In my “Texas Aggies, Dallas Cowboys and Fútbol Americano,” and in the spirit of a long-standing “tradition,” I took a few good-natured shots at our arch-rivals, the University of Texas Longhorns.
I even had a few amicable words for the Longhorns mascot, Bevo:
[Players] who invariably brought a dumb-looking steer named Bevo onto the football field—obviously to intimidate the Aggies and our little mascot Collie, Reveille.
The (football) rivalry between these two great universities goes back more than a century, is the third longest running college rivalry in the nation and one on which volumes have been written.
One of the aspects of this rivalry is the great deal of mischief and “pranks” that each school plays on the other and which sometimes involve the schools’ mascots—such as “kidnapping” each other’s mascots.
The present Texas Aggies mascot is a Collie named “Reveille,” Reveille VIII, to be precise. Reveille is the seventh in a line of Collies in a tradition that dates back to 1941 (The first A&M canine mascot was a mixed breed).
The history of the University of Texas longhorn mascot, Bevo, goes back to 1916 when, as the story goes, members of the UT Class of 1911 collected money and bought the longhorn steer in the Texas Panhandle and shipped it to Austin.
According to Mike Cox, author of “Texas Tales,” the first Bevo already had “an impressive story”:
The steer had been captured by a posse of Texans in a raid on Mexican cattle rustlers near Juarez in the fall of 1916. Presumably, the animal had been stolen from the Texas side of the river some time prior to his repatriation.
Today’s Longhorn mascot is a 2000-pound steer, Bevo XIV, with more than 6 feet of horn—73 ½ inches to be exact. Just as Reveille, Bevo travels everywhere with his team and stomps the end zone and sidelines providing moral support for the Longhorns.
But how do you transport a 2000-pound steer to the Rose Bowl, 1,400 miles from Bevo’s ranch northwest of Austin, Texas?
The Austin American-Statesman, in an interesting story on this logistics feat, says:
Because airline pet carriers aren’t made big enough for steers, getting Bevo to the Rose Bowl end zone has required a 1,400-mile cattle drive over the past few days, a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the four UT seniors entrusted this year with Bevo’s travels.
The Statesman mentions the Silver Spurs, part of a 100-member group of UT seniors selected and trained as Bevo handlers, and goes on to describe Bevo’s interesting four-day journey to the Hummingbird Nest Ranch in Simi Valley, Calif., where the UT mascot now patiently awaits his triumphant entry to the Rose Bowl this Thursday. As the Statesman puts it:
There will be one final, most crucial leg to this trip, a 40-mile drive to Pasadena on Thursday for his namesake team’s national championship game against the Alabama Crimson Tide, which kicks off at 7:38 p.m. Austin time. The 2009 two-legged Longhorns will try to keep Bevo XIV’s bowl record clean
As a Texas Aggie, but most importantly as a “naturalized Texan,” and all the year-long rivalry and “needling” aside, I do wish the Longhorns a great win in Pasadena.
I started this story with a mention of the mischief and “pranks” that members of the two schools play on each other. They are simply legendary. However no story about the Longhorns’ mascot would be complete without mentioning what probably was the very first prank “committed” by the Aggies on the very first Bevo.
According to Cox, in February 1917, some intruders, “presumably Aggies,” slipped up on the UT mascot and seared “13-0” on the steer’s flank.” That was the score by which the Aggies had beaten the Longhorns the year before. But then…
The steer’s embarrassed student handlers, in turn, soon came up with a clever way to save face for their school, though it was a little hard on their mascot. The UT partisans converted the 13 into a B, the hyphen into an e and inserted a V in front of the zero. That spelled Bevo, the brand name of a popular near beer.
And now you know the rest of the story. Hook ‘em Horns!
Image: Courtesy bevoart.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.