The burnt orange train eventually came to a halt at a scarlet-red stoplight. It was actually losing steam down the stretch anyway, but it finally met its match. The end of the Texas Longhorns’ 2024 season was pretty anticlimactic. Going backward on a 1st and Goal and being strip-sacked for a TD on the other end on the same set of downs. However, Steve Sarkisian will take solace from their season overall. It was the beginning of a new era for this blueblood, being their first year in the SEC post-realignment. Fans will attribute it as a success overall. In fact, they’re rubbing it into the faces of others in the southeastern faction. For Texas being more successful in Year 1 than programs in the conference have been for years. This common feature of Texas fans is baked into a Top-5 list prepared by a revered national analyst.

The nature of sports fandom is such that discourse revolves around subjective hypotheticals more than objective reality. That said, how do you measure how much a team is “hated” on a scale. It’s a feeling, not a fact. College football is a community-driven game that feeds and thrives off emotions. Emotions on either spectrum of good and bad. As much as a person loves their own, they hate their rivals—if not more. Josh Pate prepared a list of the top 5 most hated schools in CFB, which was crowd-sourced just as much as his own opinion. Not most hated historically, mind you. But right at this moment—while Steve Sarkisian is at the helm.

Now, he is the voice of the sport in many ways, but Pate’s word isn’t gospel. That said, few could argue with Texas winning the poll he conducted and placing at #1. Josh Pate understood and gave elaborate reasoning why. Pate relayed the list over on his namesake YouTube show. He prefaced discussing Texas’ placement at No. 1 by mentioning how they haven’t won a national title recently. However, he also acknowledges that the fanbase likes to be hated and almost welcomes it. “I think Texas is the most hated team in college football right now,” claimed Josh Pate. “A lot of Texas folks came at me today, and they said, ‘We’re the most hated.’ Texas wants to be hated, but then they dropped the whole ‘they hate us because they hate us.’”

That last bit is something Pate took objection to. He reckons it’s untrue that people hate the Longhorns because of their stature. In fact, many would “never want to trade places” with them. “Let me be the one to break this news to you. When a Texas fan says ‘they hate us because they ain’t us’, Texas fans are only half right. They do hate you. They despise you at a cellular level. I’m not always sure it’s because they ain’t you,” said Josh Pate. He proceeded to discern what the real reason is behind the disdain for UT under Sark.

“Texas has always carried themselves a certain way. Societally, they’ve always been prone to look down on you. This is just accurate. If you think you’re better than someone, that’s okay. Just admit it, Texas fans. Admit it, I respect that about you guys!” said Pate. This is the exact ammo that the Texas A&M Aggies use to fuel their side of the Lone Star Showdown. The working-class underdogs against Texas’ collective highbrow persona.

Pate, being the CFB savant that he is, wants Steve Sarkisian to keep that negative notion alive. “You should always long to be hated. If they don’t hate you, you’re irrelevant. So it’s a compliment to Steve Sarkisian and co. that they’re hated,” he said. Well, Sarkisian is giving plenty of reasons for people to do just that. Like his two-faced take on spring football being a breeding ground for tampering. It can be a loosely thrown-around umbrella term. But it’s very prevalent across the landscape. It’s so prevalent that it has almost become the norm. Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns are the latest ones accused of indulging in some tampering themselves.

Steve Sarkisian accused of tampering while himself leading a campaign against it

Of all its quirks and abnormalities, the concept of spring games is one of the most interesting in CFB. Something that’s so etched in the fabric of the sport. Yet, coaches, including Sark, are convening to stop its existence. Spring games are trending towards becoming history soon. Why? Tampering is at the crux of it all. Steve Sarkisian, among other coaches, pointed to these games being an opportunity for some outside intervention. It’s especially lethal since it’s right before the transfer portal reopens. Texas aren’t even hosting a spring game this year. But the latest intel from CFB savant and insider Blake Ruffino suggests this is a bit of a “stones and glass windows” scenario.

Ruffino is privy to the fact that while Sarkisian has been a proponent of spring being a breeding ground for tampering, his program has been involved in some, too. Speaking over “The Ruffino & Joe Sho,w” he dropped a bombshell on Sark. “You’re coming out here and arguing about how you don’t want to play because of tampering. My god, you’re out there tampering! I’m going to keep it brief. I’m not going to say how I know it…” he said before proceeding to spill the beans. Ruffino said, “I know that, literally, a Texas coach was on LSU campuses… Not going to say when. But you think that he didn’t talk to some players that he recruited? You think he didn’t bump into them? Because I’m just going to tell you, it happened.” 

Ruffino did mention Sark’s POV and official reasoning for not holding a spring game. “[Steve Sarkisian] didn’t want to play because [Texas] played more games than anybody. Fine,” he continued. This was, in fact, cited as the primary reason Sark abstained from hosting a spring game. “But then [Sark] follows it up with, ‘I don’t want my roster being tampered with.’ Then look at your own staff. That’s all I’m going to bring up. Look at your own staff,” reiterated Blake Ruffino. Until some sort of legislative changes are made, the sad reality is that big programs will continue to flex their muscles where possible. 

Morals and ethics are partisan values to hold in a results business. Which CFB now is. A business where a pigskin gets thrown on Saturdays. Until there is stricter penalization for tampering, it’ll continue to hamper the sport. First, it’s spring games; next could be something even more seismic. Will fans come to terms with losing spring football years down the line? Probably. But it’s not going down well in the immediate. As for Steve Sarkisian and Texas, the sheer volume of these cases means they will inadvertently get swept under the rug. However, episodes like this ensure that the status as the most hated team is maintained.