The football rivalry between the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners is one of the most passionate in college football. The intensity of that rivalry has led to some highly competitive recruiting battles between the two schools for the best football talent in Texas over the years.

With that backdrop, the NY Times’ Thayer Evans ran this lengthy article on his bird’s-eye view of the recruiting fight between UT and OU over the services of blue-chip Lufkin High School defensive tackle, Jamarkus McFarland, who orally committed to OU on Christmas day.

McFarland and his mother cooperated with Evans closely over the past several months in helping him chronicle the twists and turns of the recruiting battle. The article does not paint a pretty picture of the recruiting process, particularly of UT’s efforts to land McFarland. NCAA investigations have been commenced over less.

However, the story doesn’t stop there. Turns out that Evans is an Oklahoma native and apparently a long-time OU fan (he also used to write for Sooners Illustrated). Evans has written extensively about OU’s football program over at the NY Times collegiate sports blog, the Quad, and almost always quite favorably. Neither Evans nor the Times disclosed any of this in connection with running the story on McFarland’s recruitment.

Meanwhile, Longhorn supporters are already poking some big holes in Evans’ story (see also here). And the NY Times continues to lose money hand-over-foot.

So it goes.