Texas A&M football confessions: Matthew McConaughey is awesome

It’s time to come clean Texas A&M football fans, the rival school has one awesome supporter and his name is Matthew McConaughey.

I want to set the record straight. I graduated from Texas A&M in the Spring of 2016 – holy hell, I am getting old — and make no mistake about it, maroon and white blood is what courses through my veins.

My love for the premier university in the state of Texas has gotten so excessive lately, that even my girlfriend has started to call me a walking billboard simply because there’s not a day that goes by where I’m not wearing something that has the block ‘T’ stitched into the fabric.

During the Fall, there’s nothing that’ll make me happier on a football Saturday than seeing the Aggies pull off a victory while the Longhorns simultaneously get their teeth kicked in down in Austin.

Although the two rivals do not share the field anymore, there’s no denying that disdain for each other still roams freely among each fan base. Players openly taking shots at the other school’s expense, politicians occasionally chiming in, and mindless Twitter spats equipped with trolls and burner accounts have become the norm for the two flagship universities inside the Lone Star State.

That’s why it is truly agonizing and painful to say — I love Matthew McConaughey.

In case you’ve missed it over the years, the legendary actor has become the poster child for Longhorn athletics. A former student in Austin, McConaughey got his start in acting while taking courses at the university.

It wasn’t long before he saw the writing on the wall, recognized the massive potential he had on the big screen, and abruptly left school his junior year. In 1993, he made it back to campus to finish out his degree and it’s no secret that his love of Bevo, reefer and the city of Austin all still run deeply in his heart.

As an Aggie loyalist, for years I searched for reasons to hate him. I called him a hippy and even tried convincing myself that his movies suck (I know… how ridiculously delusional is that). None of it worked.

The guy is ‘Wooderson’ for God’s sake. I mean if I’m being honest there’s probably not been a week that’s gone by in the last 10 years where I haven’t been caught quoting Dazed and Confused.

The true turning point came when I watched his Oscar’s acceptance speech in 2014. With his hair slicked back and the eyes of the world upon him, the Uvalde, Texas, native delivered one of the most inspirational and heartwarming speeches I’ve ever witnessed. If you’ve never seen it, I highly suggest taking a few minutes to check it out below.

Sure, I’ll be the first to admit that the Lincoln Lawyer is still kind of ridiculous from time to time. The long, clueless soliloquies that he rattles off in just about every episode of “True Detective” or his Lincoln commercials will surely make you do a double-take. And don’t even get me started on his new movie “The Beach Bum”, which is essentially just two hours of him and Snoop Dogg walking around with the munchies.

However, Aggies, we have to face the facts here. If the academy award winner was setting up shop in College Station like he has in Austin the last few years, the simple truth is that every single one of us would be fighting for a chance to wear one of those terrible $14 suits that he dons during basketball games.

Let’s not be delusional here — we’ll leave that to the hipsters in burnt orange — one of the most celebrated Aggies in school history was in an Old Spice commercial sacking a quarterback with a beehive on his hand last week.

A free spirit actor, McConaughey is not only immensely talented, but a generous humanitarian, and a native Texan at heart. I’ll never root for them on the field, but I’m realistic enough to give a subtle nod of approval to the Horns for what’s turning into a pretty cool tradition in the capital city.