Longhorns’ move to the SEC leaves legislators feeling spurned
The decision by the University of Texas and Oklahoma University to join the SEC has come with a great deal of backlash.
While it may be “the right decision at the right time” for the Longhorns, according to UT President Jay Hartzell, it’s also one that will have profound impacts on the remaining Big 12 teams — especially Baylor, Texas Tech and Texas Christian University.
Listening to alumni and fans of those schools, I was reminded of the Dolly Parton lyrics: It’s a sad situation, I must say When someone wants to leave as bad as you want them to stay.
And the reaction from some Texas Republicans has been even more heavy-handed.
“A decision to switch to a different athletic conference affects the opportunity and stability of our publicly-funded universities across the state and must be fully vetted in the most transparent and comprehensive manner possible,” said state Rep. Dustin Burrows, a Republican of Lubbock who received his MBA and JD from Texas Tech, in a statement.
He filed a measure that would require Texas public colleges and universities to get approval from the Legislature before affiliating with a different athletic conferences. The measure was effectively dead on arrival, since it wasn’t on Gov. Greg Abbott’s call for the special session, but nonetheless attracted the support of several dozen colleagues, most of them associated with the spurned universities.
“Such a monumental economic and educational decision impacting the entire state must not be made in a bubble on the Forty Acres,” said state Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from Plano who at one point served as the president of Baylor’s student body.
And Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, also a Republican, reacted to Texas’s news by announcing that he was establishing a special committee on “The Future of College
Sports in Texas,” which held a
hearing Monday.
State Sen. John Whitmire, a Democrat from Houston, used his opening remarks to point out that there’s currently a real crisis unfolding at hospitals across the state, including Houston’s Ben Taub.
“There’s a 24-hour waiting period for emergency care in our largest county’s largest charity hospital, to kind of put in perspective what brings us here today,” Whitmire said.
“This is a real problem; it needs addressing. But we’ve been given this assignment.”
He added that University of Houston leaders might have had some expert testimony for the committee, had they been invited. After all, UH’s football program was pretty hard-hit when Texas, Baylor, Texas, and Texas A&M decided to bunk the Southwest Conference to form the Big 12.
“I’m not going to belabor that point because I don’t think it really accomplishes a lot,” Whitmire added, dryly.
Indeed, the purpose of the hearing was seemingly to lambaste UT officials over their upcoming move — even though Bernard Weinstein, a longtime professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, testified that he doesn’t think it spells doom for Baylor, Tech, and TCU, or for the Big 12 more generally.
“It represents a major and perpetual blow to the remaining members of the Big 12,” said Robert Bowlsby, the commissioner of that conference. “There is no question about that. And to intercollegiate athletics more generally.”
State Sen. Sen. Charles Perry, a Republican of Lubbock, took issue with how UT handled the process: “As a Legislature, we need to make sure that when these processes go down that they’re not done in the dark of night with no consideration for other affected parties.”
“I’ll just say it this way,” he continued. “I expect my trustees to be responsible for the university they chose to serve, but at the same time they can’t do it at the detriment of other schools in the state.”
“If you’re as big and great as you think you are, you should have made the Big 12 equal or better than the SEC and you didn’t do it,” said Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Republican of Georgetown, when it was his turn to question Hartzell. “I kind of feel sorry for the SEC. Cousin Eddie’s coming home and he don’t leave ’til he’s wrecked the whole house.”
All of this was cathartic for some football fans disappointed by Texas’s move to the SEC.
“They deserve a roast,” argues Jay Leeson of Lubbock, a Tech supporter.
With a majority of the Texas House’s Democrats still in DC after breaking quorum in July, lawmakers remaining in Austin were unable to pass any legislation this week. That being the case, might as well have a committee hearing.
Still, it was a strange exercise. The Legislature certainly didn’t get involved when Texas A&M joined the SEC in 2012. And I don’t remember Republican lawmakers such as Schwertner, Perry, and Burrows appealing to a sense of statewide solidarity when they were pushing to pass “campus carry” legislation in 2015. (Nor did they heed such appeals from UT professors and students, most of whom were vehemently opposed to the idea.)
There’s no indication that
UT’s move to the SEC was driven by political considerations as opposed to business ones. But it would be hard to fault the university if that were the case.
Let’s hope that the future of college sports in Texas is one in which our state’s public colleges and universities are free to make their own decisions about their athletic programs without getting crossways with politicians — politicians with hurt feelings, axes to grind, and short memories.