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The Longhorns and the Aggies will stand alone in front of the entire football world

by: Evan Vieth11/24/25

Friends, family, football. The three commandments we all live by on Thanksgiving.

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It’s one of the best weeks of the year. Not only do we celebrate those we love with delicious food, but it’s one of the best three days of football we get all year.

On Thanksgiving, we’re treated to a number of good NFL games. It’s an unofficial barrier between the first part of the season and true crunch time for teams. We’re two-thirds of the way through the season, and the best of the best really begin to separate right around now.

On Saturday, we get some of the best rivalries in college football. The Game, which will feature top-15 teams in Michigan and Ohio State. The Iron Bowl, ruthless as ever. Even Oregon vs. Washington is must-see TV.

But while all of these games share the spotlight with the rest of their sport, nearly every single TV in America will be glued to one thing on Friday night: Texas vs. Texas A&M.

“I like that in this game we get an opportunity to stand alone whether it’s Thanksgiving or the Friday after Thanksgiving,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “I just think this game deserves the spotlight to stand alone. The fact that we’re playing on Friday night with all the eyes of college football on it, and really the football world on this game, I think this game deserves that.”

And that it is. While the Egg Bowl between Ole Miss and Mississippi State and Clean Old Fashioned Hate between Georgia and Georgia Tech are scheduled for Friday, the only other game that will be on air at night will be Indiana at Purdue. We know where most neutral observers will be tuned in.

Even in a week where all of the football world and its best teams are highlighted, Texas stands alone as THE team to watch on a weekend night.

The Longhorns aren’t strangers to the spotlight. They kicked off the season in a No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup. They’re the fourth most-watched team in the nation. Just two weeks ago, Texas was in primetime facing off against the Georgia Bulldogs on national television. The Texas vs. Texas A&M game last year was the ninth-most viewed regular season college football game of the season.

“I can remember being a kid in California watching this game,” Sarkisian said. “It was the only game on on Thanksgiving, and to be part of it is pretty special, and it was special a year ago, especially again this year. I don’t take games like this lightly.”

Sarkisian can’t afford to take a game like this lightly. The Longhorns are 8-3, clinging to the hope that a 9-3 team with wins over No. 3 Texas A&M, No. 8 Oklahoma, and No. 12 Vanderbilt can make the College Football Playoff. For the Aggies, they’re trying to be the first undefeated regular-season SEC team since Georgia in 2022, a team that dominated its way to the national championship.

This will be Texas’ third game on national, primetime television, and the first two didn’t go quite as planned.

The Longhorns played Kentucky for an ESPN night game and barely escaped Lexington with a win. The entire nation was given the idea that Arch Manning was still underdeveloped and that the Longhorns weren’t good.

It didn’t get much better a month later, when the Georgia Bulldogs thoroughly beat the Longhorns 35-10 in Athens.

Now, Texas has the chance to flip the script. With packed households and stomachs still recovering from the day before, Texas has a chance to prove why it is one of the 12 best teams in the nation and why Sarkisian’s program should be in the College Football Playoff for a third consecutive year.

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