October—Means—RIVALARY!

When the month of October hits, it usually means that football rivalries are renewed, and that the blood runs to a boiling point, and it spills out onto a gridiron!

Well not sure about the blood boiling part, but can assure you that the rivalry between schools are alive and well in Texas!

Every Second Saturday of the State Fair Of Texas, the rivalry between the institutions of the University of Texas and Oklahoma University, find themselves center stage on the field inside the Grand Dame herself, The Cotton Bowl!

A stadium in a city that is neutral between Austin, Texas and Norman, Oklahoma, about 3 hours drive from each school, and the fans, students, alumni, and just plain football fans show up inside the 90,000 plus capacity building, to create what merely looks like the Red River running right down the 50 yard line stripe!

Half the stadium dressed in the Crimson and Cream of Oklahoma, and the Burnt Orange and White of Texas. The Longhorns and the Sooners!

They have played this game in Dallas since 1929 and inside the Cotton Bowl at Fair Park since 1939. These two teams have met for 113 times, a couple of years twice in the same year. 1901 and 1903, in Austin and Norman each, they didn’t play in 1918, ’20. ’21, for four years from 1924, thru 1928. The Neutral site of Dallas and the Cotton Bowl will have these two teams play until 2025, and even though there has been talk about moving it to a home and home situation, the City of Dallas will most likely make a bold play to keep these two schools right here in Big D and at the State Fair of Texas for many more years to come.

However, the rivalry as we once knew it, going back the last 40 or 50 years or so, is not as intense as it once used to be.

If you are a native Dallasite, and you grew up during that era, you have memories of Downtown Dallas on the Friday before the game, with both sides, walking up and down Commerce street, and throwing up the Hook ‘Em Horns or the other side putting the HORNS DOWN. You would hear “TEXAS!!!! FIGHT!!!!” or “BOOMER SOONER!!!!”

The masses were made up, mainly of the natives who would show their allegiances to either school, but most likely, not be either a student or alum, just a fan!

ON those Friday nights, one could walk up and down the downtown street, watching police officers in later years, dressed in riot gear, prepared for the absolute worse, with fights and glass bottles being thrown or used as weapons, or having people trying to tip over cars. Yes this is YOUR town going berserk over a football game, that hasn’t even been played yet.

One could be arrested that night, spend that night in the city jail just up the block from where the party was going on, at Commerce and Harwood, and most likely not get out until well pass game time.

That’s where the REAL fun took place. See if you were smart, you would go into the jail to bail these poor souls out of jail, by purchasing their game tickets so they could have enough cash to bail out of jail! WORKED EVER TIME! And at times GOOD SEATS!

As the decades moved passed the 60’s and the 70’s and a little bit into the 80’s the party sort of ran  its course, the crowds were not as rowdy, they would hold staged “pep rallies’ in the West End of Downtown Dallas, with the Cheerleaders and the Bands holding court. The crowd would still chant “TEXAS!!!!!!! FIGHT!!!!!!!” or “BOOMER!!!! SOONER!!!” but that would be about it, no more fighting among the masses, no more throwing of bottles or using them as weapons.

Those days are long gone!

However the intensity inside the Cotton Bowl hasn’t changed, the two teams like up inside the tunnel that leads unto the field, and you can hear the smack talking, and the “jaw jacking” between the two teams, just before they run out onto the field!  

This years game was one that they will be talking about for years to come, how the Number 7 Oklahoma Sooners came into the Cotton Bowl undefeated, and looked like the team that would make their way to the National Championship rounds, and the Texas Longhorns came in at number 19, with a questionable start to the season against Maryland, then they reeled off 4 wins in a row, including beating Tulsa, USC, TCU, and Kansas State.

So all eyes are now on the Cotton Bowl, where Kyler Murray the quarterback of the Sooners and a home town football star from Allen High School in Allen, Texas (just 40 minutes north of Dallas) and transferred from Texas A&M to Oklahoma, has already signed a baseball contract with the Oakland A’s, and plans on playing baseball, but until then, he puts on the pads and the helmet and leads the Sooners. It’s a classic story with all the pomp and circumstance that goes along with it.

Murray led his high school team to state championship, led his Eagles to a come from behind victory in the State Semi Final game against one of the larger inner city schools in Texas, Skyline out of Dallas ISD.

Down by 20 plus points in the second half, it was Kyler that put his high school team on his back and led them to the resounding victory. While in High School he as undefeated in a total of 43 consecutive games, and THREE ---count them—THREE State Championships while he played there!

The KID doesn’t know how to lose!

Well that is until that fateful day in Dallas, when another quarterback out of Austin, Texas named Sam Ehlinger stepped up and showed that he is the leader of the Longhorns and did just that, even though his team was tied at 45 with the Sooners in the fourth quarter, and a turnover late in the game by the Sooners gave the ‘Horns a chance, and that’s all they needed, when they trucked out a Freshman kicker, a Freshman holder, and a Freshman long snapper onto the field, and from 40 yards out, places the ball right down Broadway to seal the deal for Texas and beat the Sooners 48-45.

Oklahoma on Sunday after the game, fired defensive coordinator Mike Stoops (brother of Bob Stoops, former Oklahoma Sooner head football coach) and will replace him this week. The main reason behind the firing is that the Sooners defense for the first time gave up not only more points, but also more total yards by an opposing team, and it was time for them to part company.

Texas jumped 10 spots in the polls from number 19 to number 9, and the Sooners dropped from number 7 to number 11 and pretty much out of the top 4 running for the National Championship Playoffs.

There are rivalries that are beloved and dear, to most people the top three rivalries are Michigan vs Ohio State, Army vs Navy and Texas vs Oklahoma.

Though there is one rivalry game that isn’t played anymore, and its because the two schools aren’t in the same conference as they were for 118 years. Texas vs. Texas A&M. The tradition of that rival game is one for the books.

You have “Yell Practice” at midnight for the Aggies, and the “HEX” walk for the Longhorns the Bonfire for the Aggies to show the BURNING DESIRE TO BEAT VARSITY, and of course the Longhorns fight song mentioning the Aggies by name, oh and so does the Aggie War Hymn for that matter. They are the ONLY TWO Schools in the NCAA that DO mention each other in their respective fight songs!

High Schools have theirs as well, there are times when the W. T. White Longhorns would play the, THEN, Thomas Jefferson Rebels (since changed their name to Patriots) Where they once placed a dead cow in the student parking lot, and placed a Rebel Flag in it! Made their point, there were others like Dallas Skyline and Dallas Bryan Adams had their rival game, or Plano and Plano East, the cross town rivals are always the best, what about the J. J. Pearce and Richardson High School, they are truly about a mile or apart, and it’s the Back Yard Brawl, or even Lake Highlands and L.V. Berkner and their battle of the stadium, called the Bone Yard!

Those are great rivalries and they make for great and intense story lines, and make for great fodder for newspapers and talk shows, however the real story is how the athletes handle it, and do they remain friends with their rival after the game, and after the season, and at times when they might even play for the same team!

Sometimes its just a game! And its Just a thought!