The Ellipses . . .

The turkey has been eaten, my tree has been decorated and the final Lone Star Showdown (as we know it) has come and gone. And after 118 years, Texas and Texas A&M have said goodbye to their Thanksgiving, cross-state rivalry as Texas A&M moves on to the SEC, and Texas fills their spot on the schedule with a new Big XII team.

Tonight (as I sit down with a mug of cider - spiked, naturally - and a comfy burnt orange blanket) is not the night to talk about hurt feelings, politics or finger pointing about who’s leaving and why. Tonight I will take a break from all of that and just remember the rivalry at it’s finest. What memories have I taken away from the annual Texas / Texas A&M game? What stories will I tell my own children some day?

Going back in time the furthest, I remember sitting with my sister on my Great Grandmother’s living room floor, stuffed with turkey, watching the game with my Dan Dan’s family.

A few years later, my Mom, Dad, Sister and I huddled together on our couch in England, sometime in mid-December, watching a VHS recording of the game my Mom’s parents had sent to us. A little bit of home while we lived overseas.

Of course, how can I forget 1998? Will the defining moment of the series be when Ricky broke the record on the 20 yard line that fateful November day? Standing in the crowd with my family and 80,000 of our closest friends as the Heisman race narrowed further?

Maybe I’ll remember the candlelight vigil that Texas students held just one year later, in place of the annual Hex-Rally, to pay respects to the 12 people who died in the Aggie Bonfire collapse, or the University of Texas band removing their white cowboy hats in honor of the fallen, as they played Amazing Grace and Taps.

Of course, how can I ever forget last Thursday? Posing for a picture on the 50 yard line at Kyle Field, with my tailgate friends, elated, after a last second Texas victory - the final victory of it’s kind?

I don’t know. But I do know I’ll miss it. The rivalry ended quite dramatically, with charged emotions on both sides of the state. The tradition’s ending, and the bitter feelings that led to it’s demise are not what I want to remember.

I don’t want this Thanksgiving victory to be a punctuation mark at the end of a rivalry, unless maybe as an ellipses…a dot, dot, dot of what lie ahead for the series in the future.

I know it will never be the same. We can’t rebuild the house of cards that caused the rivalry to collapse. But maybe I’ll get to see a new kind of tradition rise from what cannot be undone.

Until then …