Texas A&M Fans Provoke Baylor With Waco Billboard: "Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Conference Deal"

Just when we think we’ve gone and boiled Texas football down to its essence, the Texans go and out-Texan themselves.This week in Waco, about 100 A&M fans pooled their money to put up a billboard right near the Bears’ football stadium in Waco. Baylor is still threatening legal action should the Aggies ditch the Big 12 for the SEC—hence the giant maroon sign: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s conference deal.”Saturday’s result will not go over well in certain quarters of the Deep South. Those barbeque joints, honky tonks and talk shows tinged with a drawl in SEC country couldn’t have seen this coming.Big 12 solidarity.At the end of Oklahoma State’s 30-29 win over Texas A&M, there came a chant that rarely, if ever, had been heard in the 16-year existence of the eternally squabbling conference.”Big 12, Big 12, Big 12,” yelled a few thousand Cowboys’ fans pointing and gesturing at their 87,000 marooned-out counterparts at Kyle Field. It wasn’t so much loyalty being expressed as finality. If A&M considers itself an SEC school, then it will lug a four-game losing streak to the Cowboys perhaps into forever. In what was most likely was the last meeting between the two schools as conference rivals, the Aggies were caught looking ahead.To the end of the game after blowing a 20-3 halftime lead, to next week when it most likely can begin calling their next opponent (Arkansas) an SEC rival, to July 1 when the SEC move looks to become official on paper.Certainly, A&M officials had looked past the school’s honor code — an Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal — in leaving the Big 12 only 16 months after it had pledged to remain.Call Saturday’s result, then, the biggest Texas A&M backtrack since “committing” to the Big 12 in June 2010. The Aggies blew it, on the field and as an audition for the conference it soon will join. And for the record, it was A&M’s biggest blown lead since dropping another 17-pointer to Nebraska in 2002.
“We had so much on the line,” A&M quarterback Ryan Tannehill said, “and we were excited about this game.”For a half. After that, the Gig ‘ems gagged. Big time. Oklahoma State scored 27 unanswered points to beat A&M for the fourth straight year, the past three by five points or less.Oklahoma State flipped a switch, from moribund offense held 26 points under its first-half average to dictator of tempo and perhaps of a Big 12 it has never won.The victory makes it more likely that the Big 12 conference title actually stays in the Big 12. A small point, but one worth mentioning in the whirlwind of conference realignment. Had A&M won, the Aggies could have taken a Big 12 title into perpetuity as it migrated to the SEC.A&M president R. Bowen Loftin told CBSSports.com on Saturday that the school’s move to the SEC will be done “shortly.”The Aggies were done shortly after blowing a 17-point halftime lead. They weren’t so much trying to impress the SEC as just trying to beat Oklahoma State. The Aggies blew a 14-point halftime lead in Stillwater last year, losing 38-35.