re: Just so you know how important the A&M rivalry is...

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Me too. Love this rivalry. One of the reasons I hated Dodds (among the many) was his refusal to keep playing them when they left.

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I saw a quote about Dodds and A&M about 6 months ago that changed my viewpoint on the situation a little bit..

---------- excerpt from link below
In July, Texas accepted an invitation to join the SEC in 2025, but the move could happen sooner. If Schiller got his wish, it would have happened much, much sooner.

Texas was the apple of Schiller’s eye during his time as SEC commissioner from 1986-89.

And the interest was mutual from the Longhorns, Schiller said, although they stayed in the Southwest Conference until later leaving for the Big 12.

“We focused on Arkansas and South Carolina, and really wanted Texas,” Schiller told me earlier this month. “So, something interesting happened: The (Texas) state legislature came back to me and said, ‘If you take Texas, you have to take Texas A&M.’ The funny part about it is that A&M was sort of lukewarm at the time about coming in.”

And the SEC wasn’t enthralled with the Aggies back then, Schiller said.

Dodds, in 1990, told the Associated Press that however the dust settled on conference realignment, the Longhorns and Aggies “will be together” in a conference.
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Link: Texas & SEC talk in the late 80s

Based on that statement from Dodds, I think he always thought that Texas and Texas A&M would stick together no matter what.. probably similar to how Texas and Oklahoma are attached at the hip these days.. and then when A&M went behind his back and chose to leave.. he just got his panties in a wad over it..

I'm sure there is more to the story though.. I just found that quote interesting.. right or wrong, he felt like they were a package deal..

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Why would they agree when it was clear we needed the game more than they did when our program was floundering under the weight of horrible head coaching hires?

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So there is a funny outcome to this story.. Had A&M decided to play us, we wouldn't have played Alabama last year.. and therefore, we likely wouldn't have made the playoffs over Georgia..

Schiller is telling a story, but its a long way from the full story (I'm not going to call him a liar; let's just say he's missing big pieces of the story, and "recollections may vary").

The reason nothing happened in the '80s was because the folks in Austin wanted no part of the SEC; the academic folks in particular wanted to go to the Pac viewing it as a move to fit in with the institutions that they aspired to be. But, when Stanford black balled any move west at that time, the administration in Austin wasn't interested in going to the SEC as a fall back.

A&M was not part of the deal with the Pac, and was looking at an SEC move at the time. Jackie Sherill wanted to go to the SEC, and the A&M regents chair used these talks as an excuse to have a state plane fly himt to Baton Rouge for a graduation. A&M was not interested in the Pac then, nor (except for Bill Byrne) were they interested when DeLoss and Bill Powers put together a package deal in 2010 that would have included A&M.

Dodds and Powers just assumed that A&M would do whatever they wanted, and when that proved not to be true, Dodds was not happy. When Dodds left, his successor realized that without A&M, the Big XII schedule didn't provide any marquee home games as long as OU was played in Dallas, so they started making rumblings about renewing then.

Among the A&M fans I know, there was no hue and cry to restore the series. Most of us found life in the SEC without "our friends in the State Capitol" to be just fine. I would have been OK with that continuing indefinitely, as I think there were a lot of A&M fans back in the day who put way too much emphasis on this rivalry. But, now that we are in the same league, we are going to play every year (unless this 8 vs 9 game schedule thing screws it up), and that's OK.

It's really annoying that the SEC never asked for texas losers or fricking weird arse aggies, yet here we are talking about this stupid rivalry like we give a shite.


NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR BIG 12 RIVALRY. frick OFF.

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NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR BIG 12 RIVALRY. frick OFF.

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Epic meltdown you are having.

Please, cry some more!

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Schiller is telling a story, but its a long way from the full story (I'm not going to call him a liar; let's just say he's missing big pieces of the story, and "recollections may vary").

The reason nothing happened in the '80s was because the folks in Austin wanted no part of the SEC; the academic folks in particular wanted to go to the Pac viewing it as a move to fit in with the institutions that they aspired to be. But, when Stanford black balled any move west at that time, the administration in Austin wasn't interested in going to the SEC as a fall back.

A&M was not part of the deal with the Pac, and was looking at an SEC move at the time. Jackie Sherill wanted to go to the SEC, and the A&M regents chair used these talks as an excuse to have a state plane fly himt to Baton Rouge for a graduation. A&M was not interested in the Pac then, nor (except for Bill Byrne) were they interested when DeLoss and Bill Powers put together a package deal in 2010 that would have included A&M.

Dodds and Powers just assumed that A&M would do whatever they wanted, and when that proved not to be true, Dodds was not happy. When Dodds left, his successor realized that without A&M, the Big XII schedule didn't provide any marquee home games as long as OU was played in Dallas, so they started making rumblings about renewing then.

Among the A&M fans I know, there was no hue and cry to restore the series. Most of us found life in the SEC without "our friends in the State Capitol" to be just fine. I would have been OK with that continuing indefinitely, as I think there were a lot of A&M fans back in the day who put way too much emphasis on this rivalry. But, now that we are in the same league, we are going to play every year (unless this 8 vs 9 game schedule thing screws it up), and that's OK.

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I agree that all of your points match my memory of the situation as well. I always thought it was cool when A&M would play LSU in the 80s.. I do remember that growing up..

But to your point.. we don't know all the details.. and that's fine.. some things are better left alone.

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I always laugh at the irony when an aggy uses 'Utrans' being that A&M hosts the largest trans event in college....Draggieland.

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You literally have zero self-awareness of the school you cheer for.

One, unofficial event, versus an entire university that embraces (pushes) an alternative lifestyle.

But I get why you so badly want something to be the case that simply isn’t.

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But I get why you do badly want something g to be the case that simply isn’t.

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Draggieland is hosted yearly at Rudder Theater, on the A&M campus.

A&M website (A&M MSC Box Office) sells the tickets for Draggieland (see below).

Without A&M's support, Draggieland would have never been so successful.

Period.

You are in denial.

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Draggieland is hosted yearly at Rudder Theater, on the A&M campus.

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Nobody said otherwise (by the way, I’d never heard of this event until you posted about it).

But being able to narrow something down to a single, once-a-year event, as opposed to an entire culture embraced and encouraged on a daily basis is apples and oranges.

I know you realize this. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.

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hook em

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This is gayer than the Aggie milkmen.