Before brothers Douglas and Bert Simmons can sit down, the Prairie View and Texas Southern cracks start coming.
You know, Texas Southern doesn’t have admission standards.
The girls were always prettier at Prairie View.
The entire time I was at Prairie View, I don’t know if we ever lost to TSU.
The entire time I was at TSU, we never lost to Prairie View.
Going to Prairie View for you was like going to the city, coming from Hemphill.
It’s the typical all-in-fun banter between two brothers who love each other immensely but still enjoy taking jabs at each other’s alma maters. A biology major, Douglas graduated from Prairie View A&M University in 1964. Bert matriculated at Texas Southern University from 1975 to 79 before graduating with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
They are 14 ½ years apart, more than 10 years separate their time on the respective campuses. Several decades have passed since either one was an undergraduate on Prairie View and Texas Southern’s campuses, but you wouldn’t know it by the amount of pride the brothers still have in their respective schools.
They are family and Simmons’ first, but they still rep their schools hard.
The Prairie View and Texas Southern lines are drawn in permanent ink in the Simmons family. As the Tigers and Panthers prepare to renew their rivalry in the Aug. 30 college football season-opening Labor Day Classic for the 40th year, the sides are as defined as ever.
“I want Prairie View to win,” proclaims Douglas, 83. “I will brag about it, too. If we win by one point or they fumble the ball into the end zone going in, as long as they win, I’m going to brag about it.”
The rivalry on the field might have been as intriguing as the back-and-forth among alumni, mainly because the series has long been defined by long winning and losing streaks on both sides. When Prairie View ran afoul of the NCAA in the 1980s, they were reduced to non-scholarship status and, as a result, lost 14 straight games in the rivalry from 1989 to 2003. The Panthers also notoriously lost 80 straight during that stretch.
In Cris Dishman’s first year at the helm last season, the Tigers ended a nine-game losing streak in the Labor Day Classic with a dominant 27-9 win. TSU owns a 21-18 edge since the Labor Day Classic kicked off in 1985 and has a 45-34-1 edge during the 80 rivalry games played.
“During my time, it’s always been one-sided, either TSU is on a long winning streak or Prairie View,” Bert said. “So now, I’m looking forward to the game this year because there is a lot of hype coming from the Prairie View side, and that’s just the way that coach is. Our coach is real laid back.
“I think it’s going to be an extremely competitive game and hopefully at the end of the game, TSU will come out victorious. We’ll see.”
That’s just how this rivalry goes.
These two Historically Black Colleges are 51.3 miles apart, and only an hour and eight-minute drive separates them. However, as far as their rabid alumni bases are concerned, these two institutions are across the world from each other. That sense of separation and superiority crosses family lines, friendship ties and even high school teammate bonds.
Just mentioning Prairie View to a TSU alumnus instinctively brings barb and vice versa.
“When I went to college, Prairie View was more difficult to get in than TSU,” said Douglas, a retired dentist in the area. “TSU was open enrollment until the guy came over from UH, John Rudley.”
But over the years, the lines have become a little blurred. It hasn’t been uncommon for a Prairie View undergraduate to travel to Texas Southern to receive an advanced degree.
While it has been rare for student-athletes to move from one school to another, several instances have occurred of professors, administrators and even coaches seamlessly moving from one rival campus to the other.
“It’s a whole lot of family ties. It’s a lot of good times. Recently, as far as football is concerned, they’ve had the ups on us, but we always take it back when we smash them in basketball.”
Bert Simmons
Texas Southern Sports Information Director Ryan McGinty and his wife, Deborah, are perfect examples of how the lines of this rivalry can easily become blurred. They both received their undergraduate degrees at Prairie View, but after working there, Ryan has worked for TSU for several years. Deborah, meanwhile, received her doctorate from TSU after earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Prairie View.
Deborah likes to remind Ryan, “You are Prairie View made, but you are TSU paid.”
But over the years, the rivalry has also seen former Prairie View A&M athletic director and graduate Charles McClelland jump to Texas Southern, along with current baseball coach Michael Robertson, who began his Division I coaching career at Prairie View and won a couple of SWAC Championships with the Panthers before shifting to TSU. Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Cynthia Cooper-Dyke started her collegiate coaching career at Prairie View before moving to TSU.
It’s also gone in the other direction, with Prairie View first-year football coach Tremaine Jackson playing defensive tackle for the Tigers from 2002-2003 and then serving as defensive assistant coach at TSU from 2009-2011. But don’t expect Jackson to be all sentimental on the sidelines at Shell Energy Stadium when he is staring across the field at his former school for the right to take home the Durley-Nicks Trophy.
“It means absolutely nothing to me, being honest,” Jackson said. “That school fired me in 2011. They fired our staff, which I was on the staff. They fired me. I never got a chance to get into the new stadium. They chose to make a change, and they fired me. My family was affected just like everybody else’s.
“I’ve never sat here and said, I played there, and it will be so special. That’s another football team across town that we’ve got to go play and get ready for. I certainly relish the rivalry because we love rivalry games, and anytime we can play for trophies, we certainly want to win the trophy. But I don’t care that that’s Texas Southern. It was good while I was there. It ain’t good no more to me. We are just going to do what we’ve got to do on that day.”
Jackson does acknowledge that the ties to either school can be blurry, even in his circle.
“In my family, you either went to Prairie View A&M or you went to Texas Southern. It was just that simple,” said Jackson, who began his college playing career at Louisiana-Monroe before transferring to TSU. “Even if you went somewhere else first, you transferred back to one of those schools. My daughter (Harmony) is a prime example of that. She was at UH and now she has transferred here. She is no different than a lot of people in my family. I chose to go to the other place as a player.
“It’s most definitely a special deal, especially being the 40th year.”
Still, some, like Douglas, just can’t understand why anyone would pick TSU over Prairie View.
Douglas is still surprised Bert decided to go to TSU over Prairie View, which had become a family tradition. As Douglas recalls it, when he enrolled at Prairie View in 1960, he had 15 cousins in his freshman class, and at a recent family reunion, they counted 83 relatives who were PV grads.
“It was odd, because actually everybody in my family has gone to Prairie View,” said Douglas, who once worked as a part-time dentist at TSU. “My mother went to Prairie View, my daddy actually went to Prairie View for a day or two. All my mother’s brothers went to Prairie View, my daddy’s oldest brother went to Prairie View, my aunt who lived here in Houston went to Prairie View, my uncle who owned a barbershop went to Prairie View. Everybody in East Texas went to Prairie View. Prairie View was the place to go – if you could get in.”
But Bert, who owns a State Farm Insurance Agency in Pearland, wanted something different and in a bigger city than Nacogdoches, where he grew up. Houston and Texas Southern seemed perfect.
“Both of my brothers had gone to HBCUs and were extremely successful,” said Bert, whose son, Lance, played baseball at TSU. “And sometimes you want to be a little trailblazer. I guess I got a little bit of that in me.
“I wanted to create my own name, be my own person. So, following my brothers to Prairie View was going to put a lot of pressure on me. That would have been a hard thing to live up to.”
| No. | Date | Location | Winner | Score | |
| 42 | 1985 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 19–7 | |
| 43 | 1986 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 38–35 | |
| 44 | 1987 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 30–21 | |
| 45 | 1988 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 13–10 | |
| 46 | 1989 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 45–7 | |
| 47 | 1991 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 23–6 | |
| 48 | 1992 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 35–0 | |
| 49 | 1993 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 38–8 | |
| 50 | 1994 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 20–13 | |
| 51 | 1995 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 50–8 | |
| 52 | 1996 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 42–24 | |
| 53 | 1997 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 32–16 | |
| 54 | 1998 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 24–13 | |
| 55 | 1999 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 34–0 | |
| 56 | 2000 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 42–0 | |
| 57 | 2001 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 17–0 | |
| 58 | 2002 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 44–14 | |
| 59 | 2003 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 42–3 | |
| 60 | 2004 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 25–7 | |
| 61 | 2005 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 30–27 | |
| 62 | 2006 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 17–14 | |
| 63 | 2007 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 34–14 | |
| 64 | 2008 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 34–14 | |
| 65 | 2009 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 17–7 | |
| 66 | 2010 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 16–14 | |
| 67 | 2011 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 37–34 | |
| 68 | 2012 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 44–41 | |
| 69 | 2013 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 37–13 | |
| 70 | 2014 | Houston, TX | Texas Southern | 37–35 | |
| 71 | 2015 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 38–11 | |
| 72 | 2016 | Prairie View, TX | Prairie View A&M | 29–25 | |
| 73 | 2017 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 30–16 | |
| 74 | 2018 | Prairie View, TX | Prairie View A&M | 60–14 | |
| 75 | 2019 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 44–23 | |
| 76 | 2021 | Prairie View, TX | Prairie View A&M | 20–19 | |
| 77 | 2021 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 40–17 | |
| 78 | 2022 | Prairie View, TX | Prairie View A&M | 40–23 | |
| 79 | 2023 | Houston, TX | Prairie View A&M | 37–34 (OT) | |
| 80 | 2024 | Prairie View, TX | Texas Southern | 27–9 | |
| Series: Texas Southern leads 45–34–1 | |||||
