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Texas SEC receives planning gift, inspiring conspiracy theories and enemies

Harry October 26, 2024

Let’s start with the obvious: We’re 25 days into October and Texas still hasn’t played a true SEC road game.

We are eight weeks old college football seasonand Texas, the richest and most powerful athletic program in all of college sports and the crown jewel of the latest round of conference expansion, will finally play its first true SEC road game on Saturday.

SEC light for a long time vanderbilt.

Excuse me as I unfurl this double-wide conspiracy flag, wave it wildly, and dig it into the mud.

Or, as one SEC athletic director told me this week, “more than a handful” of the conference’s athletic directors are furious about Texas’ program and the looks it offers. What it looks like – take a deep breath, the Deep South – just like longhorns I already manage the league.

And off we go.

We’re Texas and You’re not in the SEC (ask the good people in the Big 12, they’ll explain it) and I’m not saying it’s buyers’ remorse, but that’s not all it’s as flashy as it seems.

Maybe that’s why the league office came out guns blazing in response. Texas fans were throwing trash last week and other assorted on-field shenanigans during Georgia’s welcome to the SEC row.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey fined Texas a sum of cash ($250,000) and demanded that the school use “all available resources” to identify fans littering the field (and Georgia players) and ban them from attending future games. You know, every good conspiracy needs a useful idiot.

Then the SEC announced another misstep, and the ability to sell alcohol at Texas games may change.

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Before you think this is a serious, heavy lift, understand that Sankey and the presidents recently did the same thing to Tennessee when Vols fans threw trash on the field (and at Ole Miss players) because they knew more than the officials. . Tennessee’s alcohol sales were also threatened, which is kind of like threatening the oxygen for the rest of us.

Officials in Tennessee eventually rounded up all 25 fans who failed to behave properly, did what had to be done, and no one threw anything on the field in Knoxville anymore.

That’s the way the SEC works: all for one, one for all. Everyone receives an equal share of billions of dollars in media rights, and everyone receives similar penalties for similar incidents.

But as the great George Orwell once wrote in Animal Farm, “All SEC teams are equal, but some SEC teams are more equal than others.” Or something like that.

That’s where we get back to the whole schedule thing, with an aggressive wink and a nod to Texas and his first run at the big time. If you think the league’s athletic directors aren’t happy with the gift road to the SEC championship game, conference coaches are furious.

I spoke with three coaches this week, and each of them not only confirmed the disagreement over the ridiculous schedule given in Texas’ first season, but each also texted Georgia coach Kirby Smart and thanked him for making it clear that Texas could be successful this season. a member of the conference – but Texas did not come close to experiencing the conference.

Before hosting Georgia, Texas played the worst team in the SEC (Mississippi State) at home, the worst Oklahoma team in neutral-site play in years, and the wildly overrated Michigan with three non-conference punching bags at home.

bulldogs Then he came to Austin and star quarterback Carson Beck had the worst game of his career. He failed to throw a touchdown pass, had three interceptions, and receivers threw nine passes. And it was still 24-0 before we could call full hat, no cattle.

Smart may have wailed after the game that “nobody believed” in Georgia, but you better believe it everyone Bevo, who is not named in the SEC, wanted Georgia to do what Georgia did against every team not named Alabama.

Every team in the SEC wants another Vanderbilt win this weekend and another goal post thrown into the Cumberland River. They want Florida coach Billy Napier to save his job two weeks from now, Arkansas to win its third straight game against its former Southwest Conference rival, Kentucky to find big-game excitement and Texas A&M to eliminate Bevo’s 12-year disappointment. to hide.

With three of those games (Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Texas A&M) on the road, life is tough in a meat grinder league no matter who or where you play. Texas alone has Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Texas A&M.

While Georgia took on Texas, Alabama and Ole Miss.

No other SEC team has gone beyond October 5 without playing a true road game. Oklahoma, Texas’ expansion sibling, played its first true SEC road game a month before the Longhorns at Auburn, one of the three toughest road venues in the conference.

Texas took Vanderbilt, the easiest place to play in the SEC. if you don’t believe me, Ask Nick Saban.

Look, this isn’t some angry plot, shoot first, aim later. These are facts. Texas will play the same teams in Year 2, with changed venues, as the SEC has decided to maintain its current schedule for the 2025 season.

Everyone is making friends quickly at the new Texas conference.

Shortly after the SEC’s response to Texas fans, Longhorns president Jay Hartzell issued an open letter to fans stating, among other things, that “these actions left a poor early impression on Georgia and our new counterparts in the conference.”

Don’t worry, Jay. Texas’ reputation comes before that.

The difference is you’re not in the Big 12 anymore.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for the USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X @MattHayesCFB.