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College football teams hailing from the state of Texas don’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to games where Ted Cruz is in attendance to cheer them on. However, the senator has clapped back after being accused of cursing the Longhorns by showing up for their showdown with Washington in the Sugar Bowl.
It’s very hard to imagine Cruz will get to cheer for his alma mater in a nationally televised game with huge stakes when you consider he got his undergraduate degree at Princeton before graduating from Harvard Law School.
However, the man who was born in Canada but spent most of his childhood in Houston has routinely thrown his support behind programs based in the state he represents in Congress. Unfortunately, he’s earned a bit of a reputation as a jinx thanks to what’s transpired when he’s been in the stands.
On Tuesday, The Messenger did a deep dive into the dozens of sporting events Cruz has attended over the past decade and discovered teams from Texas are 1-6 in games where they were the only team from the state represented (Texas A&M’s win over Alabama in 2021 marks the lone victory).
That list of losses includes three games featuring the Texas Longhorns, who are now 0-3 after Cruz showed up at the Superdome on Monday to watch them lose to Washington by a score of 37-31.
While plenty of people used that defeat to highlight the supposed existence of the “Ted Cruz Curse,” he decided to clap back by hopping on Twitter to highlight some of the Ws he’s gotten to witness in person while positioning himself as a good luck charm in those scenarios.
To all the dishonest press hacks blaming me for the Longhorn’s heartbreaking loss, ok—if you give me the WINS I’ve cheered on too!
-Astros World Series 17 & 22
-SEVEN consecutive Astros ALCS
-UT 06 Rose Bowl victory over USC
-A&M beating Alabama in 21
-Rockets 94 Finals win pic.twitter.com/2qrPIivyAQ— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 2, 2024
The Astros streak he mentions doesn’t really paint the entire picture when you consider it came to an end in 2023—a year where Cruz was front and center for all four of the losses that led to Houston losing to the Texans in the ALCS.
Only time will tell if the Longhorns will be able to punch their ticket to the College Football Playoff next year, but if that does end up being the case, they may want to think about asking him to watch the contest from afar just to err on the side of caution.