After seemingly avoiding each other since the Aggies migrated to the SEC in 2012, Texas and Texas A&M both are interested in renewing their football rivalry, ESPN reported Tuesday.

The two programs could play as soon as 2019.

Much like the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight, where each party blamed the other for the two failing to meet inside the ring, the Longhorns and Aggies, and their respective fan bases, have pointed fingers at each other a few times, culminating after the 2014 regular season.

Acting on behalf of the Aggies, the SEC may have made it known to any bowl game with Big 12 and SEC ties that the conference would nix any pairing between the two programs, according to reports.

RELATED: Texas A&M missed chance to back ‘We Run This State’ slogan

To be fair, Texas athletic director Steve Patterson previously said he has no desire to play Texas A&M in football. Securing a non-conference game in Mexico would do more to enhance the Longhorns brand and was a bigger priority, he maintained.

Now, according to ESPN, it appears both Kevin Sumlin and Charlie Strong will seek to renew the rivalry between Lone Star State’s two biggest football programs. At least we hope; despite the explicit willingness, it’s a waiting game to get it on an actual schedule.

“Now, moving into Year 4 and listening to our former students and our alumni base and knowing a lot of Texas alums, it’s important that we play again,” Sumlin said, according to ESPN. “I think it will happen somewhere down the road. The tough part for both parties, when we moved, was scheduling. The first two years we scrambled just to get anybody to play, and the SEC hadn’t solidified their schedule until last year. We were at the mercy of whoever would play us.

“Now that we’ve solidified what the SEC’s scheduling theory is going to be, you’ve seen us become more aggressive with our nonconference schedule, and that was the knock on us early on. People sometimes take scheduling for granted and say, ‘Play this team.’ They don’t know the process. But I think the Texas series will happen. I just don’t know when.”

After initially meeting in 1894, Texas and Texas A&M played every season from 1915 to 2011. The Longhorns hold a 76-37-5 record in the series.

Most recently, Sumlin’s Aggies have out-recruited their former and future rivals, at one point deploying the Twitter hashtag #WRTS for “We Run This State.” Maybe soon the program will get a chance to prove that on the field. It seemed like neither school wanted the negative marketing of losing to the other, and there surely was some bitterness from Texas at the school they perceive to hold a lesser tradition moving to the SEC, and performing well at that.

“The first year I became the head coach here, we didn’t play. As I hit the ground, my focus was somewhere else, and I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but we were starting to play in the SEC West,” Sumlin said.

“My plate was full, so I made some remarks early that Texas was the last thing I was worried about, so people took that as I was being [flippant]. But I wasn’t. I became the head coach at Texas A&M and we were in the SEC and we weren’t playing Texas. For somebody to ask me, that was really the last thing I was thinking about. I think people took that the wrong way.”

The SEC recently started requiring that all its members play at least one power-conference opponent within the four out-of-conference games each year. Texas A&M has been the most aggressive SEC team in scheduling those games. The Aggies already will face a power-conference FBS team every year through 2o21, and again in ’24 and ’25.

A&M’s schedule is full through ’17 with the exception of one non-conference slot that year. Texas’ non-conference schedule — just three games, since the Big 12 plays a nine-game conference slate — is full until 2019, which is the earliest the teams could meet again on the field.

Texas has one power-conference opponent scheduled outside of Big 12 play every year through 2025, including games against LSU and Arkansas.

“That game is so much a part of this state,” Strong said, according to ESPN. “Over 100 years, we’ve played that game. Why stop it now because we’re in different conferences? At some point, when it’s right for everybody with the different schedules, I would love to play Texas A&M again.”

Conference realignment caused many long-time football rivalries to end, including Kansas-Missouri, also formerly of the Big 12. Perhaps if Texas and Texas A&M renew their game annually, or at least on occasion, other historic rivalries will follow. It would be great for college football, and the fan bases on those teams would enjoy the opportunity to beat their hated rivals again.