Texas rivalry continues without yearly bonfire

     Knight-Ridder Tribune—The college football season now winds down, with those final games against traditional rivals. For old grads like H.R. “Bum” Bright none is more important than the one between Texas and Texas A&M—Longhorns and Aggies.

     It will be played for the 107th time, since 1894, on the Friday following Thanksgiving with ABC televising nationally from Austin.

     Bright, a Texas tycoon and onetime owner of the Dallas Cowboys, a few days ago made a gift of $5 million to his alma mater, Texas A&M, to enhance the football program.

     What will be different this year is no bonfire at College Station. It has been put on hold until 2002, announced president Ray M. Bowen.

     The tradition at the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, founded in 1876, was to build a huge log structure on the campus and then light it at a night rally before the game against “the hated Longhorns.”

     A year ago the log pile collapsed while under construction. Twelve Aggies swarming about the pile were killed, 27 others injured. This was a deep wound to a proud university, one of the five largest in the United States. The bonfire tradition might have ended right there.

     The planned new bonfire will be one safely constructed by engineers in teepee style, rather than randomly, so that, said Bowen, “the horror of the bonfire collapse never visits our campus again.”