The 10 Dumbest Fan Bases In America: #7 the Texas Longhorns
Most fans brag about their team's performance on the field.
Texas is different, the vast majority of Texas Longhorn fan bragging has to do with how much money the Longhorn athletic program brings in a year. If you say anything that isn't 100% positive about Texas, Longhorn fans lash out by responding, "Oh, yeah, well we make more money than you do!"
It was a strange reaction, something I'd never seen anywhere else before in sports. Imagine if a Dallas Cowboys fan responded to losing a playoff game by saying, "Yeah, but the Cowboys are the most valuable franchise in all of pro sports! Suck it!"
You'd laugh at this argument, right? Sports are about winning titles, not about making money. Yet this is the foundational argument of Texas Longhorn athletics: "We're richer than you!"
At first I was confused by this, why were Longhorn fans -- most of whom couldn't afford a used truck without selling their platelets first -- spending so much time emailing, tweeting, and facebooking me about how much money Texas made?
It was downright strange.
See, at that point in time, beginning a decade or so ago, I was guilty of what I'll call the "Texas fallacy" -- it's a belief, rooted in media laziness, that Texas was better than it actually was. But dive into the record book's recent history and you learn something astounding -- despite all the money Texas athletics make -- the Longhorns don't actually win very much.
In fact, do you know how many national titles the football or men's basketball team has won in the past 45 years?
One.
One title!
This means in over two generations -- three Longhorn generations -- the mighty Texas Longhorns have won a single national title, with Vince Young as their quarterback in the 2005 season. Otherwise, despite their manifold riches, they still lose just about every game that matters.
Once I knew this, everything about Texas fans made sense.
See, the only thing modern Texas fans can really brag about is the money their athletic department makes. Because when you really break down the athletic department's history over the past 45 years Texas is the dumb rich kid who hasn't done anything to earn his daddy's money, is desperately insecure about that fact, and so he lashes out at everyone else by pointing out how rich he is. But at least Texas is rich. The vast majority of Longhorn fans aren't rich. They're dumb t-shirt fans who aren't smart enough to go to Texas. Unlike the other universities in Texas which have many more alumni rooting them on, a full 92% of the people who are Facebook fans of Texas didn't go to Texas. And these are the people who can afford Internet connections to have Facebook profiles. While Alabama has the 85% of the fan base giving the 15% a bad name, it's altogether probable that 99% of Texas fans didn't go to Texas. Meet the 1%, they actually have Texas diplomas.
These loser Longhorn fans who aren't smart enough to go to Texas are deriving their self worth by bragging about cheering for a rich athletics program. This is so dumb even Alabama fans, Outkick's curent dumbest fan base title holders, think Texas fans are delusional. During Texas's Nick Saban pursuit, when Longhorn fans -- in typical dumb rich kid fashion -- believed they were going to give Saban so much money he couldn't say no, Bama fans were sitting around prison calling into Paul Finebaum's show saying, "Y'all, these Texas fans are really dumb."
If everyone at Texas just wants to make money, why don't they go somewhere that isn't a non-profit educational institution? Because while every other team is focused on trying to win, the Longhorn fan base just wants to brag about how much money the university made playing sports last year. So why stop here, Texas fans, there are plenty of corporations -- virtually all of them, in fact -- that make infinitely more money than Texas athletics does. If making money is what matters to you, why not pick one of them to root for instead? Then you can Tweet me all the time, "So what, Apple is rich, bitch." (Of course, rooting for Apple would require owning a smart phone or laptop, a double luxury that most Texas Longhorn fans haven't managed to pull off yet, but still, it's the idea that counts.)
What's more, Texas has adopted a swaggering, "We're better than everyone else because we make more money than they do perspective, at the exact same time that everyone else is actually better than Texas where it matters most -- on the football field. Texas A&M? Better. TCU? Better. Baylor? Better. Houston and Texas Tech? Better coaches and soon to be better programs. You may be the richest athletic department in the country, but you're the fourth best program, at best, in your own state right now.
And don't even get me started on Oklahoma owning your ass. The Sooners dominate you, having won seven Big 12 titles since the conference was formed. Do you know how many Big 12 football titles Texas has won?
Three!
In nearly twenty years of playing in a crap conference where they've made hundreds of millions of dollars more than their competitors, the Longhorns still can't dominate. They've only won three Big 12 titles.
To hell with dominating the nation, you guys can't even win a crappy conference.
But if Colt McCoy's shoulder...
Shut up.
The rich kid of college athletics theory totally explains the Longhorn Network too, doesn't it? What do rich kids do when they realize that other than being rich they have nothing else going for them? They buy things to make themselves feel better and to try and make other people jealous. The Longhorn Network is like a brand new Porsche.
Only without an engine.
Longhorn fans don't even watch the Longhorn Network either, they just brag about having it. In fact, they bragged so much about having it that people don't even want to be friends with Texas any more. Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri, Texas A&M, maybe Oklahoma soon, Texas is so annoying that everyone who can leave Texas behind is leaving Texas behind. Which, you guessed it, happens to the rich kid too. The rich kid keeps having to find new friends who will put up with him just like Texas does. Pretty soon the Big 12 will be Texas and one other school that spit shines Texas's boots as part of the new conference deal.
Only the Longhorns will still lose that conference too.
Hell, right now Texas can't even make money. Despite all that revenue, Texas managed to lose over eight million dollars last year. Now fans are upset because they have an athletic director who has bad interpersonal skills and is hell bent on making money. Which means Texas hired the most Texas athletic director possible -- a guy who doesn't win much, but boy can he make money! Except when he can't. If Texas isn't making money, what are Texas fans going to brag about? The 59 yards of offense they posted against Arkansas in last year's Advocare Texas Bowl?
Oops.
At least Texas and its fans have something in common now -- they're both all hat, no cattle.
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Outkick's 10 dumbest fan bases:
10. The University of Tennessee
9. Outkick the Coverage and Clay Travis fans
