Opinion: With light schedule, Texas is quickly making SEC friends - or is that enemies?
Matt HayesUSA TODAY NETWORK
Let’s begin with the obvious: we’re 25 days into October, and Texas still hasn’t played a true SEC road game.
We’re eight weeks into the college football season, and Texas – the wealthiest and most powerful sports program in all of college sports, and the prized jewel of the most recent round of conference expansion – will finally on Saturday play its first true SEC road game.
At longtime SEC lightweight Vanderbilt.
Excuse me while I unfurl this doublewide conspiracy flag, wave it wildly and plant it in firmly in the mud.
Or as an SEC athletic director told me this week, "more than a handful” of the conference athletic directors are furious about the Texas schedule and optics it presents. How it looks – take a deep breath, Deep South – like the Longhorns already run the league.
And away we go.
We’re barely four months into We’re Texas And You’re Not in the SEC (ask the good folks at the Big 12, they’ll explain it), and I’m not saying there’s buyer remorse, but it’s not all as hunky-dory as it looks.
Maybe that’s why the league office came out guns blazing in response to Texas fans last week throwing garbage and other assorted nonsense on the field during a welcome to the SEC paddling from Georgia.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey fined Texas some walkin' around cash ($250,000), and required the school to use “all available resources” to identify fans who threw trash on the field (and at Georgia players) and prohibit them from attending future games. You know, every good conspiracy needs a useful idiot.
Then the SEC declared one more misstep, and the ability to sell alcohol at Texas games could be altered.
Before you think this is drastic, heavy lifting, understand that Sankey and the presidents did the same thing to Tennessee not so long ago when Vols fans threw trash on the field (and at Ole Miss players) because they, too, knew more than officials. Tennessee's alcohol sales were also threatened, which is sort of like threatening oxygen for the rest of us.
Officials at Tennessee eventually rounded up all of 25 fans who couldn’t behave, did what had to be done, and no one throws anything on the field in Knoxville anymore.
This is the way the SEC works: all for one, one for all. Everyone earns equal shares of the billions in media rights, and everyone earns similar punishments for similar incidents.
But as the great George Orwell once wrote in Animal Farm, “All SEC teams are equal, but some SEC teams are more equal than others.” Or something like that.
It is here where we circle back to the whole schedule thing, an offensive wink and nod to Texas and its first run at the big time. If you think the league’s athletic directors aren’t happy about the gift road to the SEC championship game, the conference coaches are livid.
I spoke to three coaches this week, and each not only confirmed the rift about the laughable schedule given to Texas in its inaugural season, but each also made sure to text Georgia coach Kirby Smart and thank him for making it perfectly clear that Texas may be a member of the conference — but Texas hasn’t come close to experiencing the conference.
Prior to playing host to Georgia, Texas played wildly overrated Michigan, the worst team in the SEC (Mississippi State) at home, the worst Oklahoma team in decades in a neutral site game, and three non-conference punching bags at home.
The Bulldogs then rolled into Austin, and star quarterback Carson Beck played the worst game of his career. Didn’t throw a touchdown pass, had three interceptions and his receivers dropped nine passes. And it was still 24-0 before you could say all hat, no cattle.
Smart may have wailed after the game that “no one believed” in Georgia, but you better believe everyone in the SEC not named Bevo wanted Georgia to do what Georgia does against every team not named Alabama.
Every team in the SEC wants another Vanderbilt win this weekend, and another goalpost thrown in the Cumberland River. They want Florida coach Billy Napier to save his job two weeks after that, and Arkansas to win its third consecutive game against its former Southwest Conference rival, and Kentucky to find its big game mojo, and Texas A&M to extract 12 years of frustration from Bevo’s hide.
Three of those games (Vanderbilt, Arkansas, Texas A&M) are on the road, where life in the meatgrinder league is difficult no matter who or where you’re playing. It’s just that, you know, Texas got Vanderbilt, Arkansas and Texas A&M.
While Georgia got Texas, Alabama and Ole Miss.
No other SEC team went further than Oct. 5 without playing a true road game. Oklahoma, Texas’ expansion brother, played its first true SEC road game a month before the Longhorns ― at Auburn, one of the three toughest road venues in the conference.
Texas got Vanderbilt, the easiest place to play in the SEC. if you don't believe me, ask Nick Saban.
Look, this isn't a raging, shoot first, aim second conspiracy. These are facts. And because the SEC decided to stay with its current schedule for the 2025 season, Texas will play the same teams in Year 2 with home sites swapped.
Texas, everyone, is quickly making friends in its new conference.
Not long after the SEC’s response to Texas fans, Longhorns president Jay Hartzell published an open letter to fans, stating, among other things, that “these actions made a bad early impression on Georgia and our new conference colleagues.”
Don’t worry, Jay. The Texas reputation precedes it.
The difference is, you’re not in the Big 12 anymore.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X @MattHayesCFB.
