An ode to the Red River Competition, which will stay

• Ryan McGee, ESPN Elder WriterOct 6

  , 2023, 07:00 AM ET Close Senior author for ESPN The Publication and ESPN.com

• 2-time Sports Emmy winner
• 2010, 2014 NMPA Author of the Year

WE ALL KNOW plenty about the game referred to as the Red River Rivalry. And we should.There might not be another college football contest that does a much better job of wrapping its gloves around everything we like about the sport than when Texas and Oklahoma square off on the second weekend of October. On Saturday, they will fulfill at midday on ABC, a top-12 match with a Big 12 inside lane on the line.You desire custom? How about Bevo’s 1,800-pound self, roaming onto the sideline to view the 1,020-pound Sooner Schooner wagon come barreling into the Cotton Bowl, pulled by land-grabbing ponies and covered in RUF/NEKS. You want history? How about a game that Saturday will be bet the 119th time, a series that started 7 years prior to the Oklahoma Territory attained statehood. It has actually been played for 94 successive years, going back to Oct. 19, 1929. Since 1948, it has offered out 75 times, including this year.You want competitors? How about a series that is led by Texas 63-50-5 however given that the end

of World War II has been split nearly precisely down the middle with 39 wins for the Sooners, 37 wins for the Longhorns and three ties. In fact, what is considered perhaps the most impressive game in Red River rivalry history was one of those ties. The 6-6 stalemate of 1976 ignited wild conspiracy claims of spying. It was fitting, thinking about President Gerald Ford, he of the Warren Commission and the pardoning of Richard Nixon, remained in attendance.You want balance? How about all of that you simply read, plus a game place of Dallas because Big D was viewed as the best Red River DMZ, situated nearly precisely midway between the 2 schools in Austin, Texas, and Norman, Oklahoma. And after that there is that seating setup. The Cotton Bowl is split precisely down the middle, the 50-yard line acting as a Bowie knife, evenly dividing the 92,100-seat oval into equal halves of UT scorched orange and OU crimson and cream. That leaves whole sections of hundreds of fans sitting with their shoulders mashed and colors clashed for four hours in the Texas heat. As previous Horns head coach Mack Brown once explained: “It’s not like your home crowd or your away crowd, where it’s loud for you and peaceful for the opponent. In this game, somebody is screaming every play. ” play 0:24 Rattler’s strange fumble sets up Ehlinger’s TD Spencer Rattler loses the football right into the hands of Texas linebacker Juwan Mitchell. Sam Ehlinger would score for the

Longhorns on the ensuing drive.You desire a heart-stopper? Simply return and enjoy the highlights of this game over the past years alone. From 2014 through 2021, the biggest margin of victory was eight points and the typical rating over eight contests was Oklahoma 36, Texas 32. Heck, simply watch that eight-point game. The 2020 contest was an anti- ’76 affair that extended into 4 overtimes and was bet nearly five hours prior to previous Sooners QB Spencer Rattler– who had actually been benched previously in the game for fumbling– tossed a TD pass to Drake Stoops, son of former Sooners head coach Bob Stoops, to win the game 53-45. Or, if you wish to take that concern literally, you could step outside the stadium gates and straight into the State Fair of Texas, the occasion that envelopes the Cotton Bowl and this game, and choke down a basket of deep-fried cheesy crab tater bites or a plate of deep-fried honey butter brisket swirls. My Crestor bottle began vibrating simply by me typing that.From Darrell Royal and Bud Wilkinson to Billy Sims and Earl Campbell to Ricky Williams and Baker Mayfield and, yes, this weekend with Quinn Ewers versus Dillon Gabriel in a fight of unbeaten College Football Playoff hopefuls, every single time these two groups have fulfilled, the stakes– and steaks–

have been scorching hot.But this year, the official framing of the game features some sadness. As if a famous western wear store was suddenly closing store. Completion of an era. Texas and Oklahoma’s last cleated steps in a long march together as members and co-anchors of the Big 12 Conference.ONE YEAR FROM now, this game will be played once again, just as it has actually been every autumn since the turn of the previous century. Only from 2024 and beyond, it will be an SEC matchup. Since July 21, 2021, when the news broke of the schools’ joint decision to break ranks with the Huge 12 and connect to the SEC, collegiate sports has been a continuous Jenga puzzle, pieces pulled from conferences coast-to-coast and then jammed back into any readily available opening in any and every manner required to keep the whole tower from falling apart down. So many of those moves don’t make sense. What they produce in cash they appear to equally lose when it comes to the appraisal of regional importance and tradition.The banks of the Red River are definitely a long way from The Swamp of Florida or the Congaree River that streams by South Carolina’s Williams-Brice Arena on its way to Charleston. However the two states whose shared border is drawn along that Red River likewise snap perfectly into the left side of the continuous jigsaw map that represents the footprint of the Southeastern Conference. There are no gaps, from the Atlantic Coast and Gulf of Mexico all the method into

the Great Plains as they roll up into main Oklahoma.Editor’s Picks 2 Related Nevertheless, a lot more vital than cartography is the calendar. The Red River rivalry’s streak of games played will not be stopped, unlike many other competitions that have actually at worst been entirely sunk or a minimum of been put on extended hiatus by the cold spreadsheets and shredded maps of realignment(* clears throat * ahem, Texas-Texas A&M). This is not the first time this game has actually gone through a severe matchup makeover. Yes, it has actually functioned as the focal point occasion of the Huge 12,

however just since 1996, when the conference was formed out of requirement throughout the first genuine lineup shakeup of college football’s contemporary age. Prior to that, Oklahoma-Texas was not an in-conference matchup.From 1920 through’95, the Sooners were not a member of the Southwest Conference, a fact that would no doubt stump any younger-generation football fans at their local sports bar’s trivia night.

They remained in the Big 8, which had actually been the Huge 7, the Big Six and, in the beginning, the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association.Texas was a founding member of the Southwest Conference in 1915 and stayed there till it collapsed in 1995 to give way to the Huge 12. OU was likewise an OG Southwest member but left at the end of the 1919 season.So, if you’re scoring in the house,

and a lot of Sooners and Horns certainly are, then through Saturday, over 119 games played, the Red River game has actually been a conference face-off 33 times, five in the Southwest and 28 in the Huge 12. That’s just 28% of the games. The other editions of the game have been whatever from a clash of independents to Southwest vs. Big 8 to SWC vs. MVIAA.IN OTHER WORDS, when

one backs up and looks at the larger photo, whether it be in black-and-white silver emulsion or gigapixel high resolution, the concept of OU and UT in the SEC does not appear all that weird, definitely when compared to the other incongruous college sports chess moves that will be happening at the very same time as theirs next fall.The distinction? This game– in the minds of many, the game– isn’t going anywhere.” I do not require however possibly a couple of things in my life to still be there all the time so that I know it is still my life,” explained Barry Switzer, who coached in 22 Red River rivalry games, six as an Oklahoma assistant and 16

as head coach. His remarks came in late summertime 2021, not long after the news of the relocate to the SEC had actually broken.”As long as that game is on that weekend in that location, I suppose I can make the rest of it work.”