Here we Bell County residents have our two primary rival football games - Temple-Belton and Academy-Rogers - on the same Friday night.
Plus, they’re booked on a quasi-holiday to boot.
If the Milam County classic Rockdale-Cameron Yoe contest were this coming Friday we’d have our own cable television-style theme night.
With these games on tap, questions come to mind as to what it is that really makes these “rivalry” games more than others. Temple, Belton, Academy and Rogers all have opponents they play annually that are hotly contested, meaningful matchups.
But what is it that makes these particular games more special, makes the blood pressure rise a bit at the very mention of it and makes territorial pride that much more coveted? What makes these games a T-shirt vendor’s dream?
Some of the intangibles vary from year to year, but geography, school size and history are the obvious factors that add depth and emotion to a traditional rivalry.
When school districts border each other and the high schools are 10 minutes apart, it’s a given that many of the players and their families have played with and against each other in youth leagues, worked, traded and worshipped alongside one another for years, even generations. It’s a good-natured pride that develops bragging rights to be savored.
No one understood this better than Grady Barganier, Academy’s head football coach from 1994-98. Ten years ago, on one of the occasions that the University Interscholastic League realignment split Academy and Rogers from the same district, the two teams were not originally scheduled to play each other for the first time in decades. Then-Rogers coach Joel Berry had already lined up other non-district opponents.
Barganier stepped in and said, “Rogers and Academy have to play each other.” It took some cajoling and juggling, but he made it happen. It wasn’t necessarily to his benefit. At that point, Academy had beaten Rogers only twice since 1967. However, a vital chain of tradition was preserved.
Rogers’ rivalry with Rosebud-Lott, for example, is one of the best around. But the football teams won’t play for at least two years and it barely elicits a shrug.
Then there’s the Temple-Belton series. You can trace this rivalry back to the beginning of both programs a century ago. They played each other twice in 1908, with Temple winning both - 12-0 and by the peculiar score of 11-5.
Series records are a relative non-factor in determining a great rivalry. Texas leads its series with Texas A&M 73-36-5, but that doesn’t dampen interest in that juggernaut.
Rogers is well ahead in the Academy series and Temple has a large advantage on Belton. Those numbers don’t matter on that much-anticipated Friday, though.
From 1908-34, Temple and Belton played 26 times and the Wildcats went 19-3-4. It was the emotional attachment of the rivalry that kept it going as long as it did. The game drew huge crowds whether it was at Woodson Field or the old Bell County Fairgrounds. It was a highly anticipated event.
Temple was a far larger school than Belton at the time. By the early 1930s, some of Temple’s semi-regular rural opponents such as Cameron Yoe, Marlin, McGregor and Granger disappeared from the schedule as more schools started adding football programs.
When Temple and Belton teed it up on Sept. 28, 1934, many on both sides of the Leon River had begun to feel that the rivalry had outlasted its usefulness. The Wildcats won 80-0 in 1933. The goodwill that had been the hallmark of the series was fraying.
Temple won the final 10 games of the series, mostly by lopsided scores, and ran away with that 1934 contest, 74-0. The Telegram confirmed the public sentiment by calling for an end to the series. C.E. McClelland wrote, “It’s an old rivalry and all that, but such things can be carried too far. We cannot see where Belton or Temple fans or the Belton or Temple players get any benefit out of the annual melee, things being the way they are.”
So the rivalry went dark. For 62 years. You might call it the 62 silent years between the old and the new rivalry.
My original premise for this rumination was that although the Temple-Belton rivalry generates much local excitement, it might not be the rivalry of the ages where Temple is concerned. Dr. Billy Wilbanks, a Belton historian, said he couldn’t think of any bigger rival for the Tigers than Temple.
The Wildcats, however, had strong, long-running battles with Waco, Austin, Cleburne, Bryan and later Killeen.
It’s hard to ignore the Waco series - whether in its original version when its nickname was the Tigers or in its current post-Waco Richfield-merger days as the Lions. Only four times between 1922-75 was there not a Temple-Waco game.
The Temple-Waco game for many years was the final regular-season game and played on or around Thanksgiving. A district championship was often on the line, as well.
Through the years it ran the pendulum of streaks that many great rivalries do, with one team or the other dominating for years. Some of the Wildcats’ program-defining victories in the first half of the 20th century were at the expense of Paul Tyson’s vaunted Waco Tigers.
The historian in me says the Temple-Waco series is undoubtedly one for the ages. How can a series that lay dormant for 62 years top that?
The modernist in me says the fact that Temple and Belton didn’t play for 62 years and the game still holds the same fervor as it did when trolley cars took thousands to Woodson or the Fairgrounds is precisely what makes it a premier rivalry. Six of the eight meetings since 1996 have been decided by 10 points or less.
The weight of this rivalry game on the playoff race will vary from year to year. But it will always matter to the pride of these communities.
Maybe that’s what makes good rivalries great.
twaits@temple-telegram.com
