In the early days of the Big 12, for some reason they moved the game to the Friday after, or T+1 as it was known. I don’t know about anything before then, but I know a lot of older Ags complained about it a lot. A lot of it was blamed on the Big 12 , some was blamed on TV. The really weird thing about it was that it was at 10 am. 10 o’clock in the friggin’ morning. I have no idea how you’d look it up but I seem to remember Ole Miss and Miss State were given a better time than A&M/UT.
There was and probably always will be a certain vocal minority element of Aggies that believed that UT had an outsized influence on the conference. Some felt that UT pushed the time and date to minimize any success that we had against UT at the time. Not many remember this but from 1984-1994 A&M won 9/10 games in the series. Ancient history now but A&M was 100% the more popular college team in the late 80’s and early 90’s, at least around these parts.
I will mention that A&M was on probation in 1994 and banned from TV. They moved the game that year so that UT and somebody else could be on TV at thanksgiving. I think it was TCU. I’m not sure if the 1995 game was on Thanksgiving or not, but from about 1996 to 1998 it was on T+1. 1999 seems like it was on Friday, but that was the bonfire game, and I was there but I can’t recall. It seems like in the very late 90’s the game was still on Friday but moved up to a more decent time. Sometimes after 2000 the game was moved back to Thanksgiving, but I don’t remember if it stayed there until we left the Big 12.
