Apathy
All-American
Would I be out of order to ask a simple but nagging question: Who died and made the University of Texas king of the college football universe?
This is a school with one national championship in the last 40 years. And some of the biggest boys in college football -- yeah, that includes you Oklahoma -- are following the Longhorns like lambs to slaughter as if they don't have an alternative in the world.
Thank goodness for Texas A&M. Thank goodness a school in the rough and tumble, hard-scrabbled world of the old Southwest showed some intestinal fortitude. Thank goodness a school did not immediately roll over like a dog at obedience training school for the Longhorns. At least someone in Texas' long and suffocating shadow showed some real Lone-Star-sized innards. At least, until last night.
Nebraska had enough of Texas' haughty attitude and arrogance and flew the coup for the Big Ten. But Lincoln is 767 miles away from Austin. It's a little different when you're in the same state and breathe the same air as the Longhorns. Nebraska doesn't care if it ever sees Texas again. But Texas A&M has this little old game every year around Thanksgiving that can make grown men weep.
I don't know about you, but the last time I saw 30,000 of my closest Texas Longhorn fans, they were crawling out of the Rose Bowl on their hands and knees late in the evening of Jan. 7, whimpering and whining and sniveling about what might have been. I heard so many fine whines from those in burnt orange, I thought I accidentally landed at the wrong California airport and was headed to the wineries of Ernest and Julio Gallo instead.
For the record, Alabama kicked the Longhorns all over the vaunted field of the Rose Bowl. However, all I heard from Longhorn fans were excuses. "If Colt McCoy hadn't been injured ..." Blah, blah, blah. Final score, Alabama 37, Texas 21.
With Notre Dame silent, at least for now, Texas has commanded center stage in college athletics' most dizzying summer. When talk of joining the SEC is broached, Texas fans turn their nose to the air and say, "Eww, no, that's below us."
They carp about the SEC's lower academic standards (and end up staying with the likes of Texas Tech and Oklahoma State). They look down on some of the locales of the SEC. They talk like Texas is a combination of Harvard, Yale, Princeton and a touch of Stanford tossed in.
I'll admit Austin is a cool city and Texas is an outstanding academic institution. But I hate to break it to the "Harvard of the Southwest" but did you cowboys really think the folks in Berkeley, Palo Alto and Westwood were really going to be wowed when a bunch of Texas fans in those kitschy orange shirts, boots and a ten-gallon showed up in laid-back California? I'm not sure old Bevo, the malodorous mascot of the Texas nation, would have played well in Pacific time, either, amidst the chorus of "Hook'em Horns."
What's remarkable is the pathetic con game Texas played with everyone and how in the end they got away with it. That's why for a few days -- at least, until last night when the Big 12 finally announced it was staying together -- the most extraordinary story has been the Aggies. Always in Texas' long shadow in the Lone Star State, A&M dared to be different. In spite of vicious threats from the Texas political machine, A&M seriously weighed the SEC's overture.
The Longhorns have won eight of the last 10 and one newspaper in Texas recently described the Aggies as only the fourth most important rival of the Longhorns. Texas has played in three Rose Bowls and four BCS bowl games in the last five years. While the Longhorns were losing to Alabama in the Rose Bowl for the national title to fall to 13-1 on the season, the Aggies were losing to Georgia in the Independence to drop to 6-7 and off the radar screen.
So the Aggies' possible move east had as much to do with being a game-changer combined with a desperate Hail Mary than anything else.
In the very end, the Aggies blinked in a high stakes game of Texas hold'em. They ended up joining the other lap dogs like OU, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech. The more difficult course would have been the least traveled road to the SEC. However, political pressure in Texas can usually trump common sense. However, for a brief moment, in this dizzying game of conference chess, they stood tall, showing off the biggest heart and soul.
And, at least briefly, someone dared to stand up and ask the question: Who died and made Texas the king of college football?
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