Prairie View A&M-Texas A&M game is 140 years in making
PRAIRIE VIEW – Coach Willie Simmons describes it as his program's "chance to make history," when Prairie View A&M takes on its slightly older, much bigger brother Texas A&M at 11 a.m. Saturday at Kyle Field.
"We definitely have our hands full," Simmons said.
When the Panthers sprint from Kyle's tunnel and the first kickoff sails through the morning air, however, Prairie View A&M already will have made history just by playing the game. The contest between the "A&Ms," separated by 50 miles of country road, marks the first time the state's two oldest public universities will face each other in football.
"This is a unique game," Texas A&M defensive lineman Kingsley Keke said of the non-football history between the two schools. "And we know Prairie View is going to be pumped to play us."
Indeed, and considering Texas A&M has in its long-ago past faced opponents like Galveston Ball High, Houston YMCA and a now defunct college dubbed Daniel Baker, a showdown with a much more challenging brethren - truly a system brethren - seems overdue.
When Texas A&M needed to fill a gap in its schedule, A&M system chancellor John Sharp worked to bring together the two schools connected by highways 290 and 6 northwest of Houston.
As Sharp explained, if A&M will pay a program like Sam Houston State of the Football Championship Subdivision - which the Aggies have played host to on three occasions in the past two decades - it might as well pay one of its own in the FCS. It helps that Prarie View is bringing its famed "Marching Storm" band for a halftime performance at Kyle, as well.
"Let's keep it in the system," Sharp said.
A chance for Green
Doing so allows Prairie View star quarterback Trey Green a chance to perform in one of college football's ballyhooed settings in his senior season.
"They're phenomenal for putting us on their schedule," Green said.
Prairie View considers the payout phenomenal, too, for less than an hour trip up the road. The Aggies are paying the Panthers $450,000 plus 400 complimentary tickets. Prairie View fans have bought about 1,000 more as of Wednesday, according to Texas A&M spokesman Alan Cannon.
Sharp was instrumental in helping Prairie View build a $61 million stadium, which it opened Sunday night on national television in a 29-25 comeback victory over rival Texas Southern.
The chancellor, a Texas A&M graduate, hasn't been shy about airing his affection for Prairie View, a scenic school enveloping a rolling hill and covering about 1,500 acres in Waller County.
"In all of our 11 universities," Sharp said of the A&M system spread across the state, "I don't have another one as pretty as Prairie View."
The schools' ties that bind reach back 140 years, when Texas A&M was founded in 1876, and Praire View shortly after in the same year. Prairie View, known as Alta Vista at the time, was created as part of Reconstruction following the Civil War, as separate Texas "Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges" were built.
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