Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian let out a chuckle as he sat before reporters last week, recalling the boos raining down upon him inside what used to be called Cougar Stadium.

Sarkisian, the starting quarterback at BYU in 1995, threw four interceptions in his first real taste of rivalry football against Utah, the Cougars' bitter in-state foe. BYU lost that edition of the rivalry game known as the Holy War 34-17.

"They were booing me so bad, my mom left the stadium at halftime," Sarkisian said.

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A year later, Sarkisian and the Cougars took on the Utes and the elements. He passed just 12 times due to inclement weather, and BYU won 37-17 on its way to a Cotton Bowl title.

Those games didn't give Sarkisian any signature moments. But they did contribute to his long-standing opinion that rivalry games help make college football great.

"That's what it's all about," he said. "It's so special."

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Now it really does mean more in the SEC

The Red River Rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma feeds Sarkisian's football soul. In a coaching world occupied by goal-driven obsessives with little time and a need for results, Sarkisian is willing to take in the sights and sounds.

"I love the energy of the crowd," he said. "I love the smell of the popcorn — all that stuff. And there's nothing like this game when you pull into the State Fair, and you see fans from both sides and they're intermixed, and both teams' buses pull up and we're in the same tunnel.

"You come out and here's all those OU fans, and you look and there's all the sea of burnt orange, and you're like, 'I can't wait to get over there with my people.'"

This season, the Longhorns and Sooners are bringing their unique slice of college football culture to a new conference. And it gives the SEC, already home to several of the game's fiercest rivalries, another tentpole event to add to its schedule.

Pageantry and hatred mix similarly across the conference. Georgia and Florida put that blend on display annually at the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party. It's present on the Third Saturday in October for Alabama and Tennessee, as well as in the South's Oldest Rivalry game between Auburn and Georgia.

"There's the year-round banter that goes on between those fan bases and friends who see each other all the time in every town," said Auburn coach Hugh Freeze, who has coached in three of the aforementioned games. "It has just such a rich history, and then you go to — obviously we're not in the same state — but it's the South's Oldest Rivalry, and I think it's made up of the same thing. There's so much pride in both schools by the fan bases and supporters and administration and alumni."

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So where does the Red River Rivalry, which resumes this week at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, fit in the hierarchy of SEC rivalry games? And what about Texas' soon-to-be-renewed rivalry series with Texas A&M?

Four American-Statesman sports writers — Cedric Golden, Danny Davis, Thomas Jones and David Eckert — voted to rank the SEC's top five rivalry games.

Here are the results:

1. The Iron Bowl

∙ Who: Auburn and Alabama

∙ Series history: Alabama leads the all-time series 50-37-1 and won the most recent matchup 27-24 last November.

In the past two decades alone, the Alabama-Auburn game has produced a kick six that helped send the Tigers to the national championship game and a conversion on fourth-and-goal from the 31 (featuring now Texas wideout Isaiah Bond) that propelled Nick Saban to one final SEC title before his retirement. It also prompted one Alabama fan, Harvey Updyke, to poison a famous group of trees on Auburn's campus — a crime for which he served jail time.

2. The Red River Rivalry

∙ Who: Texas and Oklahoma

∙ Series history: Texas leads the all-time series 63-51-5, but Oklahoma won the most recent matchup 34-30 last October in their final meeting as Big 12 foes.

Few matchups have been played more often than Texas and OU. In the previous century, the winner of this game would many times find itself in the national title conversation. More recently, the Red River Rivalry game has been the site of star performances from the likes of Jordan Shipley and Baker Mayfield. Oklahoma has won five of the past six and 11 of the past 15 games to close the gap in the series.

3. The Lone Star Showdown

∙ Who: Texas and Texas A&M

∙ Series history: Texas leads the all-time series 76-37-5, but the schools haven't met in football since A&M left the Big 12 after the 2011 season. The Longhorns won that last matchup 27-25 on Nov. 24 of that year.

Justin Tucker's 40-yard field goal to cement the 27-25 win over the Aggies remains the last memory of this series. When Texas visits A&M in late November, 4,755 days will have passed since the last game between the Longhorns and Aggies. In its history, Texas has only played more games against Oklahoma (119) than it has against A&M; Texas remains by far the most-played team in Texas A&M's history.

4. The Egg Bowl

∙ Who: Ole Miss and Mississippi State

∙ Series history: Ole Miss leads the all-time series 65-47-6 and won the last meeting 17-7 last November.

The Egg Bowl might be an underappreciated rivalry nationally. For example, it was decided in 2019 when the Rebels' Elijah Moore pretended to urinate like a dog in the Bulldogs' end zone after scoring a last-second touchdown. His antics earned him a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. As a result, the Rebels missed a game-tying extra point and lost 21-20.

5. The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party

∙ Who: Georgia and Florida

∙ Series history: Georgia leads the all-time series 55-44-2 and won the last meeting 43-20 last October.

Since 1933, this matchup has, for the most part, been played in Jacksonville. The teams have essentially traded off dominance in the series: Georgia won most of the games until 1951, then Florida took over until about 1970. The Bulldogs again owned the series, at one point winning 13 of 14 between then and the end of the 1980s.

From 1990 to 2016, Georgia won just six times, but since then, the Bulldogs have won six of seven, and they will be favored in this year's game as well.

Saturday's game

No. 1 Texas (5-0, 1-0) vs. No. 16 Oklahoma (4-1, 1-1), 2:30 p.m., Cotton Bowl, Dallas, ABC, 1300, 98.1, 105.3 (Spanish)

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This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football: Where does Red River Rivalry rank among SEC rivalries?