New Mexico State
Notre Dame vs. Purdue
Pittsburgh vs. Penn State
Virginia vs. Virginia Tech

They are, of course, in-state rivalries between schools in different conferences, or, in the case of Notre Dame/Purdue, a conference school vs an independent.

I bring this to your attention because there is a lot of talk right now about Texas moving to the PAC 10 Conference and its long-time in-state rival Texas A&M moving to the Southeast Conference. And folks are moaning "Oh, what a shame if this happens because it will destroy one of football's great rivalries."

It doesn't have to.

It wasn't that long ago that another one of Texas' big rivalry games - the one with Oklahoma - was a non-conference game (Texas was in the Southwest Conference, Oklahoma in the Big 8).

No matter what happens in the current conference shake-ups, it's important to maintain that Texas-Texas A&M Thanksgiving Day weekend tradition. That game was my first and really only exposure to college football when I was growing up in New York City in the 1940s. On Thanksgiving morning, my mother, father, little brother and I would board the train at Penn Station to Westchester County where we would have Thanksgiving Dinner with my maternal grandmother and other members of that side of the family. And I vividly remember the day featured two televised football games, Texas/Texas A&M and the Detroit Lions playing the Green Bay Packers. Those two games were football to me at that time.

So, to me, it doesn't matter if Texas moves to the PAC 10 and Texas A&M feels it needs to go to the Southeast Conference. If those events do happen, I encourage the athletic directors of the two schools meet immediately and sign a long-term contract to keep playing each other very Thanksgiving holiday period. Doing so has two major advantages: (1) It maintains the tradition, one of the greatest in all of college football and (2) It means one less non-conference game each school has to worry about scheduling each year.