There's one enemy for Texas football, and it's Oklahoma
“The Redcoats are coming. The Redcoats are coming.” I know that’s the cry of the American Revolution, but that is literally what I think of every time the Sooners in Crimson cross the Red River and head to the State Fair to play the Longhorns.
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My dad actually called the Sooners “turncoats” when I was growing up, so I just naturally mixed the metaphor.
After all, I was brought up in a time when going to OU was considered a sin against the state of Texas, when a star high school football player who chose the slick Barry Switzer over the virtues of the University of Texas, was clearly labeled a traitor.
Right or wrong, it’s the way it was thought of and portrayed. And that’s how it was seen across much of the state of Texas, and in my household in particular.
Now, with the mass population migration to the state of Texas over the last 30 years from places across the country, the changing landscape of college football recruiting and the monetization of college football generally (and probably with my own age softening my stance as well), I don’t carry that same feeling.
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I no longer see the Sooners as traitors or redcoats. I just see them as THE enemy.
There’s no sugar coating that. They evoke hate in Texas fans unlike any other. And the feeling is mutual.
Maybe that’s the uniqueness of the rivalry. The hate on both sides has been so ingrained that we don’t need a real reason anymore. It might as well be a fourth generation match-up of the Hatfields and McCoys.
But fair warning to the young people out there who might be unaware. Let’s make no mistake. The Sooners are the Redcoats. And the Longhorns will always be the Patriots.
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Texas-OU will be the highest rated TV game of the Big 12 conference this year. It will be a marquee contest between two highly ranked teams.
Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark will be nowhere to be seen.
Instead, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey may just be in Big D.
Good.
