DALLAS — The spring of 1989 brought the first bloom of rumors that Texas was interested in the SEC and vice versa. An apoplectic Fred Jacoby, the Southwest Conference commissioner, called it “crazy.”
Why, the SEC was already bursting at the seams with 10 teams! Poaching not just Texas but Texas A&M and Arkansas, as reported, would give it enough inventory for two conferences!
Turns out the scoop was 35 years premature, at least in Texas’ case, but, ready or not, here we are at last.
Texas’ first official act as an SEC member — unless you count pirating the baseball coach in College Station — will take place when SEC Media Days convene downtown at the Omni with all the humility of Mardi Gras.
Since their transfer was processed three summers ago, Texas and Oklahoma partisans had waited on July 1, the day it became official, like it was the end of Prohibition. They’ve been fishing kids out of fountains on both campuses ever since.
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And make no mistake, the buzz is what it’s all about. Frankly, this is what Jacoby missed back in ‘89 and what yours truly failed to see when A&M beat Texas to the punch a dozen years ago. Back then, I figured the Aggies’ prime motivation for going to the SEC was to get out from under the shadow of their biggest rival. That no doubt played a part, but it was superseded by the lure of this:
An invitation to the biggest show in college football.
This is what SEC Media Days — and their “record” 49 hours of original programming — are all about. This is what SEC fans are saying when they chant “S-E-C” at the underprivileged. We may only be 7-5, but we were mediocre in the world’s greatest football conference. We may not have won as much as a division title in the BCS/CFP era, but SEC schools have won 15 national championships since 1998, and that reflects well on all of us. We believe if there’s such a thing as guilt by association, the opposite must be true, too. That’s what Sancho Panza tried to tell Don Quixote, anyway.
You are the company you keep, even if that company beats your brains in every week.
Like A&M did with Johnny Football during its first couple years in the SEC, the Longhorns will do just fine in football, at least initially. Texas doesn’t need membership in an exclusive club to feel good about itself, either. Once asked about keeping up with the Joneses, Texas’ former athletic director, DeLoss Dodds, famously said, “We are the Joneses.” Texas simply got tired of the company it kept. That’s what killed the SWC. The Big 12 had promise until it first atrophied, then bloated. Even at that, Texas won just four Big 12 football titles, a distant second to Oklahoma’s 14. Winning only gets harder now, not that it seems to matter.
Will Texas make more money? Sure, but only A&M has rivaled it in football revenue year in and year out. Will the Longhorns recruit better? No doubt, but ultimately NIL and collectives will have more to say about the destination of teenagers than conference affiliations.
My problem for years was looking at it strictly from a football perspective. If the objective is to make the playoffs, why take the hardest path possible? Didn’t Texas just go to the semifinals as a Big 12 member? Wouldn’t it be easier to do it again from the Big 12, especially in an expanded playoff format?
No one would have called it cheap if Texas had won it all last season, just like no one questions the validity of its national titles from the ‘60s while dominating a mostly two-team league.
Like A&M, Arkansas and Missouri before them, Texas will find that football in the SEC is a grind. There will be no more parachuting into Tuscaloosa for a signature win, then stealing out again. Every week is more of the same. That sort of thing wears on you after a while.
Of course, maybe Steve Sarkisian has the Longhorns ready for just such a jump in competition. He knows the SEC as well as anyone and has all the resources necessary to win at a national level. Then again Texas has always had those resources and had its hands full just dealing with Oklahoma. Now the Longhorns will have three or four games a year at least as tough as Texas-OU.
The crazy thing is, that’s exactly what they want. The prospects of losing don’t matter as much to the masses as the entertainment value of worthy opponents who might be proven equals. Selling out all 100,000-plus seats at DKR-Memorial will be a snap. On the road, the locals will have to find space in neighboring airports to accommodate all those private jets from Texas, like they did last year in Tuscaloosa. This is the new norm. The Longhorns finally have a jury of their peers. A verdict awaits on football, but the buzz is back.
