An ode to the Red River Showdown, which will remain unbeatable no matter the conference

WE ALL KNOW plenty about the game known as the Red River Rivalry. And we should.

There might not be another college football contest that does a better job of wrapping its gloves around everything we love about the sport than when Texas and Oklahoma square off on the second weekend of October. On Saturday, they will meet at high noon on ABC, a top-12 matchup with a Big 12 inside lane on the line.

You want tradition? How about Bevo's 1,800-pound self, sauntering onto the sideline to watch the 1,020-pound Sooner Schooner wagon come barreling into the Cotton Bowl, pulled by land-grabbing ponies and covered in RUF/NEKS.

You want history? How about a game that Saturday will be played for the 119th time, a series that started seven years before the Oklahoma Territory achieved statehood. It has been played for 94 consecutive years, dating back to Oct. 19, 1929. Since 1948, it has sold out 75 times, including this year.

You want competition? How about a series that is led by Texas 63-50-5 but since the end of World War II has been split nearly precisely down the middle with 39 wins for the Sooners, 37 wins for the Longhorns and three ties. In fact, what is considered perhaps the most epic game in Red River rivalry history was one of those ties. The 6-6 stalemate of 1976 ignited wild conspiracy claims of spying. It was fitting, considering President Gerald Ford, he of the Warren Commission and the pardoning of Richard Nixon, was in attendance.

You want symmetry? How about all of that you just read, plus a game location of Dallas because Big D was seen as the perfect Red River DMZ, located almost exactly halfway between the two campuses in Austin, Texas, and Norman, Oklahoma. And then there is that seating configuration. The Cotton Bowl is split exactly down the middle, the 50-yard line acting as a Bowie knife, evenly dividing the 92,100-seat oval into equal halves of UT burnt orange and OU crimson and cream. That leaves entire sections of hundreds of fans sitting with their shoulders mashed and colors clashed for four hours in the Texas heat. As former Horns head coach Mack Brown once explained: "It's not like your home crowd or your away crowd, where it's loud for you and quiet for the opponent. In this game, somebody is screaming every play."