Getty Image / Jeffrey Vest / Chris Leduc / Icon Sportswire
The SEC has thrown shade at one of the conference’s newest members and signaled to the world that tradition matters after they made the decision to bestow the official ‘UT’ title on the University of Tennessee Volunteers over the University of Texas Longhorns who will henceforth be known as ‘TEX’.
This is a devastating blow for the Longhorns and the entire state of Texas who have been using UT for as long as the state’s flagship university has existed, which, for reference it University of Texas-Austin was founded in 1881 while the University of Tennessee was founded 87 years prior in 1794.
Of course, both schools went by different names in their earliest of days but that’s neither here nor there now that the SEC has officially bestowed ‘UT’ honors on the Volunteers who were a charter member of the Southeastern Conference all the way back on December 8, 1932 when the SEC was founded.
News that UT had been demoted to ‘TEX’ broke when Brent Zwerneman, a Texas A&M beat writer for the Houston Chronicle, shared this official chart from the SEC showing ‘UT’ for Tennessee and ‘TEX’ for the University of Texas:
The SEC chimes in on who is the real UT (the one with league seniority): pic.twitter.com/8SQQNn1RwE
— Brent Zwerneman (@BrentZwerneman) July 19, 2024
That full list of First/Second/Third team Preseason All SEC offense looks like this:
SEC
Seniority matters. And in this case that simply refers to the number of years spent in the SEC as Texas has seen considerably more on-field success in the ‘Poll Era’ of College Football than the Vols with Texas claiming 4 national championships to Tennessees 2. Stepping outside of just college football, Texas is also a behemoth across all sports with 47 titles claimed across 11 different sports.
It is worth noting that this SEC Tennessee-Texas ‘UT’ title news was broken by a Texas A&M writer whose team is noticeably absent from that list of First Team SEC talent. That has to sting a little bit for the Aggies.