With the return of the Aggie-Longhorn rivalry, a look back at football history

On By Littum

On November 30, University of Texas Longhorn and the Texas A&M University Aggies football team renew a rivalry that dates back to October 19, 1894.

For much of that time, their games were held on Thanksgiving Day.

UT won their last contest on November 24, 2011, thanks to Justin Tucker’s cardiac arrest as time expired. The next season, A&M moved from the Big 12 to the Southeastern Conference, disrupting tradition. This year the Longhorns joined the SEC.

UT leads the series, 76–37–5.

“Back in the old days there were often two games in a year, but this custom expired in 1909,” stated the American Statesman on November 25, 1926. “A&M’s most severe beating against the Longhorns came last year when Texas was smeared 28 to 0.”

In 1898, however, Texas had crushed A&M by a score of 48-0.

One of the most famous incidents from the early days of the rivalry was retold by Bobby Hawthorne in “Longhorn Football: An Illustrated History” from the University of Texas Press. It tells the origin stories of Bevo, the name of the Longhorns mascot.

“The first Bevo came to UT on Nov. 16, 1916, thanks to Steve Pinkney, the 1911 team leader and UT Law School student, who found the 1,200-pound bull while patrolling the Mexican border near Laredo for cattle rustlers. He bought the boar for $124, sent it on a three-day train trip to Austin, and had it hauled onto the sidelines at halftime of the 21-7 upset of A&M.

“When several vengeful Aggies got word that UT planned to tag him ’21-7′ in time for a UT graduation meet in March, they slipped into a South Austin corral and burned ’13-0′ — the score from 1915 UT -A&M game — into his orange and white hide.

“According to popular legend, embarrassed and angry UT students changed the mark, converting the ’13’ to a B, changing the hyphen to an E and inserting a V in front of the zero,” according to BEVO. Others claim the animal was named either after a popular local beer or after a Sunday cartoon about monkeys.

In truth, the steer was dubbed “Bevo” by the editor of the UT alumni magazine, who wrote, “His name is Bevo. Long may he reign.”

“In any case, Bevo was never tamed and spent his final days on a ranch 60 miles west of Austin, mostly unloved and abandoned. In January 1920, he was served as the main course at the UT football banquet, a glittering event held in the men’s gym and attended by several of the Aggies who had originally offended him.

“According to accounts, the chest wasn’t worth a hell of a lot.

“Half of his skin was presented to the Aggies as a goodwill gesture. The other half hung in the UT athletic offices. His head was stuffed and mounted in Gregory Gym, only to be stolen before the 1928 SMU game, recovered unscathed shortly thereafter, then marred in 1943—most likely by Aggies who sawed off his horns from neither hide nor stare of moody creature has been seen since.”

The only thing missing from this well-told tale is that “beeves” was the long-standing plural of “beef” and that “beeve” or a singular “beef cattle” is a reversal of that plural.