TCU-SMU Rivalry Football Game Set to Go on Hiatus

The Iron Skillet rivalry has featured some of college football’s greatest players and one of its oddest trophies.

One of college football’s longest-tenured rivalries will be hitting pause for the foreseeable future.

TCU and SMU will stop scheduling each other in football indefinitely after the 2025 season, according to a Wednesday report from the Dallas Morning News which cited a TCU spokesman. The Horned Frogs and Mustangs are set to play on Sept. 23 of this year, Sept. 21, 2024, and a to-be-determined date in ’25.

TCU and SMU have played every year since 1915 with the exception of 1919, 1920, 1925, 1987-88 (when the Mustangs were given the NCAA’s “death penalty”), 2006, and 2020 (during the COVID-19 pandemic). The winner of the game has received the Iron Skillet since 1946.

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The two teams were Southwest Conference rivals from 1923-95, and briefly again in the WAC from 1996-2000. The Horned Frogs left the WAC for Conference USA after that, and the programs have not been conference mates since, although their series had carried on largely uninterrupted.

The rivalry has featured a bevy of great players over the years, including Sammy Baugh, Davey O’Brien, LaDainian Tomlinson, Doak Walker and Eric Dickerson. The teams’ 1935 meeting, which both teams entered 10-0, is considered one of the greatest games in college football history; a successful fourth-quarter fake punt keyed a 20-14 SMU win.

“The game has been played over 100 years. I don’t know why we wouldn’t play. We are always willing to play them,” Mustangs coach Rhett Lashlee said on July 17 when asked about the rivalry’s status going forward.

TCU leads the all-time series, 52-42-7.