Texas – Texas A & M football rivalry The Texas – Texas A & M football rivalry was an American college football rivalry between the Texas Longhorns football team of the University of Texas and Texas A & M Aggies football team of Texas A & M University . History . The first meeting between the football squads of the University of Texas and Texas A & M University was in 1894 , a 38 – 0 win for Texas . In fact , Texas won its first seven games against the Aggies , all of them by shutout . By 1915 , Texas held a 15 – 4 – 2 advantage against the Aggies . The game was a back and forth affair for the next twenty years as the home team usually took the victory in the game , however Texas still maintained the series lead . In 1940 , Texas shutout the Aggies 7 – 0 and kept them from receiving the Rose Bowl bid that year . From that year forward Texas would go on to win 33 of the next 38 games over A & M . It was not until the mid - 1980s that A & M developed a win streak over Texas and in the late 1990s and 2000s the rivalry would again go back to Longhorns . The Texas – Texas A & M football rivalry has given rise to several stereotypes on both sides : Texas A & M is generally portrayed as the rural smaller school while Texas is portrayed as the urban - wealthy larger school . With the exception of the 1994 game , when A & M ' s probation restricted the Aggies from being televised , the annual football game with Texas A & M traditionally takes place on Thanksgiving Day or the day after each year . This rivalry is often considered one of the top college rivalries of all time . In July 2011 , Texas A & M elected to join the Southeastern Conference beginning in 2012 . The move to switch conferences resulted in the ending of the 118 year rivalry between the two schools . On November 24 , 2011 , Texas faced Texas A & M in College Station in the final scheduled meeting of the rivalry as of January 2012 . Texas defeated Texas A & M 27 – 25 on a last second field goal to win the final meeting . In an attempt to generate more attention for the rivalry in sports other than football , the two schools created the State Farm Lone Star Showdown in 2004 . Essentially , each time the two schools meet in a sport , the winner of the matchup gets a point . At the end of the year , the school with the most points wins the series and receives the Lone Star Trophy . Aspects of the rivalry include : Each school mentions the other in its fight song ( " and it ' s goodbye to A & M " in Texas Fight , and the entire second verse of the Aggie War Hymn is about Texas ) . The football series was the third longest running rivalry in college football . Since 1900 , the last regular season football game was usually reserved for the matchup . Each school has elaborate pre - game preparations for the annual football clash , including the Aggie Bonfire and Hex Rally . Texas has a unique lighting scheme for the UT Tower after beating Texas A & M . Series record . " Texas victories are colored ██ burnt orange . Texas A & M victories are colored ██ maroon . Ties are white . " t - Thanksgiving Day game In popular culture . In October 2006 , General Mills announced they would honor the then third - longest running college football rivalry with a special edition Wheaties box . The box featured the helmets of Texas and Texas A & M and their respective home stadiums , Darrell K . Royal - Texas Memorial Stadium and Kyle Field , on either side . Although several individual college basketball and football teams had been featured previously on special edition boxes , this was the first time Wheaties had honored a rivalry series .