Question: Which game often occurs the weekend before the Red River Rivalry?

Context articles: Gaston Park
State Fair Classic
Red River system
Red River Expedition (1806)
2009 Fiesta Bowl
Peter Gardere
Smokey the Cannon
Red River Showdown
Black Hills Brawl
Red River Rivalry trophies

Gaston Park was a baseball park located in Dallas, Texas.
 Named for landowner William H. Gaston, the ballpark existed where the State Fair grounds are today in the vicinity of Texas and Pacific rail tracks as well as the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas.
 The field was also used for the Red River Rivalry in 1912 and 1914.
 Oklahoma beat Texas 21-6 in 1912 while the Longhorns beat the Sooners 32-7 in 1914.
 The A&M College of Texas, as it was then known, beat Baylor University there on Thanksgiving Day 1912 by score of 53-0.
The State Fair Classic (known as the Southwest Airlines State Fair Classic for sponsorship purposes) is an annual college football game between the Grambling State University Tigers and the Prairie View A&M University Panthers of the Southwestern Athletic Conference.
 The game is played on a neutral site at the Cotton Bowl in Fair Park, Dallas, Texas during the State Fair of Texas.
 The game often occurs the weekend before the Oklahoma–Texas Red River Showdown game; the new Texas State Fair Football Showdown is also scheduled to take place on the third weekends of the 2018 and 2019 fairs and will feature Southern and Texas Southern.
The Red River system is a network of rivers surrounding the main river - Red River in North Vietnam.
 These branches of the system contribute to or receive water from Red River.
 Red River system, joining with the Thái Bình river system in the northeast, creates the Red River Delta - the second largest delta in Vietnam.
 Because of the close relation between Red River system and Thái Bình river system, the two system are known as the common name "Red and Thai Binh rivers system".
 Alluvium of the Red River system creates the central and south Red River Delta.
 Two banks of the rivers are protected by a great dyke system.
The Red River Expedition, also known as the Freeman-Custis Expedition, Freeman Red River Expedition, Sparks Expedition, or officially as the Exploring Expedition of Red River in 1806, was one of the first civilian scientific expeditions to explore the Southwestern United States.
 It was ordered to find the headwaters of the Red River (Red River of the South) from the Mississippi River as a possible trading route to Santa Fe, then under Spanish colonial control in New Mexico; to contact Native American peoples for trading purposes; to collect data on flora, fauna, and topography, and map the country and river; and to assess the land for settlement.
 The Spanish officials intercepted the expedition 615 miles upriver, in what is now northeastern Texas, and turned it back before the party achieved all of its goals.
The 2009 Tostitos Fiesta Bowl game was a post-season college football bowl game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Texas Longhorns on Monday, January 5, 2009, at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
 Texas participated in the Fiesta Bowl because the Big 12 champion University of Oklahoma Sooners were participating in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game; however the bowl kept its ties to the Big 12 by selecting the Longhorns, who did not play in the championship game as they beat Oklahoma in the Red River Rivalry, 45-35, then lost to Texas Tech and Texas Tech in turn lost to Oklahoma and dictated that a tiebreaker would decide that the highest BCS ranked team for the Big 12 South the week of November 28, 2008 would be in the title game.
 The Buckeyes were chosen as an at-large school as co-champions of the Big Ten Conference, having lost the right to play in the Rose Bowl due to a 13-6 loss to Penn State on October 25.
Peter Alexander Gardere (born September 29, 1969) is a former American football quarterback, famous for his four-year tenure as Texas Longhorns quarterback in the late 1980s/early 1990s.
 He is the only starting quarterback on either side of the Texas-Oklahoma football rivalry to win four straight games in the Red River Rivalry.
 He set 10 school records and still shares the record for most interceptions thrown over a career.
Smokey the Cannon is a famous replica Civil War artillery cannon that has served as part of the pageantry of college football games at the University of Texas at Austin since 1954.
 Smokey the Cannon is owned and operated by the Texas Cowboys (an honorary men's service organization at Texas) and is stationed in the left corner of the south endzone at Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium during every Texas Longhorns home football game.
 After each football season, Smokey the Cannon is generally displayed in the Red McCombs Endzone atrium for the spring semester.
 In addition to all home football games, Smokey the Cannon is present at the annual Texas vs. Oklahoma Red River Rivalry game in Dallas, Texas every October, as well as at other select football games outside of Austin, Texas (barring local and stadium permission).
 Recently, Smokey the Cannon was present at the 2011 Holiday Bowl, in which the Texas Longhorns beat the Cal Golden Bears 21-10 on December 29, 2011; former Texas Cowboy Oldman, Blaine Irby caught 1 pass for 30 yards in the win.
The Red River Showdown, commonly called the Red River Rivalry, the Red River Classic, or the Red River Shootout, is an American college football rivalry game played annually at the Cotton Bowl stadium in Dallas, Texas, during the second weekend of the State Fair of Texas in October.
 The participants are the Oklahoma Sooners football team of the University of Oklahoma and the Texas Longhorns football team of the University of Texas at Austin.
 The game is played the week following the State Fair Classic featuring Prairie View A&M University and Grambling State University.
 The series is one of the major rivalries in NCAA football and in all of American sports.
 The name is derived from the Red River that forms part of the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma that has in the past caused conflict between the two states, most notably the 1931 Red River Bridge War.
The Black Hills Brawl (also rarely called the West River Rivalry) is annual football game between Black Hills State University and South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
 The winner of the game receives the Homestake Trophy.
 The current venues the game is played in are Lyle Hare Stadium since 1960 (Black Hills State) and O'Harra Stadium since 1938 (South Dakota Mines).
 First played in 1895 and played 131 times, the Black Hills Brawl is the most played in NCAA Division II and tied for the oldest rivalry in DII (alongside the Battle of the Ravine); it is the 4th most played rivalry nationwide in any division (behind only Harvard–Yale football rivalry, Princeton–Yale, and The Rivalry (Lehigh–Lafayette)).
There are three Red River Rivalry trophies given to the winner of the annual Red River Rivalry (previously Red River Shootout) which is a college football rivalry game between The University of Texas Longhorns and the University of Oklahoma Sooners.
 The trophies are the Golden Hat, the Red River Rivalry trophy and the Governors' trophy.
 The trophies reward the annual winner of one of college football's longest and most intense rivalries.
 2005 marked the 100th meeting of the two football programs.
 The rivalry began in 1900 while Oklahoma was still a territory of the United States.
 In the first 100 games of the rivalry, Texas won 56 times to 39 Oklahoma victories and 5 ties.
 The 2007 match-up between Oklahoma and Texas was predicted to be the #3 game to watch in 2007 by SI.com's "Top 20 Games To Watch In 2007" list.