Which rivalry hits harder: Texas A&M versus Texas, or Texas versus Oklahoma? Most college fans might lean toward the Red River Rivalry, but I’ve been making this take for three years now, and I feel the same way I did three years ago.

Texas A&M versus Texas, if you expand it outside of football, is a bigger overall rivalry than what we see with Red River.

Football isn’t the only sport that matters

Now, I completely understand the counterargument. Football is the biggest sport in all of college athletics, and you see the most intensity between Oklahoma and Texas on that field. If you want to say Red River is the bigger rivalry because of that reasoning, I get it. But I’m going to encapsulate the entire rivalry across all sports, because there is intensity regardless of the game being played between those two programs.

And you may say, football is king, so that should settle it. Well, what are we talking about? There is a lot more intensity and genuine hatred between Texas and Texas A&M in nearly every other sport than there is between Texas and Oklahoma. Baseball, basketball, track, you name it. The venom is there year-round, not just one Saturday in October at the Cotton Bowl.

The in-state factor changes everything

I also think there’s a little bit more juice with it being an in-state rival. These fan bases live next to each other. They work together, go to church together, argue at Thanksgiving dinner together. That proximity breeds a different kind of animosity than a rivalry that crosses state lines.

And here’s the thing: if I was to go through every single sport and rank which rivalry carries more intensity, I’ll give football to Red River. But if we go through all the other sports, I’m leaning to Texas A&M and Texas almost every time. That adds up.

The gap is closing on the football field, too

Even with Texas A&M and Texas now playing on the football field again in the SEC, the margin between these two rivalries is a lot closer than people want to admit. It’s not just on the recruiting aspect or the transfer portal anymore. It’s being played on the field. The head-to-head battles for 5-star prospects, the portal wars, and now actual conference games with SEC implications on the line. That changes the calculus and it’s something we will see again on Nov. 27 when the Longhorns arrive to College Station.

I think you can make the argument that it’s pretty fair to say the intensity and the overall rivalry hits a little bit harder with Texas A&M and Texas than it does with Red River. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’ve held this position for three years, and nothing has moved me off of it. If anything, A&M and Texas sharing a conference again only strengthens my case.