Welcome to Bevo’s Fake Nuts, our weekly-ish column on the Texas Longhorns.
Texas won the Learfield Directors’ Cup. You may know this already. We’ve mentioned it a few times.
It’s not the biggest deal, winning the Directors’ Cup. You would rather win the national championship in football than do well enough across the entirety of sport to outscore the rest of this country’s Division I institutions in the eyes of the most noteworthy licensing/broadcasting conglomerate. But, you take what you can get, and theoretically, the same approach behind Texas’s strength in men’s golf and women’s tennis—winning a lot, namely—could yield some success in football as well.
Who came in second place? Now you’re asking the right questions. Behold: Texas’s biggest threats.
Oklahoma: 10th Place
No, Oklahoma didn’t come in second. Stanford came in second. But Stanford and Texas are playing different games. Stanford is not a threat to Texas. Oklahoma very much is.
The thing about Oklahoma is that they already have Texas beat in football. The other thing about Oklahoma is that now that Texas’s power is diluted, with the pair having joined the SEC, Oklahoma doesn’t have to suck up to Texas anymore. For years in the Big 12, Oklahoma and Texas were a tandem. Now, if Oklahoma succeeds and Texas doesn’t, the Sooners will become more like Alabama and Georgia while Texas, like Stanford, plays a different game. Also? Oklahoma can always dismiss Texas as a soft, city school, downgrading it from a place that really cares about college sports. It’s a risk. Oklahoma is Texas’s biggest threat.
Florida: 5th Place
Florida finished best in the SEC this year (Arkansas was close—look out for Arkansas) among schools that are not Texas, which makes them the primary competition. What about LSU? Alabama? Georgia? Those schools are already ahead of Texas by the football measure, and they’re nowhere close in broad athletics. Florida is not ahead of Texas in the football measure (8-4 and 5-7 are functionally the same when you are Florida and Texas), and it’s close in other sports. Like Texas, Florida is a flagship school with a weird primary in-state rival. Like Texas, Florida has some things going for it academically. Like Texas, Florida is in a state that’s a little off its rocker (ok, that’s fair, Florida’s way more tilted from stability than Texas is, but you know what I mean). Florida’s won in football about as recently as Texas has. Florida’s got more skeletons in the closet, but that’s more an Urban Meyer thing than a Florida thing. Texas would have those skeletons had Texas had the chance.
USC: 12th Place
Finally, USC. The Texas of Los Angeles.
One of the great tricks Texas pulled, when it joined the SEC, was setting itself up to be the winner of every offseason. Until the move actually happens, every summer people will say, “Hey, does Texas play in the SEC this year?” and they will be talking about Texas, the big addition to the SEC, rather than Texas, the middling football program. USC has a similar thing going on right now. People are forgetting that USC has been bad of late. Will Lincoln Riley work out there? Maybe. But right now, who cares? It’s been seven months since football season. We’re here to talk realignment, not games.
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Texas A&M poses no existential threat so long as they are who they are. Texas Tech is a little scary, but they aren’t anywhere yet (except for one place behind South Carolina and one ahead of Harvard in the Directors’ Cup standings). LSU and Alabama and Georgia are ahead in the race that counts, and not competing in the race where Texas has a tremendous athletic department in the most comprehensive sense. LSU, Alabama, and Georgia won’t knock Texas down a peg. Texas A&M might, but they’d just somehow torpedo themselves further if they did. Texas Tech, again, is not of present concern. Oklahoma? Florida? USC? They’re biting at Texas’s vulnerable places. Bevo’s vulnerable places, if you will.
