NCAA Football Odds: Aggies battle Longhorns
By: Willie Bee
One of the nation's oldest college football rivalries is renewed this Thursday evening when the Texas A&M Aggies and Texas Longhorns meet in Austin. It's the 117th time the two schools have met on a gridiron, and apparently the last matchup as Big 12 South opponents.
Bragging rights are once again on the line in this year's meeting, but that's not all. The Aggies have surged into the BCS rankings at No. 17 and will be playing for a possible share of the Big 12 South title. A&M doesn't have much chance to represent the division in a three-way tie since the Ags would still likely trail both Oklahoma State and Oklahoma on the BCS list, with rankings in that poll serving as the tiebreaker.
Still, a road win over the Longhorns would leave Texas A&M 9-3 straight up and push the Ags forward a spot on the bowl invitation list.
Texas wishes it was playing for a more attractive bowl invite. The Longhorns (5-6 straight up, 3-8 against the NCAAF spread) have to win just to become bowl eligible.
Thursday's odds opened with the Aggies favored by a field goal at Bookmaker.com. The total has settled at 47 in the early going.
Mike Sherman's Aggies ran their win streak to five with last Saturday's 9-6 win at home over Nebraska. A Kyle Field record 90,079 fans watched the Aggies triumph as 2½-point underdogs in the field-goal battle.
Bo Pelini and the Cornhuskers will tell you they not only had to battle A&M's 12th man, but a 13th, 14th and 15th man on the field wearing black-&-white stripes. Nebraska was penalized a record 16 times for 145 yards to the Aggies' two flags.
The win was not only Texas A&M's fifth in a row straight up, but the fifth consecutive time the Aggies beat the spread to leave them 7-4 at the college football betting window this campaign.
Texas avoided running their losing skid to five with a 51-17 win at home over an overmatched Florida Atlantic squad. The Longhorns easily covered the 21½-point line to also stop a four-game losing streak against the spread.
Texas owns a dominating 75-36 edge in the all-time series with five ties. The Longhorns have won eight of the last 10 matchups, covering nine of the last 15.
The most recent meeting (Nov. 26, 2009) turned into a battle between the two quarterbacks, Jerrod Johnson for A&M and Texas' Colt McCoy. The squads combined for over 1,100 yards of offense in the Longhorns' 49-39 win as 20½-point favorites that went well 'over' the 63-point total.
A&M's last win in Austin came in 2006 when the Aggies were 13½-point road 'dogs. A defensive, 12-7 skirmish broke out in that get-together.
ESPN has the broadcast from Memorial Stadium on the UT campus with kickoff set for just after 5 p.m. PT. A rather warm, muggy week in this general area of the Lone Star State is forecast to change abruptly at some point during Thanksgiving Day. Exactly when remains uncertain, but there is a 40 percent chance of rain with a daytime high of 70ºF cooling down into the 40s once the expected front pushes through.
Despite attending a dozen or more of these matchups in person and seeing 30 or more on the telly, I'm still reluctant to suggest a winning side due to the ample maroon hanging in my wardrobe. Despite my allegiance to A&M, it's hard to believe Texas won't be going bowling this season and will be playing the 'Horns plus 140 on the money line.