Texas A&M AD says Texas has no choice but to visit Kyle Field first in renewal of rivalry

Texas is set to join the SEC no later than 2025, which means that its rivalry with Texas A&M will be rekindled at some point in the near future. Aggies athletic director Ross Bjork is already jockeying for position. 

He told reporters at the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Florida, this week that the SEC has to schedule the first conference game between the Aggies and Longhorns in College Station, Texas, at Kyle Field rather than in Austin. That would give Texas A&M back-to-back home games vs. Texas after the Longhorns won 27-25 on a walk-off field goal to end the 2011 regular season.

“It’s a whole new day, it’s a whole new league and it’s a whole new format,” Bjork said, via the Houston Chronicle. “That’s something that’s important to us.”

Conference scheduling has been a big storyline in Destin this week as the conference considers new formats to be enacted once expansion does take place. The conference has narrowed down the possibilities to either a 3-6 model with three permanent annual opponents, or a 1-7 model with only on permanent rival. The latter could impact the Texas-Texas A&M game, since the Longhorns would likely want to keep Oklahoma on the schedule on an annual basis. 

It doesn’t matter to Bjork, because Texas isn’t a voting member of the SEC yet.

“They realize they’re going to be very, very happy to be in the SEC, and that’s why they made the move,” Bjork said. “They’ll take whatever … and they don’t have a vote in the process, it’s only current membership.”

Consider this a preemptive strike from Bjork, who was very outspoken about the possibility of Texas joining the SEC when that news dropped at SEC Media Days in Hoover, Alabama, last July.

“We want to be the only SEC program in the state of Texas,” he said last year to several reporters standing in the elevator lobby.

Obviously, he didn’t get his way in that debate. He’s getting out in front of this one, and is making it known to Texas that he isn’t going to bow down to the program that used to be referred to as “big brother” when the two were in the Big 12.