DALLAS — Full disclosure: An Aggie wrote this.
So, there might be a little bias in the declaration that the greatest rivalry in Texas sports – maybe all of college sports? – is returning to the greatest college campus on earth.
Hyperbole aside, ticket prices for the first matchup of UT and Texas A&M in more than a decade reflect just how much hype there is.
The Aggies and Longhorns play Saturday night at Kyle Field in College Station and ticket website TickPick calls it “the most expensive college football game ever.”
A Monday night search of TickPick and Seat Geek, also a ticket marketplace, showed the cheapest single ticket with fees included to be $688.
Two seats together were selling for $743 each.
Not to throw shade at the Dallas Cowboys, but on those same websites, $150 or so could get someone a standing-room-only ticket for the next four home games combined.
Longhorn Cord Samuels lives in New Braunfels and is married to an Aggie.
He is a coach and used coaching connections to land his ticket to Saturday's game for “a few hundred dollars.”
“I started looking last year in the middle of January, making it a mission that like, hey, we need to be there for this,” Samuels said. “It's almost like it’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I found one of the golden tickets. Very, very fortunate. Very, very blessed.”
Kyle Krebs, a third-generation Aggie, is going with his father.
They “played the long game,” Kyle said, buying season tickets for the last few years.
“We thought eventually Texas had to follow us to the SEC. And so, we already had our tickets in hand when the season started and the game was announced,” Krebs said.
Krebs was a member of the Aggie band the last time the Aggies and Longhorns played in 2011.
That, too, was at Kyle Field in College Station, but it was an Aggie loss.
Samuels has enjoyed bragging rights since then.
“I've enjoyed those bragging rights,” he admitted. “Now I’m going to go through four hours of just nothing but anxiety, sweat, emotion. It's a roller coaster of emotions.”
On top of the renewal of an epic rivalry, a trip to the SEC title game is on the line.
“Aggie spirit is just going to be off the charts,” Krebs said. “Just getting a chance to be a part of it and wave your towel and yell for your team.”
“It's going to be memories to cherish for the rest of my life, especially getting to be there with my dad.”
For those who can’t afford the ticket, the Aggies and Longhorns face off on WFAA at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 30.
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