SEC’s decision will give Hog fans someone to hate regularly

The only question left to answer after a unanimous decision to officially invite Texas and Oklahoma into the SEC is when they start playing?

So much for speculation the media has run with for a decade that Texas A&M would block any attempt by the Longhorns to get into the league. It wasn’t hard to guess money was going to be the ultimate trump card … sooner or later.

NEWS | The @SEC Presidents & Chancellors voted unanimously Thursday to extend membership invitations to the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas to join the SEC effective July 1, 2025, with competition to begin in all sports for the 2025-26 academic year.

— Southeastern Conference (@SEC) July 29, 2021

Turns out ESPN apparently has come up with some sort of plan to get out of the financial disaster of The Longhorn Network and in the process has created the biggest super conference in the history of college athletics.

Arkansas fans should thank Frank Broyles. His talking the Razorbacks into the SEC will start paying dividends and keeps them from getting left out.

Get ready for a new world. Don’t plan the future based on what has happened in the past. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not promised and the present is probably going to change on a pretty regular basis.

The good news is Hogs’ fans have an opponent they can truly hate.

Of course, they never really stopped hating Texas for some strange reason. Hey, I grew up in Arkansas and seen it for over six decades and I still don’t understand why everybody gets so worked up, but it is what it is.

While Oklahoma may be the best football program right now, don’t think Steve Sarkisian inherited a roster without any talent. He’s got a top 10 group of players in the country. The question is if he can pull it together for the first season.

The Hogs are the only SEC team having to worry about that now. Make no mistake, though, the Longhorns will come into Fayetteville to make a statement after being approved to join the league.

In sports other than football, both programs are pretty good. Texas is ranked in the way-too-early preseason men’s basketball polls, Oklahoma is currently a powerhouse in college softball. The Longhorns went to the College World Series, beat Mississippi State and Tennessee in Omaha so that will be intense, too.

The SEC rivalry may be more intense for Hog fans than it was before 1992.

We have no idea, though, when that will be. The invitation says it will be effective July 1, 2025 but nobody wants to wait four years and it will happen before then.

Exactly how it happens with CBS holding that Saturday afternoon game for a couple of years isn’t known and as I was told years ago don’t apply standard business practices and logic to television rights fees and such. They play with an entirely different set of financial rules, expectations and results.

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It will get figured out by somebody.

For the Hogs’ faithful, though, this should be good news for the future. Oklahoma is a relatively easy drive for much of the state. Austin is a bigger trip but fans would go to a foreign country to play the Longhorns.

But now fans under the age of 40 will finally get to see what all of the fuss is about from old folks about hating burnt organge