Kate McGee wrote an eye-opening piece for the Texas Tribune last week that details the lengths the administration at the University of Texas will go to in order to keep boosters happy, even if it causes pain for their students. McGee published multiple emails filled with less-than-coded language . In those emails, the old, rich alumni base makes it clear that they do not care what students have to say about the history of the school song “The Eyes of Texas”. They want it played and they want the students that refuse to participate in a postgame singalong kicked out of school.
For those unfamiliar, here is a very quick, very broad-strokes history of “The Eyes of Texas”. Really, there are just two things you need to know.
- The phrase “The eyes of Texas are upon you,” (the song’s opening lyric) is derived from something Robert E. Lee would say to Confederate troops in the Civil War. The implication was that the soldiers did not want to live with the embarrassment of their defeat being what lead to the end of slavery.
- The song made its debut in 1903 at the Varsity Minstral Show, when a group of white students in blackface sang it to raise money for the Texas track team.
As a result of the alumni backlash, the administration told the football players that they had no choice. They didn’t have to sing, but they did have to be on the field while “The Eyes of Texas” plays.
There is only one logical conclusion you can come away with. The University of Texas cares more about people it doesn’t really need (more on that in a moment) than it does its own students. I guess a logical follow-up conclusion would be that the boosters, people that claim to be so devoted to Texas football that they give hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to the program regularly, don’t really care if the team is ever any good.
I have heard a lot of smart people talk about this on ESPN and FOX Sports Radio and various college football blogs I read regularly. They all say that this is a problem for Texas. They all say that there are deeper issues at play that the school needs to address than just this song. But no one will be blunt.
Just say it. Texas doesn’t care about football. We do not have to entertain the “is Texas back?” conversation ever again, because Texas has demonstrated that being “back” doesn’t matter to them.
You have heard the saying “there are two sides to every issue,” right? Well, let’s call that what it is: total bullshit.
The sports media has no problem saying that a call is bad or a coach made an awful decision that cost his team a game. For some reason though, we can be so scared to use the phrase “bullshit” when it comes to a bigger, off-field issue and I am not sure why, especially in this case where Texas isn’t even trying to pretend their argument is anything less than pure, uncut poop from the cow they so love.
Obviously, if you are on the radio or working with restrictions sponsored by major corporations, you have to be more creative. Using the actual word “bullshit” will get you fired. As a lifelong Southerner, might I recommend “hog wash” or “horse feathers”? The barnyard provides so many wonderful ways of calling something a wild falsehood.
Is it important to be fair to both sides of a debate? I guess, when one side of the debate can’t be boiled down to “I want people to suffer” or doesn’t come from a place of total bad faith. That isn’t the case in Austin.
Maybe it isn’t so important to be fair though. Dan Dakich has a radio show and is calling games on ESPN every week. Jay Bilas is calling games and showing up on various ESPN studio shows every week. Do you see either of them being particularly fair to the opposite point of view when they discuss whether or not college athletes should be paid? I don’t. Both Sarah Spain and Clay Travis are on the radio five days a week. Do you see either of them being particularly fair to the opposite side of literally any opinion they have? I don’t.
Texas doesn’t need money from boosters that demand America stay stuck in 1903. The school’s media rights deal alone is valuable enough to make its athletic department one of the ten richest in the country without any booster money. The University of Texas takes the money and gives control and influence to old racists simply because it wants to. Certainly the results on the field throughout the majority of the school’s football history don’t indicate that system is working.
From 1915 until 1996, Texas played in the Southwestern Conference. Their peers and opponents included TCU, Baylor, Houston, Rice, and SMU amongst others. It is easy to look at that landscape and wonder how, even with Arkansas in their heyday and Texas A&M in the conference, Texas didn’t win the football championship every single year.
It’s because this racist booster culture has existed in Austin for a long, long time. Imagine the kind of culture problem you have created when an 18 year old Black kid looks at Waco of all places and decides that is a more welcoming environment!
Texas football is good at one thing – selling the myth of Texas football. As an industry, we have totally fallen for it. The team hasn’t been truly relevant since 2009 and yet every year, there is a large portion of the college football media that writes that this is the year! They are listed alongside archival Oklahoma, Alabama, Notre Dame, USC, and Ohio State as the sport’s blue bloods despite Texas having fewer national championships to its name than Illinois, Pitt, and Minnesota.
The myth ends the second we stop buying the bullshit! It’s no different than the idea that the Dallas Cowboys are “America’s Team” or that The Masters is something every sports fan needs to experience. There is no evidence that makes either of those facts definitively true in 2021, but as long as First Take keeps leading shows by talking about how a 2-6 Cowboys team can get to the Super Bowl and CBS keeps force-feeding us human Vinyard Vines belt Jim Nantz, those narratives will live on.
At the press conference introducing Steve Sarkisian as Texas’s new football coach (I know, LOL!), he was asked about the controversy surrounding “The Eyes of Texas”. He answered that the team would “sing that proudly”. Remember, this is a guy that in addition to coaching kids, also has to go out and convince the most talented football players in America, most of whom are Black, that they want to spend the next 3-5 years in Austin. Don’t think he doesn’t know that the song is a problem.
Call Texas football what it is – a farce. There is no wider berth between branding and reality in the entire sports landscape. The people that claim to be the program’s biggest fans are actively holding it back. They are choosing a song, which by the way is set to the tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” over actually being good. That is asinine. There are not two sides to this. Pretending there are is nothing short of utter nonsense!
When the sports world tries to sell us nonsense, we cannot be afraid to push back in the harshest way possible. Doing anything less makes your audience dumber.
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
Dude, you don’t live in Texas and I’m guessing you didn’t go to Texas. So you’re not really in a position to speak about our state. Also, don’t give us this bullshit that there aren’t two sides to any story. It’s attitudes like yours that do more to contribute to the echo chamber that is modern sports media where we’re forced to listen to the same opinions from different hosts 24/7 while dissenting opinions are non existent. YOU don’t get to make that decision as to ignoring all sides of an issue. WE, the sports media consumers, do.