Would ya lookie here. Seems there’s quite the conundrum brewing inside the rabid and unwaveringly loyal SEC fanbase.
All for One has quickly become None for Texas.
The Longhorns – a newbie and the last remaining conference team in the College Football Playoff – are the last hope for the loud and proud SEC fanbase to continue boasting of college football dominance. But the old school that never hesitates supporting all things Ess Eee See isn’t buying it.
In fact, Friday’s Cotton Bowl semifinal against loathsome Ohio State has devolved into which makes you want to puke more? Ohio State and the subpar Big Ten (because they’re surely not a “rival” of the SEC), or Texas — a poison pill the devoted SEC fanbase now realizes it has swallowed?
“I would say 80 percent of our audience is rooting against Texas to win it all,” said Michael Bratton, host and owner of That SEC Podcast, the highest-rated SEC show on Apple and Spotify podcasts and an organic show that feeds off the true North of the biggest, baddest conference in college athletics.
Its passionate fans.
“If it were anyone but Texas, things might be different,” Bratton continued. “But the arrogance from those (Texas) fans has already rubbed most the wrong way.”
Well, well, well. It didn’t take long for Texas to find itself in the all too familiar place as villain, lumbering into the SEC with all the subtlety of a Bernese mountain dog.
It has taken all of four months, and SEC loyalist already have figured out what the college football world has known forever. There’s no love for the Longhorns outside of those whose blood runs burnt orange.
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Texas is its own island, no matter conference affiliation, no matter public proclamations of love and fealty. The most affluent college sports program, the most arrogant sports program — because they can, and because we’re Texas and you’re not.
Texas ran roughshod over the old Southwest Conference, until everyone else decided the only way to keep up was to cheat. When the SWC later imploded and four teams were absorbed into the Big Eight in 1996 to form the Big 12, guess what quickly happened?
The conference offices moved Kansas City, Missouri, to – I know this is going to shock you – Dallas. I’m sure that was just a coincidence.
In 2010, the Big 12 was on the verge of disbanding because (again, a shocker) Texas wasn’t happy with sharing media rights revenue and threatened to leave for the Pac-10. So ESPN and Fox pooled together an equal sharing agreement that made all Big 12 parties happy — and ESPN then created the Longhorn Network.
A 24-hour network devoted to all things Texas. For the tidy sum of $300 million over 20 years.
That cozy and profitable arrangement (for Texas, not ESPN) lasted 13 years, during which Texas won the Big 12 once. The Longhorns won 68 percent of all games as a member of the Big 12 (243-113), and four league titles in 28 seasons.
Yet this is college football royalty.
This inevitable Texas envy (hatred?) reached a boiling point earlier this season, when multiple SEC coaches and athletic directors, speaking anonymously to USA TODAY because of the sensitivity of the subject, said they weren’t thrilled about the fortunate scheduling given to the Longhorns in their inaugural season.
While the SEC office says the schedules were made with a detailed 10-year look at previous schedules and metrics, there’s no denying that the first true road game of the season for Texas didn’t happen until the last weekend in October — at historical SEC lightweight Vanderbilt.
Then Texas got the worst of the Power Four conference champions (Clemson) in the first round of the playoff. That was followed by the most surprising power conference champion (Arizona State) in the Peach Bowl quarterfinal, where an obvious targeting call that could’ve led to a Sun Devils victory in regulation, was reviewed and ignored and Texas eventually won in overtime.
It is here where we reach the disastrous dilemma for dyed in the wool SEC fans: the Cotton Bowl semifinal. The fact that 80 percent of the audience of a wildly popular SEC podcast has tuned out of all things Texas is a stark reminder of what Texas has always been — and always will be.
“It’s a worst-case scenario, one of them has to advance,” Bratton said. “Anyone but Texas and Ohio State is the general consensus from our fans.”
Finally, some true SEC sensibility.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
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