Editor's note: In the spirit of our friendly rivalry with the University of Oklahoma, the editorial boards of The Daily Texan and The Oklahoma Daily have exchanged editorials. In anticipation of Saturday's football game, both editorials are running in Austin and Norman today.

It’s early October, which means it’s once again time to leave that insulated bubble of pompous pretension you call a state capital for a trip to the Red River Rivalry.

That’s right, hipsters, it’s time to wax that ironic mustache, point the ol’ fixed-gear bicycle north on I-35 and get ready for a frenetic weekend spent sipping wine coolers under the bright lights of Dallas.

Most of all, it’s time to prepare yourselves for the dejection you’ll feel Saturday afternoon after once again having your asses handed to you by a better-coached, more talented team in crimson and cream.

We Sooners love everything about the lead-up to the Red River Rivalry. The anticipation felt in Norman is akin to how you’d feel Christmas Eve if you knew you’d be waking up the next morning to compete with your slower, weaker and less-attractive sibling for presents.

But as we all know, a trip to the big game is about more than an athletic competition for both universities.

For Longhorn fans, it’s the opportunity to mingle with your grotesque brethren at the world’s largest gathering of the fat and the stupid, otherwise known as the Texas State Fair.

For Sooner fans, there’s the opportunity to laugh in your faces as you experience heart-wrenching sorrow and shame on your own native soil.

See? Good times all around.

On a more serious note, we Daily staffers are glad conference-realignment talk seems to have settled down for the moment and the fate of this great rivalry no longer seems to be in jeopardy.

As much as we dislike your fans, your excrement-orange attire, your governors-turned-presidential-candidates both past and present and your state’s unjustifiably inflated sense of importance in a national context, we hated the thought of not being able to tell you as much to your faces at least once a year.

Yes, despite your best efforts to submarine an entire conference with the vainglorious Longhorn Network, it appears the powers-that-be at Time Warner, Comcast, AT&T U-Verse, DirecTV and Dish Network want nothing to do with enthralling programming such as “Rewind with Mack Brown,” “Game Plan with Mack Brown” and “Longhorn Legends,” Mack Brown’s roundtable discussion program with a rotating selection of paroled Longhorn greats.

But what would the shortsighted powers-that-be at every major cable provider in the nation know about quality programming, right?

Yes, the network has been a topic of heated debate across Big 12 country, but in Norman, we’re proud to say we haven’t had many complaints, even when it came to plans to air high-school football highlights and thus gain a potential leg up in recruiting.

Up here in Sooner country, it’s clear you guys need all the help you can get when it comes to keeping your best prospects from wising up and donning crimson when they graduate.

We’re confident the tradition of a team that has won seven national championships and seven Big 12 championships north of the Red River stacks up rather nicely against a television network nobody is watching.

Regarding your team’s play four games into the season, we think it’s quaint the Longhorns enter Saturday’s matchup undefeated after refusing to let losing to Iowa State become a pattern. We were worried for you; we really were.

Keep up the good work, and you may even return to a bowl this year. Why, we don’t think a trip to the New Era Pinstripe or ­— dream big — perhaps even the Meineke Car Care of Texas Bowl is out of the realm of possibilities for your unlovable, ragtag group of underachievers.

Best of luck Saturday, and we know we speak for all of Sooner nation by saying it’ll be a pleasure to see your half of the Cotton Bowl empty out once your overmatched team fails miserably and the game gets out of hand.

Boomer Sooner!