On any other weekend, walking into the State Fair of Texas in Dallas means spending way too many tickets on the duck pond, skee-ball and the many other carnival games scattered across the fairgrounds.

But this Saturday, there’s only one game that matters.

For the 122nd time, Texas and Oklahoma will meet at the Cotton Bowl, a historic venue where records, rankings and expectations have a way of becoming irrelevant. The rivalry has produced blowouts and last-second heartbreaks, often with some surprise as to which side walks away with the Golden Hat.

“It’s the best environment, in my opinion, in college football,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “This one is as special as they come. This is always a unique game because you can take records, stats and all those things and throw them out the window.”

Texas leads the all-time series 65–51–5, but Oklahoma has still claimed 11 of the last 17 matchups. 

And lately, the game has been anything but predictable. The Longhorns and Sooners have traded blows over the past decade, with seven of the last 10 meetings decided by eight points or fewer. 

The most recent stretch has offered just about every possible version of the Red River Rivalry. 

In 2020, the teams needed four overtimes to settle a 53-45 Oklahoma victory, the highest-scoring overtime game in the history of the rivalry. A year later, Oklahoma erased a 28-7 Texas lead and held on for a 55-48 victory in another thriller that ended with a wave of Longhorns leaving Dallas disappointed.

Then came the opposite extreme.

In 2022, Texas handed Oklahoma its largest shutout loss in the history of the series, winning 49-0. It was the Longhorns’ biggest win over the Sooners since 1941 and marked the first time Oklahoma had been shut out in the rivalry since 1965.

The Sooners took that loss personally, and an undefeated No. 12 Oklahoma beat No. 3 Texas with a late 75-yard touchdown drive in 2023. They found the end zone with just 15 seconds left, and the Sooners took the Golden Hat 34-30.

In 2024, the Longhorns turned a 3–0 deficit early into a 34-3 Oklahoma demolition. A year later, Texas was coming off a devastating loss to Florida against an undefeated Oklahoma, but the Sooners never found the end zone — a stat that Texas fans haven’t let Oklahoma forget.

Since 2020, the lower-ranked AP team has managed to come out on top three times.

On paper, this looks like a game Texas should win. But the Red River Rivalry has never been about what should happen.

This game is built on tradition, with the burnt orange and crimson split down the 50-yard line, and the drive to Dallas informally known as the “great migration.” There is no home crowd to hide behind. Momentum the teams have accumulated throughout the season is left at the door, and since 1929, the neutral-site rivalry has given teams the stage to settle the score.

“I wouldn’t want to change it for anything,” Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables said about the rivalry. “I love everything about it: the passion, the energy, the intensity, the crowd being 50-50. I think it’s fantastic.”

When the players take the field, the fair is no longer the main attraction. The Golden Hat is. And if recent history is any indication, nobody should expect the game to go as planned.