Who Should Be Texas A&M’s 3 Protected Rivals With 9 SEC Games?

The SEC may never be the same.

The days of not only Texas A&M, but the entire SEC, scheduling programs like Samford and New Mexico State in the second-to-last week of the season may be over soon.

On Thursday, Yahoo! Sports insider Ross Dellenger revealed that SEC executives have officially agreed to move to a nine-game conference schedule, as voted on by the SEC’s 16 school presidents, and it has the potential to completely shake up late-season Saturdays in the south. As part of the new slate, each team will get three protected rivals, meaning that those three teams will be a permanent fixture on their schedule.

Who Would Texas A&M’s Protected Rivals Be?

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey speaks to the media during the SEC Media Day at Omni Atlanta Hotel. | Jordan Godfree-Imagn Images

There is one team that should not even have to be brought up. There is zero question that the Texas Longhorns and Texas A&M Aggies will be playing every year. The “Lone Star Showdown” is so ingrained in the programs’ culture and history that both universities’ fight songs directly mention each other. The rivalry had already been stagnant for over a decade before returning in 2024 and will undoubtedly go nowhere under the new conference schedule.

The second protected rival would have to be Arkansas. The Aggies and Razorbacks have been rivals since 1903 and have carried their rivalry across multiple conferences. The game has become billed as the “Southwest Classic,” to pay homage to both programs’ days in the old Southwest Conference. While Arkansas leads the series 42-36-3, Texas A&M has dominated since 2009.

The third team that came to mind was LSU, but the Tigers have their own mess of rivals. Yes, the Aggies and Tigers have been considered rivals since the Fightin’ Farmers joined the SEC in 2012, but the fire that makes rivalries just has not existed between the two programs. It could be argued that LSU’s three biggest rivals are Arkansas, Ole Miss and Alabama, three named matchups. The Aggies and Tigers just do not have the same kind of bad blood as those programs, leaving A&M just outside of LSU’s three protected rivals.

Texas A&M’s third protected rival should be the South Carolina Gamecocks. Both programs are on the cusp of being in the new wave of SEC teams ready to dominate the program. The Gamecocks essentially ended the Aggies’ 2024 campaign, resulting in some bad blood between the two squads. Plus, the matchup already has a trophy. The Bonham Trophy originated out of a bet between the two states’ governors, and it also looks pretty dang cool. The battle for the Bonham Trophy certainly deserves to be the Aggies’ third rivalry.