Texas and Texas A&M to Play on Thanksgiving Day

It looks like the NFL just got some competition on Turkey Day!

In a move to restore some of the historical luster of the Texas-Texas A&M college football rivalry, both schools have decided that over the next two years, there teams will play in a home and home series on Thanksgiving Night.

These two schools probably represent one of the biggest, and most common, everyday rivalries of two universities within the same state. People from Texas and from A&M coexist in all of all Texas's major cities. Alums from this school work together, live together, heck, a lot of them are within the same family, which makes for some really heated inner-family battles.

Those battles may carry over to the Thanksgiving Dinner table now that ESPN will be broadcasting them nationally on a day where the only thing football is second to is turkey.

But as good as this is for Texas and Texas A&M, what does this do for the NFL?

For so many years the NFL has been the only show in town on Thanksgiving Day. Millions of men across the nation plan their eating schedules around the two football games that come on in the afternoon and evening. And just recently, the NFL instituted a 3^rd night game, that even with it only being viewable on the exclusive NFL Network, was a huge draw these past two seasons.

It just so happens that it is that third game that will be in contention with the Texas-Texas A&M Game that is scheduled to air at 8pm. And with the NFL Network being so exclusive and not in a majority of households, will the NFL be forced to put this game on national television so that the game is still relevant? Or maybe they will just rid of the game all together.

What they surely don't want to do is the leave the game in its place and see that the lure of the Texas-Texas A&M game takes away from the usual clamoring done by fans who badly want to see NFL Network games but don't have access to them. Especially since the Thanksgiving game kicks off the NFL's broadcast of Thursday night games, and it would be a shame if that were overshadowed as they try to force cable companies to give into subscriber complaints and pay for the NFL for access to their network.

So it will be very interesting to see how the nation's most predominant sport reacts to a simple move from the college ranks and ESPN. They have been fighting to get their NFL Network on mainstream television for so long, and this past year was probably their most successful in making their argument for it. But now, if one of the more popular games in college football airs on national cable television, with cable subscriber in America having access to it, will football fans be so adamant in demanding they see that first Thursday night football game of the season?

And how will the NFL react overall to not being the only distributor of football on Thanksgiving?

Finally, the NFL has a decent test from competition, with problems it may not have solutions for. And in their quest to be a distributor of their own product, this may not be a battle that they can afford to lose.