Texas and Texas A&M’s rivalry game will move to Black Friday this year, the schools announced Thursday.
The Longhorns and Aggies, who last year renewed their more-than-century-old rivalry for the first time since 2011, will kick off at 7:30 p.m. ET/6:30 p.m. CT on Friday, Nov. 28 in Austin. Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte and Texas A&M athletic director Trev Alberts both expressed an interest last year in moving future iterations of the game to a Friday night in hopes of seeking a more exclusive television window.
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The game is traditionally played on Thanksgiving weekend. Of the 119 meetings, 84 have been on either Thanksgiving Day or the day after. The Longhorns and Aggies met 70 times on Thanksgiving and played on Black Friday in 1974, 1975 and 1996 through 2007. The teams met on a Saturday last November.
Going back to Thanksgiving night was not appealing to the ADs because of the NFL’s presence that day.
“There’s three NFL windows (on Thanksgiving),” Del Conte said last August. “For me, if it was up to my druthers, I’d like to play it on Friday night. It’d be great, unencumbered. The only game, the only show you think about from coast to coast. A Friday night game would be spectacular.”
Alberts echoed that thinking.
“The NFL has gotten more involved in different windows,” he added. “We want this to be the premier prime-time window.”
The NFL began airing an afternoon game on Black Friday in 2023 after historically not airing games that day.
Other notable rivalry games currently slated for Black Friday this year include the Egg Bowl (Ole Miss-Mississippi State), Clean Old-Fashioned Hate (Georgia-Georgia Tech) and the Territorial Cup (Arizona-Arizona State). Iowa and Nebraska have played annually on Black Friday since 2011. The Egg Bowl is slated for a noon Eastern start time; kickoff times for the other games are not yet final. Georgia and Georgia Tech played an eight-overtime thriller last Black Friday, which Georgia won 44-42.
Texas leads the all-time series against Texas A&M, 77-37-5. With a 2024 SEC championship game berth on the line for both schools, the Longhorns won last year’s edition, 17-7, on a Saturday night at Kyle Field. Texas went on to play in the SEC title game, where it fell to Georgia, but the Longhorns made a deep run in the College Football Playoff before losing to Ohio State in the semifinals. The Aggies, who started 7-1 last season, finished 8-5 by losing four of their final five games in Mike Elko’s first year as head coach.
Texas and Texas A&M played annually as conference mates in both the Southwest Conference and the Big 12, but the series paused after the Aggies joined the SEC in 2012. The teams did not meet again until 2024, the Longhorns’ first season in the SEC.
(Photo: Alex Slitz/Getty Images)
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