COLLEGE STATION – Texas A&M athletic director Scott Woodward received a call from his counterpart at Texas, Chris Del Conte, earlier this year with an offer: Would the Aggies like to play a home-and-home football series in 2022-23?

Woodward told Del Conte no thanks.

“We were already booked,” Woodward said this week in an extended visit with the Houston Chronicle. “We’re booked 10 years out. He had an opening at the time, and it suited him, but it didn’t suit us.”

UT ultimately filled the openings with Alabama. Anyone who follows college football knows bookings can be and have been reshuffled or dropped altogether, so there’s more at play than simply filling schedules far in advance and then standing pat. If a big-time program wants to make a game happen, it can make it happen.

In this case, I wouldn’t expect the return of A&M-UT anytime soon, and here’s why: The Aggies don’t believe they need the old rivalry renewed, in playing in the division that’s won seven of the last 12 national titles, and in a conference that’s won nine of the last 12 national titles.

“We have a hell of a home schedule,” Woodward explained. “You have Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Ole Miss and Mississippi State rolling in here every other year, and Arkansas in Dallas every year. That’s a pretty darn good schedule. And as brutal and hard as our schedule is in the SEC West … it’s definitely the toughest division in football. That’s proven year in and year out.

“You look at where national championships come from, and the caliber of play, and you see it every week. It’s hard on a team, and it’s a pounding. So you have to be careful how you schedule your nonconference games.”

That said, Woodward added, he’s proud of A&M’s upcoming nonconference schedule that includes Clemson (on Sept. 8 at Kyle Field), Colorado, Notre Dame, Miami and Arizona State. As for once again playing the Longhorns in the regular season, for the first time since 2011 and just prior to A&M exiting the Big 12 for the SEC?

“With the right circumstances at the right time, but not right now,” Woodward said. “We already have some very good home-and-away nonconference games for our fans. It’s something coach (Jimbo) Fisher and I will talk about and consider, but it has to be at the right time and the right opportunity, when it works for both (schools).”

The teams met on 118 occasions starting in 1894 and as members of two leagues – the Southwest Conference and the Big 12 – with the Longhorns holding a 76-37-5 advantage.