Looking back, the end of 2011 marks a major turning point in college football in the state of Texas.

After a 16-year run of sharing a conference with its bitter rival, the Texas Longhorns, Texas A&M University packed up its things to join the SEC. The move ended, for now, a series that dated back to the late 1800s.

Texas A&M decided to jump ship from the Big 12. A&M did so, with Missouri joining it in its move to the SEC, just a year after Nebraska made the move from the Big 12 to the Big Ten and at the same time that Colorado shifted to what is now the Pac 12. At the time, the Aggies were squarely the little brother to Bevo and the Longhorns. Texas leads the all-time series 76-37-5, a gap the Aggies won’t close for decades if the two schools ever decide to restart the rivalry.

But the Aggies have, at least for now, passed the Longhorns in terms of on-field performance. Texas A&M is 28-11 in the time since they moved to the SEC, trotting out one of the most explosive offenses in the nation even in a down year like 2014. Texas, meanwhile, is 23-16 in the same timespan, coming off its second losing season in five years.

While the Longhorns still have far more financial might than Texas A&M — and more than any team in the nation, per the Forbes program values released in December — that might be part of their undoing.

As Clay Travis of Fox Sports smartly pointed out, when Texas launched its own television channel, the Longhorn Network, in 2011, it effectively killed the Big 12’s chance at something similar to the SEC Network. That channel, which debuted last year, is already generating a “conservative” estimate of $5 million a year per school in the SEC. That was part of the reason those four schools bailed on the Big 12, cutting its numbers down to eight before the conference added TCU and West Virginia.

Meanwhile, the Aggies reaped the benefits of playing in the nation’s most powerful conference. Johnny Manziel set the world on fire during the Aggies’ SEC debut season, winning the Heisman and pushing Texas A&M to the second-best poll finish in school history. The cash rolled in along with that on-field success.

A little after the one-year anniversary of Texas A&M’s SEC football introduction, the school had reportedly raised $740 million in donations. That’s right — in one year, the school raised three-quarters of a billion dollars. That squashed the $400 million Texas reportedly raised in the same time frame.

All that cash has had an immediate impact on Texas A&M’s football program. It helped them to fund renovations of Kyle Field to the tune of $450 million, bumping up the capacity beyond 100,000 seats and making the stadium the largest in both the SEC and the state of Texas, pushing it past Texas’ Memorial Stadium in terms of capacity.

It’s also helped rebrand the Aggies as one of the coolest programs in the nation, thanks to facilities that rival the likes of Oregon, Alabama and Southern California. Their new locker room is referred as a “Batcave” and was featured as a topic for a South by Southwest panel.

Meanwhile, in Austin, things are looking a little murkier for the Longhorns. The Big 12 was snubbed from the inaugural College Football Playoff despite having two teams, TCU and Baylor, that were in the picture through the last week of the season. Do note that both of those schools play in the state of Texas and have lapped the Longhorns, at least for now.

On top of that, the program value at Texas dipped by about six percent from 2013 to 2014, according to Forbes, although that drop was attributed to the expensive departure of Mack Brown and acquisition of Charlie Strong as coach.

Until the Big 12 bounces back (likely meaning it has to expand and/or add a title game that will give it more clout in the eyes of the CFP selection committee), Texas could be stuck in a rut. They might bounce back and dominate the Big 12 under Strong — they’re off to a good start, finishing 10th in recruiting rankings for 2015, beating out Texas A&M — but it might not mean much on a national scale if the selection committee continues to scoff at the conference.

Meanwhile, Texas A&M’s football and financial prowess have come together to form a potentially terrifying program in College Station. The Aggies pay top dollar for Sumlin, giving him a reported $5 million per year. They shelled out to bring in a defensive mastermind in John Chavis, upping his salary from the $1.3 million he was making at LSU to somewhere in the $1.6-1.7 million range, keeping him as one of the three highest-paid coordinators in the nation.

They’re raking in the recruits, too, giving Texas prospects a way to play in the conference that produces more NFL draft picks than any other in the nation. The Aggies brought in top-10 recruiting classes in both of Sumlin’s first two recruiting cycles and finished 11th in 2015, all after finishing no higher than 16th in their final five years playing in Texas’ shadow in the Big 12.

If Texas A&M’s on-field and recruiting performances continue to put Texas’ to shame, it won’t be long before they close the gap financially. The SEC raked in the most money from the CFP of any conference last year, and revenues from SEC Network don’t figure to slow down soon.

Whether or not the Aggies and Longhorns ever meet on the field again, it appears Texas A&M made the right call moving out of big brother’s house.