Longhorns Video Meant to Put SEC on Notice Does Exact Opposite
Yesterday Texas put out its first communication with official SEC branding.
It's a video filled with clips of people flashing that Hook'Em sign the Longhorns got banned in the Big 12 if held upside down, hits plenty of remastered grainy footage from when Texas was good at football a long, long time ago, and does an impressive job of showcasing the two things Texas brings to the SEC of value besides its money – baseball and softball – before it flashes up an SEC logo over the Austin skyline.
The purpose of the video is supposed show greatness and serve as a "Watch out SEC, we're coming!" Unfortunately, because of the reality of Texas athletics, it does quite the opposite.
At one point, Earl Campbell, the famed running back who narrates the video, rips off a Who's Who of Texas athletics and talks about how people can't believe they are going to school at the same school these guys once attended. The fact none of names other than Kevin Durant are from this century speaks volumes.
Even with Durant on the list, you're talking about a player who was at the university so long ago that he was drafted by the Seattle Supersonics.
Joe Nicholson - USA TODAY Sports
Telling a player now that your last major superstar was drafted by the Supersonics would have been like bragging to me when I was coming out of high school that your last great player was drafted by the Washington Generals. I would have had no clue what you are talking about and it would have hurt you way more than helped.
Watching this from the SEC side of things comes off as naive by Texas at best. As constructed the video says "We haven't done much in a very long time, and, gulp, now we have have to go face the SEC."
It generates a bit of empathy for Texas. It's like those nature videos where they follow a male tiger around his whole life and toward the end, when he's weak, hobbled and he teeth are either missing or dulled, he wanders across a younger, much stronger tiger looking to take its territory.
You don't want to watch. You know what's going to happen.
There is a generation of non-Texas fans out there, a group that is smaller each year because age gets the best of us all at some point, who still tout Texas as something to be feared and respected. They're usually referring to football, which when we're talking about the money that sustains SEC programs, is what really matters.
That generation tries to indoctrinate the younger generation with a view of Texas that existed before African-Americans were allowed on the field in most of America. They weave tales of Arkansas and Texas meeting as the best teams in America in 1963 and 1969 and how the Longhorns struck fear in everyone who crossed their path.
Malcolm Emmons - USA TODAY Sports
Malcolm Emmons - USA TODAY Sports
Malcolm Emmons - USA TODAY Sports
But guess how many African Americans were on the field for either team in those games. It's 0.
Once African American athletes became fully accepted on the college football field, the reality of Texas football became that of a program that strikes fear much like a dandelion. You see it over there ruining your neighbor's yard and you hope it doesn't end up in your yard ruining your well-manicured lawn, but it's not an actual physical threat.
By 1978, most high schools were desegregated and, while it still wasn't always safe for African American athletes to compete in a handful of college towns, their presence and contributions at every position on the field other than perhaps quarterback, had finally been accepted.
In the 16 years leading up to that point, half featured double-digit winning seasons by the Longhorns, helping shape the generation to has kept the Texas name relevant since. Over the following 44 years, that only happened 14 times.
Nine of those happened under the guidance of Mack Brown at the dawn of this century, whom Texas ran out of town.
Matthew Emmons - USA TODAY Sports
If it weren't for that generation that watched Texas football back in the 60's just hammering everyone relentlessly about the need to care about and respect the Texas Longhorns, "The other UT", would be viewed on par with Nebraska football. The Cornhusker had way more sustained success than Texas and has done so more recently, but are viewed as an irrelevant relic of the past.
Since 2010, Texas has had six regular seasons where they finished with a losing record. The Longhorns have had exactly one season with more than eight wins in that same span.
Nebraska has six seasons since then with more than eight wins. But marketing and a generation that just won't let the 60's go has tricked people into believing Texas is somehow relevant in college football.
Here's the real reality.
Texas is coming into a league where multiple schools have more national championships than the Longhorns have seasons over eight wins in the past decade plus.
Texas is going to have to recruit against the biggest names in all of college sports for recruits who have seen Texas lose non-stop, run through coaches like a billionaire runs through ex-wives, and are a part of a generation with a strong belief in equality at a time where Texas boosters ran off the only winning coach in a decade because he supported his players in that realm while boosters showered the administration with letters that harken back to the verbage of the cultural horrors of the 1960s.
That's the lens through which recruits see Texas, not the lens of the generation that gaslighted college fans for decades on the greatness of the Longhorns.
That video was supposed to say "Watch out SEC, the Texas Longhorns are coming!"
But all it really said was "Wait, Texas, you're still coming?" because no one over here in the SEC athletically respects, much less fears, the Texas Longhorns.
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