Governor's Cup (Texas)

Governor's Cup (Texas)
Preseason game between the Houston Texans and Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium on August 24, 2019
Dallas Cowboys
Houston Texans
Houston Oilers
LocationDallas, Houston
First meetingDecember 4, 1960
Texans 24, Oilers 0
Latest meetingDecember 11, 2022
Cowboys 27, Texans 23
Next meetingNovember 18, 2024
Statistics
All-time series
  • Total:
    • Cowboys lead Oilers 18–13
    • Cowboys and Texans tied 9–9
  • Regular season:
    • Cowboys lead Oilers 5–3
    • Cowboys lead Texans 4–2
  • Preseason:
    • Cowboys lead Oilers 13–10
    • Texans lead Cowboys 7–5
Largest victory
  • Regular season:
    • Cowboys (over Oilers): 52–10, December 20, 1970
  • Preseason:
    • Oilers (over Cowboys): 54–10, August 27, 1988
Current win streak
  • Cowboys: 1 win (2022)
Map
About OpenStreetMaps
Maps: terms of use
300km
200miles
Texans
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Cowboys
Locations of the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans

The Texas Governor's Cup (also known as the Cowboys–Texans rivalry, Battle of Texas, formerly the Cowboys–Oilers rivalry) is the trophy awarded to the winner of the football game between the two National Football League (NFL) teams in Texas, currently the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans. Prior to the Texans' inaugural season in 2002 the Cowboys' opponent was the Houston Oilers (now Tennessee Titans). In 1991, after 13 straight games at the Cowboys' Texas Stadium, the Cowboys and Oilers went to a home-and-away format for the preseason and this format more or less continues to this day for the games between the Cowboys and Texans.[1][2]

Since the first meeting between the Cowboys and Texans in 2002, the two teams have met in the regular season every four years, when all four NFC East teams play all four AFC South teams and every eight years at each team's home stadium, plus in 2024 when both teams won their divisions,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and meet relatively often (by NFL standards) in the preseason; from 2002 until 2008 and again from 2013 to 2021 (except 2017 and 2020, which were canceled), the Cowboys and Texans have been scheduled to play each other in the preseason whenever they are not scheduled to meet in the regular season. In 2010, the teams played both a pre-season and regular season game while in 2009, 2011, and 2012 they did not meet at all. The 2017 preseason game, scheduled to be played in Houston, was canceled due to Hurricane Harvey.[12] In 2018, the teams played both a pre-season and regular season game once again, marking the first time that this instance of two games in one year had happened since 2010.

The two cities of Houston and Dallas have a rivalry that goes way back before the team's founding. Until 2010, both were the two largest cities in Texas, with Dallas being known for having wealthy elites of the Texas oil and gas industry in the early 20th century, while Houston was known for being a working-class city with the lower-tier workers working in making oil pipelines during the Texas boom. In 2010 San Antonio – yet to ever have an NFL team – overtook Dallas to become Texas' second largest populated city. The US Census of 2020 has Houston with 2.3 million persons, the largest populated city in Texas, followed by San Antonio with 1.5 million people, then Dallas as Texas third largest city, with 1.4 million residents. [13] The Houston and Dallas metropolitan areas remain far larger than San Antonio's, moreover, the Cowboys have not played in Dallas proper since 1971.

In 1960, the NFL established the Dallas Cowboys, mainly as an effort to cut off the American Football League (AFL)'s Dallas Texans: the cutoff effort was only a partial success, as the Texans relocated to become the Kansas City Chiefs in 1963, but the AFL itself would thrive and eventually merge into the NFL in 1970.

The AFL would be the first league to place a professional team in Houston, and though the Houston Oilers and the Texans were in opposite divisions, they quickly became rivals: this culminated in the double-overtime 1962 American Football League Championship Game that the Texans won to prevent an Oilers threepeat in the Texans' last game under that identity.

In 1965, the AFL's Houston Oilers and NFL's Dallas Cowboys both drafted Oklahoma tackle Ralph Neely. The Oilers sued the Cowboys over Neely's services. In the settlement of the case, the Oilers received three Cowboys draft picks in addition to a cash settlement. The Cowboys also agreed to play five preseason games, three in Houston, against the Oilers. Thus began the Governor's Cup series, a Texas tradition created by franchise free agency.[14]

In 1992 the Cowboys and Oilers met twice in the preseason. The first game took place in Tokyo as part of the NFL's American Bowl series, and the second meeting in Dallas for the Governor's Cup.

The 1994 Governor's Cup was not actually played in Texas but in Mexico City at Estadio Azteca as part of the American Bowl series. As a result of Estadio Azteca's unusually large seating capacity, a league record 112,246 fans watched the Oilers shut out the Cowboys, 6–0 on August 15, 1994.[15]

The Governor's Cup went into recess after the Oilers relocated to Nashville, Tennessee at the end of the 1996 season (being rebranded as the Tennessee Titans): this left the Cowboys as the only NFL team in Texas until the Texans entered the NFL as an expansion team in 2002.

The only other professional football league to feature teams from Dallas and Houston at the same time is the 2020 incarnation of the XFL, which established the Dallas Renegades and Houston Roughnecks.

In 2023, both teams won their respective divisions, resulting in a 2024 meeting due to the rotation of the fifth interconference game first played in 2021 pairing each NFC East team in a 2024 home game against the AFC South team with the same division placement in 2023.

  1. ^ "NFL ANNOUNCES 2002–2009 SCHEDULE ROTATION". footballinjuries.com. Archived from the original on 2009-05-02.
  2. ^ Wangrin, Mark (August 3, 1990). "Governor's Cup game moved; Cowboys-Oilers exhibition series switches to Astrodome in '91". Austin American-Statesman. p. D7.
  3. ^ "Creating the NFL Schedule". Operations.NFL.com. NFL Enterprises, LLC. Retrieved March 17, 2020.
  4. ^ Davis, Scott. "The NFL schedule is created with the help of a simple formula". Business Insider. Retrieved 2024-01-05.
  5. ^ "NFL gives East teams a break traveling West". ESPN.com. 2009-03-23. Retrieved 2024-01-05.
  6. ^ Trapasso, Chris. "How Is the NFL Schedule Created?". Bleacher Report. Retrieved 2024-01-05.
  7. ^ "How Does Scheduling Work In The NFL? | Understanding NFL Scheduling Formula". www.sportskeeda.com. Retrieved 2024-01-05.
  8. ^ "NFL owners approve 17-game season for 2021". ESPN.com. 2021-03-30. Retrieved 2021-04-02.
  9. ^ "What you need to know about enhanced NFL schedule featuring 17 regular-season games per team". NFL.com. Retrieved 2023-12-15.
  10. ^ Graziano, Dan (2021-03-30). "The NFL's 17-game season is here: What you need to know, and how the money will work". ESPN.com. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  11. ^ Breech, John (2021-03-30). "NFL 17-game schedule: Here's how the complicated scheduling formula will work with the extra game". CBSSports.com. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
  12. ^ Cowboys versus Texans preseason game canceled, NFL.com, August 30, 2017
  13. ^ "Southern and Western Regions Experienced Rapid Growth This Decade".
  14. ^ Texas Sports News Archived 2007-09-27 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ "Top 10 Largest Stadiums In The World (by capacity)". 15 June 2010. Archived from the original on 2010-06-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)