Backyard Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud Between Texas and Texas A&M

It happens once a year, creating a seismic divide throughout the country. It pits brother against brother. It breaks up business deals. It ruins relationships. And once it’s finished, all both sides want is for another year to pass by so they can do it again. It is the Texas/Texas A& M football game. And in the football-obsessed state that is Texas, no single game resonates more.

Every year during the Thanksgiving holidays, the two teams meet for something that has become much more than just a game. It’s a blood feud that represents a tremendous cultural divide in the state. It’s city against country, a rural agricultural school against an urban university. And yet both sides come from the same family, warring cousins who roll up their sleeves once a year in the backyard to settle the question of who’s number one—at least for the time being.

In Backyard Brawl, W. K. Stratton takes you through this rivalry and its history, covering the years when the game was postponed because the fans were just too violent, the branding of UT’s beloved steer, Bevo, by a renegade Aggie, the kidnapping of A&M’s beloved Reveille by boisterous UT students, the theft of UT’s cannon, Old Smokey, and its unceremonious dumping into the murky waters of Austin’s Town Lake, and the fistfights that broke out when celebrating UT fans rushed A&M’s nearly sacred Kyle Field after Texas won the last-ever Southwest Conference title on the Aggies’ home turf.

Stratton also relates the more serious side of the rivalry, particularly the way both schools came together after tradition turned to tragedy in 1999, when the A&M bonfire collapse killed twelve students. And in a touching epilogue, he captures the angst that hit the College Station campus when officials decided to cancel the return of the bonfire in 2002.

Stratton drew a bead on the 2001 season and followed both teams through their schedules leading up to the big clash in College Station. Taking you inside a renowned Aggie Yell practice and introducing you to fervid yet often zany orange-blooded Texas fans through their elaborate tailgating rituals, he creates revealing portraits of the two teams, including head coaches R. C. Slocum and Mack Brown, both of whom are legends in their own time, destined for the Hall of Fame.

Backyard Brawl is a fascinating examination of the greatest war in college football, destined to become a classic for students of the game.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Title of ebook: Backyard Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud Between Texas and Texas A&M
ISBN: 9780307419835
parent-ISBN: 9781400051113
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Internet download file size: 670 kb
Released online for download: 12-18-2007

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Backyard Brawl

Chapter One

A Midnight Yell

THE CHANGES ARE SUBTLE against the blast furnace of Texas summer. Maybe the shadows seem a little longer. Maybe the heat breaks a little earlier in the day. Maybe the string of hundred-degree days is broken; it only gets to ninety-eight or so. And there are more clouds in the sky.

Maybe you notice the booming of shotguns in the distance at dusk. Practice for dove season, shards of clay pigeons in the uncut sunflower meadow. Maybe things are changing...maybe.

You sense those changes, the turning toward something new, and yet the fiery days continue to overwhelm.

I was running a lot before the football season began: four miles in the heat of the afternoon, mostly to get a feel for what the football players were going through during two-a-days in August. I was also making my regular training sessions at the boxing gym, and at six in the evening, I might as well have been stepping into the heater coil of a '77 Cadillac that's just made the fast run from San Antonio to Austin-that's how hot it was in that metal building behind the Goodwill. The heat sucked the air from your lungs. I'd be sweating before I unwound the jump rope in ... read full excerpt from Backyard Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud Between Texas and Texas A&M ebook

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