Texas Tech is home to many proud traditions. Us Red Raiders throw tortillas at kick-off during home football games, we celebrate the holiday season with Carol of Lights, and before every football game, the Saddle Tramps wrap a certain statue in red crepe paper. This statue is of Will Rogers and his horse, Soapsuds.
Originally, the statue was meant to be facing west, so that when the sun goes down, it would appear that Will Rogers and Soapsuds were riding off into the sunset. However, that would mean that Soapsuds' rear end would be facing Downtown Lubbock. The solution was a no-brainer. The statue was rotated 23 degrees to the east. Now, why would they do that? Simple. The rear of Soapsuds will forever be facing College Station, therefore making every student at A&M annoyed that a horse's butt is always facing in their direction.
Recommended for you
Is that the case today, though? When I asked a few of my friends that currently attend A&M University, they gave me a half smile and rolled their eyes. Maybe even a slight chuckle. But I wanted to know what more of the Aggies thought about our statue. Would they get a laugh out of it? Would they really not care? Or would their school pride get the best of them and be enraged by Texas Tech's little dig at them?
I asked my same Aggie friends to ask around their campus what people thought of the statue's positioning, and the responses are actually surprising. There were a few angry students, calling Texas Tech "jealous" and even "childish." One student even pretended TTU was not even a real institution by saying, "Wait, what's Texas Tech? Is that a school? People actually pay to go there?" Harsh.
Some truly did not care. They either just shrugged and said "OK," or they straight out said that they didn't really care. One A&M student said that "every school does something to the school that they hate. A&M put an outhouse on top of our bonfire and called it a UT frat house." Excellent point.
A majority, however, saw the humor in the statue's positioning. Many laughed, many said that it was kind of funny, and some even noted how it is clever. One Aggie stated that, "Even though we aren't in the same conference anymore, I think that's really funny. It shows how your school poked fun at us when we were still rivals."
Moral of the story? There are some Aggies that have a burning passion for their school, and if you mess with it, you will feel the wrath. The rest of the Aggie population finds the old rivalry funny and can see past the fact that the Red Raiders made a horse's rear end face their direction for who knows how long. Which leads me to the question: why can't we set aside our old rivalry and focus on our common enemy? That's right, Bevo, I'm talking about you. After all, the saying is, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
