SEC Media Days Storylines: Former Southwest Conference rivals get to 'welcome' Texas to the SEC
Now with Texas in the SEC, horns down isn’t going anywhere. Disdain for Texas isn’t going anywhere. But when Texas fans see horns down or experience disdain, it’s not because opposing fans specifically have it out for Texas. In the SEC, people just have it out for everybody. It’s not “I don’t like you because you’re Texas.” Rather, it’s “I don’t like you because you aren’t my team.”
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Of course, there are three major exceptions in the case of the Longhorns. And two of them are getting their first opportunity in several years to battle the burnt orange.
Put aside Oklahoma for a second. The originator of horns down, OU’s dislike of Texas is nothing new. Oklahoma hated Texas when it wasn’t in the same conference, and vice versa. Oklahoma hated Texas when the two programs were in the Big 12. Oklahoma hates Texas now that both are in the SEC. Texas matched that hate the whole way.
Tennessee won’t hate Texas, nor will Ole Miss, Georgia, or South Carolina. They’ll just want to beat the Longhorns, and maybe hate will come later.
Texas A&M and Arkansas? Oh, they’ve looked forward to the chance to topple UT and manifest their decades-old hatred ever since it was leaked that the SEC was expanding with Texas and Oklahoma.
Let’s start in Fayetteville. Arkansas ostensibly got the SEC’s first crack at Texas back in 2021, when the Razorbacks pummeled Steve Sarkisian‘s first Texas team at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium in a 40-21 win. The “S-E-C” chants were unironic that night and just as loud as the calling of the hogs. That made Arkansas 4-2 against Texas since the Razorbacks left the Southwest Conference. Texas looks to return things to the nearly 75-percent winning percentage it had over UA throughout the history of the matchup starting this year on November 16.
Then, there are the Aggies. Heartbreak was served to the 12th Man in College Station in 2011 thanks to the heroic efforts of Case McCoy and the accurate leg of Justin Tucker. Since then, the two programs have had their peaks and valleys but have yet to cross paths.
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No athletic department was more apoplectic at the addition of UT and OU to the SEC than the one at Texas A&M. The Aggies’ previous trump card of being the sole SEC school in Texas was taken away. Among countless other motivators, the chance to defeat the newcomer in Texas in the first iteration of the rivalry on the football field in 13 years on November 30 and show that only one school in the Lone Star State is built for the SEC is one the Aggies await with eagerness.
Mississippi State, Georgia, Vanderbilt, Florida, and Kentucky will want to beat Texas this year. They want to beat everyone. Similar applies for Missouri, LSU, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, and South Carolina.
Oklahoma always wants to beat Texas and Texas specifically. They get the chance to do so every year and look to carry it out with prejudice.
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Texas A&M and Arkansas each have that opportunity for the first time in quite a few years this season, and on their home fields at that. When they say “it just means more” these are the matchups, rivalries, and schools they are talking about.
