Some of you might know that I am an ancient Longhorn football history buff. How did Texas football get where it is?
From the earliest days, Texas knew it wanted to be a national power, even when the best programs were obviously the Ivy League schools. When football was more of a club sport, student team managers worked to schedule home and homes with distant flagships. Texas went up to Chicago and took its ass whipping from Stagg’s squads. It scheduled Notre Dame whenever it could. It was so proud of the coup of scheduling a game in Boston against Harvard.
And the Horns usually lost.
Meanwhile, other state programs were letting easy train schedules determine who they played. Texas was getting national exposure, and learning what was required, play-wise, to be a national power. (Note- this is not an approach that only the Longhorns could take)
UT was the first program in the state to build a stadium. It was expensive as hell, but it was the first. A lot of programs wouldn’t have their stadium for decades.
Texas started the SWC, primarily to get rules of play and eligibility written, signed up to, and enforced.
When the SWC was collapsing, Texas was the leader in finding a home for the SWC’s most popular programs, and Baylor, in the Big XII.
Then, in the aughts, UT saw the impact streaming would have, and budgeted the money to wire all its athletic facilities accordingly. Dodds shared this vision with the Big XII, and encouraged them to do the same. They declined, citing the expense.
Here we are. Texas has planned and invested wisely for over a century. Lilliputians hated Gulliver because he figured out that the quickest way to put out a city fire was for him to puss on it. Rather than thank him for his quick thinking and help, they tried to blind him. The IR8 could never bring themselves to thank Texas for all the revenue their free riding brought; they’d rather vote it down and keep it from leveraging all its resources.
Gulliver was surprised to discover that the Lilliputians hated him. I am surprised by the hate expressed by the IR8.