Vaqueros

Edinburg sits at the southern tip of Texas, close enough to the border that the university it built its identity around, UT Rio Grande Valley, only came into being in 2013, stitched together from UT Pan American and UT Brownsville. The Vaqueros took the field for the first time on August 31, 2025, beating Sul Ross State 66–0.

The modern program traces its line back to the Broncs, a junior college side that ran from 1927 to 1930 under J.D. Foster, then came back from 1947 to 1950 under Bobby Cannon, though the letter of intent that restarted football at the school was only filed in 2021, with Travis Bush hired the following year to build a roster from nothing.

Bush's first season did not read like a first season. The Vaqueros went 9–3, took the South Texas Showdown storyline against Texas A&M-Corpus Christi seriously from the start, and finished 5–3 in the Southland Conference — short of Stephen F. Austin's title but well clear of an expansion team's usual struggles. Quarterback Eddie Lee Marburger was named the conference's Newcomer of the Year, the kind of individual honour that tends to follow a team playing above its age.

They play at Robert and Janet Vackar Stadium, a ground with its own recent past as H-E-B Park, home to the Rio Grande Valley FC Toros before the university took it over. It holds 9,700 now, with plans on the table to push that to 12,000 as the program grows into the space.

Orange and grey, a stadium built for someone else, a rivalry already named: in one season, 9 wins.