AUSTIN — Saturday‘s game against Georgia was supposed to be a measuring stick for Texas football. Three days later, people are still talking about Texas’ big game, but for all the wrong reasons.
A challenging matchup was expected, with the Bulldogs being 48-3 over the past four seasons, with two national championships. Indeed, a lot of things went wrong for Texas during the 30-15 loss, including a second-quarter quarterback swap. But it was the fans who helped trash the university’s reputation.
Toward the end of his weekly news conference Monday morning, University of Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian was predictably asked about fans throwing trash on the field Saturday night during the Longhorns’ loss to Georgia.
Most of what Sarkisian said was a rehashing of what he said postgame Saturday night, but the last part of Sarkisian’s answer stood out.
“It was too good of a football game for that to be the focal point of it all,” Sarkisian said.
The problem is, well, 38 hours after it transpired, that third-quarter incident at DKR-Memorial was all anyone was talking about, despite Texas-Georgia being a matchup of SEC powers, both ranked in the top five of the AP Top 25.
With 2:48 to play in the third quarter Saturday night, Longhorns safety Jahdae Barron intercepted Bulldogs quarterback Carson Beck, then returned it 35 yards to the Georgia 9-yard line.
As Barron’s return was in progress, a flag flew. As the flag flew, Sarkisian was apoplectic, running down the sideline while jawing at an official.
Sarkisian knew what was coming once the play ended.
Barron was flagged for defensive pass interference, erasing the return and giving the ball back to Georgia, which led 23-8 at the time. The ball was spotted, the Bulldogs were ready to snap. Then the Texas student section intervened.
Bottles and other garbage were thrown into the north end zone, delaying the game.
A slew of people standing on the sideline closest to the student section, including the Longhorns cheerleaders, quickly worked to clear the debris. Sarkisian even made his way over there to try and calm the students down.
As the delay wound down, the officials huddled. In the end, they picked up the flag, which sometimes happens, but rarely that long after the call.
Two plays after the defensive pass interference call was overturned, Quinn Ewers hit Jaydon Blue for a 17-yard touchdown pass, pulling Texas closer to 23-15 with 2:12 left in the third quarter.
The fallout from the sequence early this week has been profound, partially due to the (incorrect) notion that the officials felt compelled to change the call due to the overwhelming response from the student section.
That aside, the optics have been a terrible look for the University of Texas.
• Late Saturday night, the SEC issued a statement, in part condemning debris being thrown on the field.
• Sunday afternoon, in a letter signed by UT System Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Eltife, university President Jay Hartzell and athletic director Chris Del Conte, the school echoed the SEC in condemning the actions of those responsible.
• Later Sunday, the SEC fined Texas $250,000 and is requiring the school to “use all available resources, including security, stadium and television video, to identify individuals who threw objects onto the playing field or at the opposing team. All individuals identified as having been involved in disrupting the game shall be prohibited from attending Texas Athletics events for the remainder of the 2024-25 academic and athletic year.” The conference also threatened to suspend alcohol sales at football games, but is not ready to take that step.
• Also Sunday, Hartzell penned a letter to the student body, harshly reiterating what had already been said. The behavior will not be condoned, and all available resources will be used to identify those responsible. Additionally, Hartzell lamented how all of this looks to those outside the school.
“This was only our third conference game as a new member of the SEC, so our fellow SEC institutions are just getting to know us,” Hartzell wrote. “These actions made a bad early impression on Georgia and our new conference colleagues, and harmed your University’s reputation before a national audience.”
For all the jokes, all the memes on social media, all the fun everyone had with goofing on the officials with how the correct call was ultimately made, Hartzell is right.
Saturday night was an embarrassment for the University of Texas, which welcomed the largest crowd in the history of DKR-Memorial Stadium (105,215).
To boot, the incident took place with an average of 12.9 million people watching on ABC. Per ESPN PR, that is the largest audience for any college football game this year, and the largest college football audience on an ESPN platform since 2016.
Hartzell’s displeasure is a reminder that football is only a small piece of any major university machine. A president, provost, or chancellor is not interested in having the larger university machine and, in Texas’ case, its $19 billion endowment embarrassed by a small cog within said machine.
This whole thing will linger seemingly forever because, frankly, SEC fans don’t forget.
If you’re looking for proof, Saturday night conjured up memories of 2021 at Tennessee. The Volunteers were fined $250,000 after a similar incident in which fans chucked aluminum cans and even a mustard bottle onto the Neyland Stadium field in response to what was perceived as poor officiating during a 31-26 loss to Ole Miss.
That incident faded into the background, but gets brought up when fan behavior goes south.
The fervor over this Texas incident is subsiding as midweek approaches, but you can bet it will get dredged up the next time something happens in the stands somewhere, especially if that somewhere is in the SEC.
Sorry, Sark. The football may have been championship-caliber Saturday night, but that’s not what the focal point turned out to be.