Last month, former Texas football standout Bijan Robinson arrived at an Atlanta Falcons media availability wearing a Georgia Bulldogs T-shirt. It was payment for a bet that he lost to teammate Charlie Woerner, who attended Georgia.
“This shirt really is not cool,” said Robinson, whose Longhorns had been beaten a few days earlier by Woerner’s Bulldogs.
All is fair in love and NFL bets about alma maters. But if Texas A&M beats No. 3 Texas this weekend, don’t expect to see former UT kicker Justin Tucker wearing maroon around the Baltimore Ravens facility.
Tucker has an Aggie as a teammate, defensive lineman Nnamdi Madubuike, but recently said he doesn’t believe in bets involving old college teams. He has no control over Saturday’s outcome, so “I don’t think I want to subject myself to the disgrace of even remotely thinking about wearing anything with that Texas A&M logo on it.”
It was 13 years ago Sunday that Texas’ Justin Tucker, center, kicked the winning 40-yard field goal to knock off rival Texas A&M in the programs’ last meeting. “I got to be a part of something really, really special,” Tucker said.
So smack talk is all that’s on the line in the Ravens locker room this week. But what could Madubuike possibly say to Tucker? For the past 13 years, Tucker has owned bragging rights over the Aggies due to the 40-yard field goal he kicked as time expired in the last Lone Star Showdown.
But on Saturday night, Texas and Texas A&M will end a lengthy standoff when the Longhorns travel to College Station. And when the Longhorns and Aggies reunite at Kyle Field, Tucker will no longer have the last laugh. He’s fine with that.
“I think Texas and A&M playing is just so special for college football, so special for football in general because it is just such a great, storied rivalry,” Tucker recently said on a conference call with reporters. “It’s kind of acrimonious and bitter; each team wants to beat the other one so badly just so you have those bragging rights to your friends and family throughout the state of Texas and then abroad.
“For this game to come back and for the implications to be what they are now where you’ve got two teams that are playing really well,” he said. “The landscape of college football has completely changed since when I was playing 12, 13, 14 years ago. The playoff has expanded, the players are being treated as and paid as professionals, the stakes are just higher, and I think that makes for great TV, it makes for great entertainment, and it makes for a really, really passionate rivalry that fans of football will hopefully be able to enjoy for years to come.”
Texas players celebrate the 27-25 win over Texas A&M at Kyle Field on Thanksgiving night 2011, the teams’ last meeting before Saturday’s series resumption in College Station.
Memory of the 2011 game hasn’t faded for Tucker
The Texas-Texas A&M rivalry dates back to 1894. The Longhorns won that game by a 38-0 margin and then went 75-37-5 against the Aggies over the next 117 games in the series. But after Tucker lifted Texas to a 27-25 win on Nov. 24, 2011, the rivalry paused as A&M left for the SEC and the teams refused to meet in nonconference play.
With Texas now in the SEC, the rivalry will resume Saturday after a 4,755-day hiatus.
On that night 13 years ago in College Station, the Aggies took a late 25-24 lead on a Ryan Tannehill touchdown pass to Jeff Fuller. But behind quarterback Case McCoy, Texas drove down the field to the Aggies’ 23-yard line with 3 seconds left. After the two teams traded timeouts, Tucker split the uprights and the Longhorns dogpiled on their rivals’ field.
Many of this year’s Texas players were in kindergarten when Tucker beat the Aggies. So their memories of 2011 are either rudimentary or nonexistent.
“He a kicker, though, right?” asked wide receiver Matthew Golden, a junior transfer from Houston, when asked Monday if he knew who Tucker was.
“I don’t remember much (about the kick),” junior left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. said. “I’ve been a Longhorn fan since I was a kid, but I wasn’t that too into it.”
Reminisced sophomore linebacker Anthony Hill Jr.: “I was like 6, so I probably was watching it, but I was born in ’05, so I don’t really remember that game.”
Tucker probably wouldn’t take these words from the Longhorns as a snub. He joked that he didn’t receive a hero’s welcome on campus since he was a senior studying music and many of his classmates in upper-division courses didn’t follow sports. Still, he remembers that moment vividly.
“As soon as the ball left my foot, I see it’s going straight,” he said. “Then there’s that explosion of emotion that consists of exhilaration, relief, excitement and then almost I’d say a gratitude that everything kind of worked out for us, that we were able to make everything work out. It was more like when we got back into the locker room after I’d gotten horse-collar tackled by Kenny Vaccaro and dogpiled on top of by everybody wearing Texas gear that day — it wasn’t until I got back into the locker room that I realized, that it really sunk in that, man, we really just hit the dagger in this rivalry for many years to come.”
Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker celebrates a 54-yard field goal against Pittsburgh on Nov. 17. He credits the field goal that beat Texas A&M for helping him catch the attention of the NFL.
Beating Texas A&M gave Tucker a leg up on his career
Tucker doesn’t rank his greatest kicks, but he understands the importance of that moment in College Station. He has repeatedly credited that 40-yard field goal with helping him catch the attention of the NFL and start a 13-year professional career.
Since Baltimore will host Philadelphia on Sunday, Tucker said he’ll probably just watch the Texas-Texas A&M game at home with his wife, Amanda, and son, Easton. Tucker doesn’t know if he’ll hear from former teammates this week, although he added that former Longhorns coach Mack Brown still checks in on him.
“I got to be a part of something really, really special that fits right into what being a Texas Longhorn is all about,” Tucker said. “For the last little while, I’ve got to have the last laugh, so that is pretty fun.”
