Message and link from a friend. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts:
"As chairman of UT’s board of regents in the 1960s and 1970s, Frank C. Erwin feuded with professors, protestors and with the student newspaper, The Daily Texan.
“We do not fund anything that we don’t control,” Erwin memorably said of the newspaper.
That is pretty much the UT mentality on everything and one of the reasons the SEC may have been the dog that caught the car!"
This link will show the inner machinations of Frank Erwin et. al. at UT. A little long for some, but we need to be aware of the history of who we are now dancing.
https://www.texasobserver.org/tangling-with-frank-erwin/
Padre,
As someone who has lived here all but 18 months of the last 20-plus years, you're by no means WRONG here. This is an excellent example of the Texas way - and even though Aggies like to pretend they're above this kind of nonsense with their flexible as Rosie O'Donnell's pantyhose ethics in the so-called Aggie code (which was proven to be a farce when Manziel took money for autographs), these are Siamese twins when it comes to thinking "I gawt money and I'm gawn get my way."
But things have changed and just like houses in Texas, most of which have foundation issues at one time or another, the ground has shifted under their feet.
The longstanding "traditional ten" members of the SEC - and even Arkansas to be blunt about it - are together for the common good. I'll even say that YES, so is South Carolina, but rememer that they don't have that long history of blood letting with Texas that Arky does.
Texas is used to playing the Tony Soprano game of extorting even more money from the hangers-on in their conferences, both the SWC and the Big 12. Because they were the crown jewel of the SWC with all the money and wins, they became the TV draw IN the state of Texas. (The fact nobody outside the state borders other than alumni and Arkansas ever game a rat's behind about the SWC has never penetrated their craniums).
Let's consider the crown jewel of the SEC, Alabama. Coach Bryant PUT US AT A DISADVANTAGE from time to time to keep peace and harmony in the SEC. Bryant was opposed to that Sugar Bowl automatic berth that came about in the mid-70s because he knew Alabama had flexibility to play any non-Rose Bowl game we wanted to play - and his decision more than anything may have cost us the 1977 title. Bryant, of course, like all savvy operators cashed in his chips from time to time when he could, but he aso understood that the ground shifts from time to time, and while it might have been to Alabama's financial advantage to NOT be bound to some of the SEC rules and laws, it was better to not get caught on an island if things changed - as they inevitably did and saw Florida State and Miami suddenly flee to the safety of conferences after years of boasting about being independent.
It was Coach Bryant and Alabama that pulled the SUGAR BOWL out of being a segregated affair of all-Southern teams into the money maker it became (the playoff overturned this but whatever). Mickey Holmes, the director of the game for so long, always noted that if it were not for Bryant and Alabama, the Sugar Bowl would have become the Peach or Liberty Bowl, a second-tier bowl game played sometime after Christmas Day but before January 1. ALABAMA gave value to the Sugar Bowl, not the other way around. And by throwing in with a contract with which he disagreed, Bryant enhanced the value of both the conference and the game.
Which brings us to the punch drunk delusional world of Texas football.
While I know the FANS hate us, the administrators at other schools know full well that we do have to all stick together, which is why almost every single public thing we learn about in SEC votes is virtually always unanimous. There was a reason A/M was excluded from the Texas/OU expansion talks - Sankey and the boys knew how Texas folks played the game, and if they had known they would have leaked it immediately in an effort to stop it. As Johnny Sack once told Chris Moltisanti when he gave unsolicited advice, "
You know it wasn't long ago I remember you used to wait in the car, as far as I'm concerned you should still be there ."
That's basically how it all came down.
But you have to understand something else -and I apologize to everyone who doesn't get it but if you're not here, you don't see it on a daily basis so let me give you a parallel: Auburn AT THEIR WORST isn't as delusional as Texas universities are about all this stuff. Auburn's only REAL flaw (and folks spare me the "they pay players" which goes on everywhere and always has) is they frame everything they accomplish in the light of Alabama and then can't understand why they're viewed as Little Brother while acting that way.
Texas, by contrast - you see, they still cling to, "We stole Franchione away from Alabama". Yeah ATM but they think the same. They truly DO believe that the fact we were on sanctions had nothing to do with it, they just quietly came in and got him to agree and they showed us hicks how it works. But other than that one - which actually turned out good for us and bad for them (who would brag about this today, 20 years later?) - where have they outplayed us? They didn't get Saban, the Aggies didn't prevent expansion, what have they really won in the abstract wars?
Texas will not be able to come in and dictate terms to the SEC like they used to do. This will go one of two ways - either Texas will fall in with the other 15 families OR Texas will not only be told to take a hike, but the SEC schools will likely implicitly nod at one another with, "We're not going to schedule games with those imbeciles,, either."
What I'm saying is that Texas is the fresh fish in the prison and in the words of Eddie Albert, the warden, "To get along you go along." Or might I add, they will move along.
We can all be a tad worried maybe about their saber rattling, but it won't amount to much. I'm sure the Big 12 in retrospect wishes they had not split up over the money losing Longhorn Network.