The rivalry between the Aggies and the Longhorns will be more tangible in 2019.

On Dec. 8, Texas and Texas A&M's men's basketball teams will play against each other at the new Dickies Arena in Fort Worth. It's the first scheduled game between the schools since A&M left the Big 12.

But those hoping the exes can get back together on a football field will likely have to keep waiting. The breakup might still be too fresh.

Unless something drastically changes this summer, it's unlikely the Longhorns and Aggies will restart the gridiron version of the Lone Star Showdown unless they meet in the postseason.

"I think we'll play in a bowl game," A&M president Michael Young told Texas Monthly during a podcast interview released in April. "If I were a betting man, I bet that's where we'll first meet. And that will be fun."

Eight years after Texas won the last football game between the teams, Friday's news shows the bitterness between the two schools could be softening. In 2019, the Longhorns and Aggies will meet in two of the three key revenue sports (men's basketball, baseball).

In football, the rivalry features recruiting battles, verbal barbs and banter on message boards. But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

During a May meeting with the A&M booster club in College Station, coach Jimbo Fisher joked about cattle he purchased this spring and poked fun at the folks in Austin.

"I wasn't gonna buy no longhorn," Fisher said, according to the Houston Chronicle, a line that reportedly elicited one of the biggest cheers of the night.

When it comes to actually making the game happen, however, the laughter stops. Both sides have postured toward restarting the annual football contest without making any tangible progress.

Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte wanted to schedule A&M to replace Ohio State during the 2022 and '23 seasons. A&M already had a contract with Miami and wasn't willing to rework things. The Longhorns scheduled a home-and-home series against Alabama instead.

The situation also hints at some of the problems with making the football game happen again. Given how one result can alter the course of a season, the game has to make sense for both teams.

"At some point, I have to think the contracts will line up and we'll play," Del Conte told The News in August 2018. "But until then, I have to do what's best for the University of Texas."

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And in the same way, new A&M athletic director Ross Bjork must operate in the Aggies' best interest. A&M currently has to work around its annual SEC West schedule, one that includes a lucrative neutral-site game against Arkansas at AT&T Stadium.

Bjork doesn't officially start his new job until July 8 and he still has to learn the ins and outs. During SEC spring meetings at the end of May, Bjork halfway joked that he didn't even know where his office was, "let alone my scheduling file."

It could be a while before any substantial football chatter takes place.

Texas has at least one nonconference "power five" opponent scheduled every year until 2033, while A&M has one booked until 2027. Granted, between the combined $400 million in operating revenue each school earned in 2017-18 and money generated from a future Lone Star Showdown, A&M and Texas could afford to fork over a few million dollars to get out of other contracts to schedule each other.

All of that speculation is hypothetical. What's real is what will happen in December, when the Aggies and Longhorns will play a real basketball game in the Lone Star State for the first time since 2012.

For now, anything more significant will have to wait.