Former Texas A&M exec: Texas told Big 12 schools not to play Aggies

Texas and Texas A&M haven’t met on the field since the Aggies left the Big 12 after the 2011 season and the ‘Horns asked other schools to do the same.

Every college football season, some of the best rivalries in all of sports take place. From Auburn-Alabama to Michigan-Ohio State and Florida State-Miami, when hated foes take the field, it means more. In the age of realignment, some games like Texas-Texas A&M have gone by the wayside for a variety of reasons.

While the men from Austin and College Station have met 118 times in their history, not one of those games has taken place since the 2011 season. After Texas got a two-point victory over the Aggies, Texas A&M went on and left the Big 12 Conference for the fame, money and fourth place finishes in the SEC West.

Since then, the debate has raged about why each side doesn’t want to play the other, but then they change their minds and decide they do want to play each other. As it turns out, one former high-level member of the Texas A&M athletics department says the Longhorns made sure they weren’t the only former conference foes avoiding the Aggies during a story for AL.com:

"Bill Byrne, Texas A&M’s athletic director at the time, expected the rivalry to continue. He even told the SEC to keep the Thanksgiving weekend open when doing conference scheduling so the Aggies could maintain their rivalry with the Longhorns.“Their AD (DeLoss Dodds) at the time came out and said we will never play Texas A&M again, and they worked along with Baylor and the conference to have no one in the (Big 12) schedule us,” Byrne says."

Now, if this is indeed true, the Longhorns have taken pettiness to a new level by saying that not only do they not want to face Texas A&M anymore just because they left the conference but they went out of their way to make sure no one did.

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Ironically, while the Aggies haven’t played a Big 12 school in the regular season since leaving, they have faces three of them in bowl games since leaving — Oklahoma, West Virginia and Kansas State. As of now, the Aggies don’t have any teams from that conference on future schedules through 2026.