Jimbo was asked about it in his first few days, of course by some spare hack out of Austin. The great thing is, Jimbo is not from Texas, he is not an Aggie, he had no vested interest, he had no history in the state or in the game, and although everyone even remotely interested or connected to the historical rivalry had given their thought and rational numerous times, Jimbo had barely been on the job for 5 minutes and yet he gave 10000% the best answer to the question.... "if it helps A&M, yes, if it doesn't, no". That is your answer, that is the final answer, and that answer is no.
Another poster in this thread mentioned something that I had brought up numerous times, Bama and Auburn did not play for a loooooooooooong time, at a time when it was much harder to find opponents, fill out schedules, and travel to games,. So there is a precedent, and even if there wasn't we can set our own precedent.
F cow, never again should we play them in the regular season. Let them be an also-ran in a JV conference, let them have a terrible home schedule while we host Bama when they play tech, we host LSU when they play Kansas, let them fall farther behind in the $$ race, let them have to rationalize and justify having a losing record to tcu, etc., etc., We need to be focused on the SEC and our own non-con scheduling, which does not and should not include a permanent P5 opponent which restricts our ability to play other meaningful non-con games. I have no desire to play cow, who we have played 100+ times and is only 90 miles away, at the expense of playing Clemson, Miami, Notre Dame, Louisville, etc.