The Texas-Oklahoma rivalry is never short on bad blood between the Big 12 border states.
Saturday will be the first time since the early 1900s that Texas/OU will play each other twice in the same season. Saturday it’s for the Big 12 Championship.
Jonah Israel, probably knows better than anyone, how this game in particular can turn a life upside down.
“The energy, you can feel it,” said Jonah Israel. “It’s a lot of hate from both sides and you can feel it in the air, the dispute between the two schools.”
If there was any question of how serious the Texas/OU rivalry just as Israel.
“What we call it in my family is hate week. The whole week leading up to the Texas game,” said Israel.
Twelve years ago, at the Red River Showdown, Israel was the kid forever immortalized on the internet, but while everyone watching at home thought he was upset the game wasn’t going his way it actually had nothing to do with that at all.
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"I was just being a 10-year-old and fussing for 10-year-old reasons and it just so happened to be at a time that Oklahoma didn’t have a chance to come back and win," said Israel.
Unfortunately, his candid moment stuck for a while.
"The catch phrase of the kids that didn’t like me would be like, ‘Hey man, don’t cry about it,’ if anything were to happen," said Israel. "It wasn’t really funny until I turned like 16 or 17. All through middle school it was just a sight I didn’t want to see or hear about it."
While he didn’t attend the University of Oklahoma, make no mistake, his love for the bad blood border rivalry is more profound than ever. As recently as this summer, he used his ‘not so cool story’ in hopes of winning a University of Oklahoma T-shirt contest.
"We had to design a shirt with the University of Oklahoma and then the fans would vote on it on Facebook ... of course I didn’t win, but I got a free shirt out of it," said Israel.
There is no crying in football, according to the old saying, and Israel said he learned his lesson the hard way. Now he’s got a message for us all ahead of the biggest game of the year for him.
"I want everyone to know I am living my best life. Texas is still the worst university of all time," said Israel.
