Fate, Florida. Texas A&M does not know the year in which it will renew its famous football competition with Texas. No later than 2025 but maybe 2024. The Aggies know exactly where the game will be.
“I can’t imagine the atmosphere when this game is played,” A&M sporting director Ross Björk told the Chronicle Thursday during the Securities and Exchange Commission’s spring meetings. “It will take place at Kyle Field.”
The last meeting between the Aggies and the Longhorns also took place at College Station in 2011. Bjork said the old schedule had no bearing on what he called a “new day” — Texas and Oklahoma officially joining the Southeast Conference by July 1, 2025, but perhaps a year earlier.
“It’s a whole new day, it’s a whole new league, and it’s a whole new format,” Bjork said of A&M hosting the first game with the old Southwest Conference and its Big 12 rival, thus playing back-to-back games at Kyle Field. “This is something important to us.”
Fire story: Jimbo Fisher Big About Renewing A&M-Texas Football’s Rivalry
As a freshman in the league alongside the Sooners, the Longhorns really don’t have a say in the early league table anyway, Bjork added.
“They knew they would be very happy to be on the SEC, which is why they took this step,” Bjork said. “They will take anything (they can have it)… and they have no vote in the process. It is only the current membership.”
He added that UT athletic director Chris Del Conte and OU athletic director Joe Castiglione have been part – from afar – of some of the SEC’s spring meetings this week.
“They know what models are being discussed,” Bjork added on whether the SEC would pick a nine-game or eight-game league schedule when it becomes a 16-member conference. (But) they don’t (officially) have a vote until July 1, 2025.”
Unless, of course, they joined the Securities and Exchange Commission a year ago, but the current 14 members will have voted on the upcoming schedules by then anyway.
So A&M fans can anticipate a home game in revamping the rivalry, and UT fans can anticipate a short road trip over what is expected to be once again the regular season Thanksgiving weekend.
“The atmosphere is going to be indescribable right now in terms of how many people are going to watch, how many people are going to try to get tickets for that game, how many people are going to get tickets to just stand,” Bjork said. “It’s going to be an epic rematch for a great competition, and whenever that happens, Kyle Field will be the place to be.”
UT leads the 76-37-5 series all-time. Texans on Thursday declined to comment on Bjork’s confirmation that A&M will host back-to-back games in the series.
Bjork also said that A&M has since last year been in favor of a future scheduling model that allows Aggies and the other 15 members — when UT and OU join — the chance to have more than one annual competitor.
Two models were left standing as the SEC’s spring meetings ended this week: playing nine league games each year with three permanent competitors – which appears to be the favourite – or continuing the current eight league games with a single permanent competitor. None of the remaining scenario includes such divisions as the present West and East form.
“We still have some questions to answer,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said while on the last call about the future schedule. “We have more work to do.”
In the game’s nine-player mode, six enemies will take turns in four-year cycles. In the eight-game game, seven enemies will take turns in four-year cycles.
“When the expansion (announcement) happened last summer, we knew the scheduling and interval football formats were going around at the time,” Bjork said. “For us, the more SEC content we can get, the more valuable it is. We were really nine-game supporters from the start until we rolled out 10 last August.”
The Aggies under coach Jimbo Fisher have fond memories of playing more than eight league games in one year, having finished 9-1 in 2020 during the pandemic lean season. They played nine SEC games, losing only to eventual national champion Alabama, defeating North Carolina at the Orange Bowl. Aggies’ No. 4 rating in the latest Associated Press poll had his highest score since winning the national title in 1939.
“If you look at the TV ratings, the fan experience, the stadiums, which leads the country in attendance, and tops TV gaming ratings — people crave SEC competitions,” Bjork said.
He added that a man from New York at the Hilton Sandestin Café Thursday morning had no idea the spring meetings of the Securities and Exchange Commission would take place at the hotel, but was happy to find out.
Bjork said the stranger told him, “There’s no such thing as American football.” “That’s all I watch.”
Bjork said he expects the CFP to expand from its current four teams to eight, 12 or even 16 – possibly after the 2026 season, also helping the SEC’s nine-team model move forward.
He said that under the eight-game format, UT and OU plan to be permanent rivals, and A&M will be paired with LSU. The nine-game schedule allows the Aggies to play Texas, LSU, and possibly a program like Arkansas, SWC’s old enemy, every season.
“This way we ensure that we play Texas every year. So we embrace that, and we want to move forward with that,” Bjork said.