Tylan Wallace looked on from the Atherton Hotel toward the crowds of people flocking Stillwater.

Just outside the walls of Atherton, the campus hotel that houses the Cowboy football team the night before home games, upward of 50,000 OSU fans and alumni took to the streets to marvel at the Homecoming decorations built by students.

Like other Cowboy football teams, the 2018 team did not participate in all the Homecoming festivities. They were resting, preparing and game planning for the next night’s primetime matchup against No. 6 Texas.

It was OSU’s first Homecoming game against the Longhorns since 2005. On Saturday, the Cowboys will again take on 20th-ranked Texas on Homecoming in front of a national stage.

It’s become an important game in Big 12 hierarchy. But this matchup is likely one of the last, as Texas departs for the SEC in 2025.

Wallace could sense the energy and frenzy occurring outside his hotel room that night. It was a big game on an important day. Though, the magnitude didn’t hit until he walked the tunnel of Boone Pickens Stadium.

“I ain’t ever seen it look like that before,” Wallace said. “And for it to be Homecoming, and for us to pull out the new (throwback) jerseys, Barry Sanders being there, I mean, it was just, I feel like a game that you really don’t forget in your career.”

While Wallace, one of the Cowboys’ top receivers, was in his second of four seasons in Stillwater, running back Justice Hill was in his final. Hill, from Tulsa, never lost to Texas while at OSU.

Entering the game, Hill felt the Homecoming hype, but as a kid from Oklahoma, it was just that. Texas was just another opponent.

“Texas was a tough game, but for me man, I’m just like, yo, we gotta go in there and win,” Hill said. “It’s just football.”

OSU jumped out to a 24-14 lead behind three touchdowns from quarterback Taylor Cornelius and lengthy scampers from Hill. Then, on fourthandone, just before halftime, Wallace ignited the stadium.

“I feel like that’s obviously one of like the highlights I tend to remember the most out of all of them,” Wallace said.

OSU coach Mike Gundy decided to gamble on fourth down from the 36-yard line instead of kicking a field goal. All or nothing in a big game. Cornelius found Wallace down the north sideline, where he won the jump over one Texas defensive back and squeezed past another.

Touchdown. OSU held on for the 38-35 win in one of the most memorable Texas and Homecoming games. Unlike Hill, the game did mean more to Wallace, who hails from Fort Worth.

So did the win. Wallace went 2-2 against UT in his career, but those wins were sweeter than others, as they were for the numerous other OSU players from the Lone Star State.

“I think that game means a lot to those guys from Texas,” Wallace said. “They know probably a lot of guys on that team. Probably grew up with some of them, played against some of them.

“So when we win or we lose, it just means a little bit more.”

But for most of history, the losses far exceeded wins.

*** Bevo loped laps around Bullet.

In the first 93 years of opposition, OSU won just two of 24 games against UT. From 1998 to 2009, the Cowboys went winless against the Longhorns in 12 matchups. Many of those weren’t particularly close.

Running back Tatum Bell was part of that slide. He went 0-4 against UT from 2000-03, losing by an average of 26 points in those games. The Cowboys had no answer.

“They had our number, man,” Bell said. “Anything we did, they could counter.”

At the time, Texas carried an aura that intimidated and made them the superior team on the field. Bell could sense it. Texas was one of the conference’s top dogs. Entering those four matchups against OSU and Bell, UT had a combined 21-4 record.

Even when OSU did keep it close, it couldn’t pull off the win. A trip to Austin in 2002 was Bell’s best opportunity, but despite a 45-yard touchdown sprint, Texas proved supreme. Final score: 17-15.

“When we played Texas, they treated us like we were the little brothers and they were the big brothers,” Bell said. “We always started the game off hot against them, but could never finish against them.”

Like many OSU players, Bell was from Texas. He never liked Texas, though, admitting he’d take sides with Texas A&M over the ‘Horns any day. Between the disdain for UT and the natural rivalry between a Texan athlete and his home-state’s flagship university, those games stood out.

Even if it was for not-sogood reasons.

Texas was a team to beat in the Big 12, and OSU couldn’t pull it off. Beat Texas, and the college football world would take notice. They stood in the way of what the Cowboys wanted.

A rise in perception and success.

“It just pisses me off,” Bell said, about his record against UT. “I was such a competitor, I just hated losing. Then I’m from Texas. Man, I was just pissed off every time I played them.”

*** A freshman Shaun Lewis had no clue about OSU’s 0-for run against Texas when he stepped onto the field at Darrel K Royal Stadium in 2010.

That didn’t mean anything to him. Neither did the 66-year drought between wins in Austin. And it showed. Not even five minutes into the game, the OSU linebacker recovered a UT fumble, and he finished with five tackles in the 33-16 breakthrough win.

There was no thought given to the history he had just been involved in. Lewis didn’t know his team just ended an era and started a new one.

“Well, since it was a new experience for me, it was a new normal,” Lewis said.

It wasn’t normal for quarterback Brandon Weeden, though. His first two seasons, Weeden was backup to Zac Robinson in a pair of losses to Texas.

A season earlier, in 2009, a top-15 OSU team suffered a 27-point home loss to the Longhorns, who played in the BCS Championship game.

“They were always just kind of, you know, athletically a step ahead early on,” Weeden said. “And I’d say my last couple of years here, we kind of caught up to them and kind of became a team that gave them fits.”

While the 12 UT games before that day ended with OSU in the loss column, the next 12 saw the Cowboys go 8-4 against the Longhorns. The 2010 recruiting class, which Lewis was part of, went 3-1 against UT, becoming the first class to ever beat Texas multiple times — much less have a winning record against them.

All three wins came in Austin, less than three hours away from his hometown of Missouri City. Texas recruited Lewis, one of the top linebackers in the state, and expressed interest but didn’t offer him a scholarship.

That interaction with Texas created long-lasting motivation.

“It’s like that girl in high school that you knew liked you, but for whatever reason, she chose not to give you any attention,” Lewis said. “Any time you could, you wanted to make sure that she knows she missed out.”

Lewis said he never had real interest in Texas, but he took it personally that they thought he wasn’t a fit there. Whether Texas had a losing record, like in 2010, or was ranked in the top 25, like Lewis’ final three seasons, he was out to prove a point.

That’s a common theme on OSU teams throughout the years. Even on the 2022 roster, only two of 48 players from Texas received a scholarship offer from UT.

“You want to make sure that when someone looks over you, they know they made a mistake,” Lewis said. “So not to have to rub it in someone’s face, but like that was a little extra motivation.”

The 12-year stretch leading up to 2010 wasn’t just tough on the Cowboys. During that time, Texas appeared in two national championships (winning one), four Big 12 championships and won at least nine games every season — including double-digit win totals nine times.

Texas (and OU) stood between the rest of the Big 12 and palpable success. Like Interstate-35, the road to conference contention and national relevance had long ran through Austin.

But Lewis and Weeden’s teams broke through that barrier and created a new mentality that’s carried over.

“I think going down to Texas and beating them, it was the start of something that was pretty awesome,” Lewis said. “Pretty much an awesome feeling.

*** Inside an empty Boone Pickens Stadium, days before Saturday’s matchup with Texas, Gundy reflected on what the UT game has meant to him and OSU.

The Cowboys don’t have a shot at Notre Dame every year. Ohio State and Michigan aren’t coming to Stillwater anytime soon. Texas has been OSU’s crack at college football royalty, outside of OU.

From Lewis and the 2010 Cowboys’ ice-breaking win to the 2018 Homecoming classic, the Texas game has taken on a new meaning. No longer is the Texas game one of apprehension, but instead it’s become an opportunity to cement OSU’s place on the map.

“For us, those have been quality games for the big picture,” Gundy said.

The importance hasn’t just been on-field. Gundy has recruited Texas hard, apparent with the 2022 roster consisting of more than one-third Texas natives, and he said all of those players enjoy trying to dethrone the Longhorns.

The opportunity to play in front of more than 100,000 fans in Darrel K Royal Stadium has been a huge marketing advantage for OSU. Regardless of where the game is played or whether Texas is having down year, it’s sold out and viewed nationally.

Gundy said the loss of Texas can’t be fixed with the addition of four new teams to the conference, as unique as they may be. UT has a tradition and following that’s hard, if not possible, for the Big 12 to replace.

“Will there be as an attractive draw without having Texas and OU? Probably not,” Gundy said. Right? People love to watch Texas.

“Even when Mike Tyson was old and wasn’t as productive, when he went somewhere and fought, everybody wanted to go watch him fight. They kind of carry that wherever they go.”

The end of the recently remodeled rivalry is now in sight. Saturday is one of OSU’s last chances to play Texas in Stillwater. Many haven’t forgotten the years of suffering at the hands of UT.

In its final moments of existence, the game carries the same intensity and meaning.

“They’re not gonna be with us this much longer in the Big 12,” Weeden said. “Let’s send them out on a high note and whoop their ass.”

Gundy has seen the evolution of the Texas game, having been back around OSU since the days of burnt orange reign in the early 2000s. It’s been a gauge of success for his program over the years.

Just like in 2018, the Cowboys have another chance for a memorable Homecoming game against a ranked Texas team in the spotlight. That barometer won’t be there much longer.

“I think it’s gonna be sad,” Gundy said. “…So yeah, my answer would be yes (I’ll miss Texas).”