Texas A&M football is coming into this renewed rivalry matchup with everything to play for. The Aggies are still alive for the SEC championship—and therefore the playoff—and therefore the national championship—and can take that first step with a win on Saturday.
Standing in their way is none other than the hated rival who conveniently refused to continue playing the Aggies directly before their football program went off a cliff: the Texas Longhorns.
With a three-year runway building up to this rivalry matchup, Texas has done every single thing they can to claw their way out of A&M's shadow—and not just on the football field.
Perhaps the most ignominious, base, low, undignified move we've seen pulled in the last few years of collegiate athletics was the one the now-Texas baseball coach, Jim Schlossnagle, pulled this summer, leaving the Aggies the day after their trip to the College World Series, on the heels of a vehement denial that he would do what he well knew he was about to, to abscond for Austin.
This was a move that many thought would cripple the A&M baseball program. However, the Aggies lost not a single major contributor to the portal, and are set to contend for a national title again this season.
This Aggie baseball team will be honored on the field during the Texas game.
Some will call this petty, but there could be no better troll of the Longhorns than to do just this. This is a thumb of major proportions in Texas's eye; a reminder that some things—like loyalty—cannot be bought.
That's a lesson the program in Austin, nationally famous for their fair-weather fanbase, will probably never understand in any of our lifetimes. So they'll no doubt mock something like this, given that they can only deride that which they are unable to comprehend.
But the rest of us understand just how perfect this gesture is. This is a true master stroke by the Aggies.