But this four-day event is entirely driven by what the media asks. That’s what happens when there are no actual results or matchups to dissect. So all week, even before Texas showed up, the program has been front and center. A big group of reporters made sure of it. SEC Media Days being in Texas for the first time made sure of it, too.
For example, on Tuesday, Georgia quarterback Carson Beck, a preseason Heisman Trophy candidate, was asked what he has seen in Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers, another preseason Heisman candidate. The question, though, also included a small bit about “Ewers being considered the best quarterback in the country.” Then someone asked Beck how excited he is to face the Longhorns in Austin.
(Beck’s answers: He doesn’t watch other quarterbacks much, but he did recently meet Ewers at the Manning Passing Academy. And sure, yeah, excited, sure.)
“Every single person has been asked about Texas,” said Brad Kellner, who hosts a podcast on Texas athletics for Texas Sports Unfiltered. “I was just in the ballroom for Oklahoma’s session, and each player … I mean, at one point it wasn’t even a Texas beat writer. Just some random person asked the OU player if Horns Down should be considered a penalty.”
We’ll get back to Horns Down, a thing that matters a whole lot, in just a minute.
But when the SEC poached Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12, the idea was to get bigger and buzzier — and, by proxy, somehow even richer. That vision, now realized, looked like Ewers walking around the Omni Dallas Hotel in a tan cowboy hat Wednesday. It looked like Texas Coach Steve Sarkisian working the stage in a burnt orange sport coat. On Tuesday, it looked like two dozen cameras waiting to shoot footage of Oklahoma Coach Brent Venables … walking into a room.
“I was just joking with [SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey] in the back,” Sarkisian said Wednesday. “So we flew in this morning, we landed, we get off the plane and we get in the Sprinter van and we got a police escort to Media Days. It just means more? It just means more right there.”
This coming season, Texas plays at Michigan and Texas A&M, faces Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl and hosts Georgia. That’s maybe a good segue — or as good a segue as any — into the pressing issue of Horns Down. Texas and its fans do not like when opponents taunt the Longhorns by inverting their Horns Up hand signal. But John McDaid, the SEC’s coordinator of football officials, was clear on the issue this week: The league will not automatically penalize a Horns Down gesture.
That’s it. End of story (yeah, right).
“There are some automatic ones. Spitting at an opponent is an automatic. Throat slash is an automatic. But the rest of them? I want it to be evaluated in context,” McDaid said to a small group of reporters. “And I may or may not answer any more hypotheticals you give me, because I want to see the video.
“… Let me say one last thing on this topic. We hear time and time again that fans don’t want us officials inserting ourselves in the game. They want the two teams to settle the game between themselves.”
Then someone asked McDaid if he could imagine a scenario in which a Horns Up sign would be a penalty. It was a creative way to keep the conversation going.
“You know, going and mock clapping to an opponent, as in congratulating them, that could be taunting,” McDaid allowed. “Correct.”
Kellner — the podcast host known as “BK” — admits to being nervous three summers ago, wondering how Texas would fare against Alabama, Georgia and the rest of the SEC. But the outlook has taken a full turn for the better. Texas finished 12-2 last year, beat Alabama on the road, won the Big 12 title and lost to Washington by six in a College Football Playoff semifinal. Elsewhere, the Longhorns won the national championship in women’s volleyball, its women’s basketball team made the Elite Eight, and its baseball program recently poached Texas A&M’s beloved coach.
Life is good in Austin. What does that mean, if anything, as the school joins the best football conference in the country? Sitting in the hotel hallway Tuesday, Kellner grinned and pointed to the SEC’s slogan, printed on a banner above his head.
“It just means more,” he said. “It’s right there on the sign.”
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