Craven: Texas needs to stop playing on Thanksgiving Day

[caption id="attachment_20840" align="alignright" width="300"]Photo by Mike Williamson Photo by Mike Williamson[/caption] Texas should no longer play on Thanksgiving. Growing up, the Texas-Texas A&M game was a Texas tradition. No more. The Longhorns' attempts to keep the tradition going with games against TCU or Texas Tech haven’t created the buzz Texas needs to make a mid-week game this late in the season worth playing (or watching). In theory, playing on Thanksgiving offers advantages. The ratings should be higher since there aren’t as many games to compete against on television, which would allow a team trying to showcase itself for the College Football Playoffs a chance to have a national audience to itself against a conference opponent late in the season. The problem is that Texas doesn’t need ratings. The Longhorns haven’t competed for national championships since the Aggies left for the SEC and games against Texas Tech or TCU create an even emptier stadium than Texas has played against during most Saturdays in the last few years. The Thanksgiving game still functions as a showcase game for Texas, but instead of showing the country that the Longhorns are a top program, the last few years showed the nation that Texas dropped from the heights it once held during the golden years under Mack Brown. All that remains is a stadium not near capacity, a student section disguised as empty bleachers and a game playing second fiddle to any other football game on television. For full disclosure, I grew up on Longhorn football. It was a rite of passage in the Craven household. We would meet early in the day or on Wednesday to eat so that my grandfather could make his way to the stadium to work, while I would wait in the locker room for the players to start warming up before I found my seat in the stands. Going to games was normal, but there was always a feeling around DKR and the facilities on Thanksgiving that was unmatched at any other point of the year. I went back two years ago to watch a Thanksgiving game and those memories were replaced by sadness. It wasn’t the same anymore. It wasn’t the same at the stadium. It wasn’t the same inside the locker room. It wasn’t the same for the players, the fans, the coaches or anyone else associated with what was once one of the best college football traditions in the nation. It is time to retire the Thanksgiving game, if for no other reason than to preserve the memories of when it mattered.