This is an excerpt from 'The Totally Biased Guide to Southern College Football' by Pete Davis, available for e-readers for the cost of a Whopper Jr. at: amazon.com/dp/B005FRFMYW
TEXAS LONGHORNS
Based in Austin, where the A stands for A-holes.
He stands on the sidelines slowly chewing his cud and gathering in all he sees with an air of detachment as he watches the players practice.
But enough about Coach Mack Brown. The same could be said of Bevo the longhorn steer mascot.
The University of Texas. It’s the only name that’s both a college title and an oxymoron.
They like to brag about their 49 bowl games. What’s the big deal? Alabama has more than that and look how small a state they are compared to Tejas. Starting in 1943 Texas has been to 22 Cotton Bowls, 3 Sugar Bowls, 2 Orange Bowls, 2 Rose Bowls and 2 Fiesta Bowls. The constant bowling got so tiring they decided to take 2010 off.
The bowl games do allow Longhorns fans to travel to other countries, like California.
And the Longhorns don’t just show up, eat well, and lounge around the hotel swimming pool like beached belugas. They also like to shop for items they can’t usually get in Austin, like toilet paper and PhDs.
Let’s face it. Austin is a great place if your idea of fun is melting some velveeta and dipping your....finger in it. But football? It stops at the high school level. Kind of like most Longhorns.
There’s something about just the mention of the Texas Longhorns that can make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up like a saguaro cactus. Maybe it has to do with all the pricks. On the cactus.
This is a team that before 2005 for all its bragging hadn’t won a national title since Nixon was making mixed tapes in the Oval Office.
Their rivalry with the Sooners is so big it’s called the Red River Shootout, held annually since 1900 when Oklahoma was still just a territory founded by the, and I’m not making this up, Indian Intercourse Act of 1834. The Indians have been getting intercoursed ever since.
Their annual Torchlight Parade is held the week of the game. This has been the source of much joy and pain since the cheap plywood that makes up most of the town is ready tinder for flame. A recent fire that burned half of the buildings on campus caused hundreds of dollars in damage.
The event has become so huge that Jay Leno of NBC’s ‘The Tonight Show’ sent his entertainment reporter/monkey Ross the Intern to cover the game and the Texas State Fair which is held next to the Cotton Bowl. He was extremely impressed by two things on his visit: Getting to play drums with the Pride of Oklahoma Marching Band, and the sheer monstrous obesity of the average Longhorn fan. You can still find these reports on youtube.com.
Enough corn dogs are consumed during this fair to circumnavigate the earth five times. For you UT grads, just look up ‘circumnavigate’ in the dictionary, you can borrow one from your neighbor flying the OU flag.
Their fight song is ‘Texas Fight’ which is actually a faster version of ‘Taps’, which is played at military funerals. And you thought ‘Rocky Top’ was depressing. It was written in response to Texas A&M’s fight song which is similar, except the Longhorns now incorporate part of the song ‘The Eyes of Texas’. their alma mater, in their version. This blatant lifting of both lyrics and musical riffs to blend into other songs led directly to hip hop.
Fans love to use a hand signal called ‘Hook ‘em Horns’, first used in 1955. The index finger and pinky are extended while the two middle fingers are held by the thumb. Once again, this was a response to a Texas A&M tradition called ‘Gig ‘em’, which makes one wonder if folks in Austin call College Station for permission to pee as well.
If you like what you've read so far you'll love the rest of the book 'The Totally Biased Guide to Southern College Football' by Pete Davis. Read more about Texas, all the SEC schools, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Florida State and Miami. And Texas A&M. Just 99 cents at: amazon.com/dp/B005FRFMYW
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