by Travis Normand

How quickly we forget; or should I say, how quickly the media forgets.

I don’t care what anyone (including DeLoss Dodds) would like you to believe, but the Longhorns do not have an annual Thanksgiving football game tradition. Despite the revisionist history being created in Austin, there is no tradition of the Longhorns playing a football game on Thanksgiving day against a random opponent.

If there is a Thanksgiving day tradition that involves the University of Texas’ football team, it is that they used to play a rivalry game against Texas A&M on Thanksgiving. However, 2012 was the first time (in almost 100 years) that the two schools didn’t play each other.

Why?

Because the Longhorns threw a fit when the Aggies decided to move from the Big 12 to the SEC; and in doing so, the Longhorns decided that they no longer wanted to play A&M anymore. At the time, the Aggies issued a standing invitation to the Longhorns to continue the rivalry, but so far the Longhorns have refused.

Now, the Longhorns would like you to believe that they are somehow continuing their long-standing tradition of playing football on Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, what they are doing is anything but “traditional.”

Can you imagine not having turkey on Thanksgiving? My family has had a turkey dinner every Thanksgiving for as long as I can remember. I can’t imagine someone suggesting that we should start eating pizza for Thanksgiving dinner (instead of turkey). However, if someone did suggest that we eat pizza, they would probably argue that having pizza was somehow a continuation of our long-standing tradition of having “dinner” every Thanksgiving. My response to them would be that it is not the same. After all, our Thanksgiving tradition is to have a “turkey dinner,” and not just any “dinner.”

The same goes for the University of Texas — as they don’t have a tradition of playing “a football game” on Thanksgiving. However, they do have a tradition of playing a football game against Texas A&M on Thanksgiving … or so they did, until they threw that away.

I mean, if you are a Longhorn fan, you can’t tell me that you love your long-standing tradition of watching your beloved Texas Longhorns play football on Thanksgiving night, because that would be disingenuous. After all, the tradition is not that the Longhorns play every Thanksgiving — it’s that they (used to) play Texas A&M every Thanksgiving. Can you not see the fundamental difference here? Is anyone really going to watch the Longhorns play TCU and/or Texas Tech, and try to act like it is the same as it has always been (and do so with a straight face)?

See the following article from the Houston Chronicle (Chron.com):  [Emphasis added]

UT football: Fox Sports 1 to televise Thanksgiving game
Thursday, April 11, 2013

Blog.Chron.com

AUSTIN — Texas’ annual Thanksgiving night football game has a new television home.

Fox Sports 1, the new national sports network that will launch in more than 90 million homes this summer, will broadcast the Longhorns’ Nov. 28 game against Texas Tech, a source with knowledge of the situation said Thursday. The source requested anonymity because Fox has not yet authorized anyone to reveal details of its college football broadcast schedule.

In previous years, UT’s Thanksgiving games had been televised by ESPN. But as part of the Big 12′s new deal with its broadcast partners, Fox had first priority in choosing a game for Thanksgiving weekend in 2013, and chose Tech-UT. ESPN announced earlier this week it will televise Mississippi-Mississippi State on Thanksgiving night.

Fox Sports 1 will officially launch on Aug. 17, but the channel actually already exists on most cable systems as the Speed network. It has deals with the Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Conference USA to carry college football games this season.