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Rooted in Texas: How the state’s oldest football rivalry became the Bluebonnet Battle

By Jackson Posey | Sports Writer

In 1899, four years after AddRan Christian University moved to town, a battle for Waco erupted on the gridiron. The inaugural football game between AddRan and Baylor University ended in a bitter 0-0 tie.

Three years after that first football game, AddRan rebranded as “Texas Christian University.” Eight years after that, in 1910, a devastating fire forced the school to pack up shop and head to Fort Worth, 40 miles from their original campus in Thorp Spring. But the ties established during those 15 years of adjacent living would not soon dissolve.