Texas-sized brand: Why are the Longhorns so valuable?

[TexasTowelie]

Although Texas football won its last national championship 15 years ago and hasn't contended for a title since 2009, the Longhorn brand still reigns.

Texas posted just one 10-win season in the last decade, unlike juggernauts Alabama, Clemson and rival Oklahoma. Still, the Longhorns, valued at a nation-high $1.1 billion in 2018, are among college football’s top earners, according to an annual study by Ryan Brewer, an associate professor of finance at Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus.

UT football's decline in the 2010s doesn’t erase its historic success or Texas’ dominance in other sports and areas, said 2008 alumnus Kyle Umlang, who shares Longhorn sports data with his 10.6 thousand Twitter followers.

“It’s only been mediocrity for the last decade, but we’ve been playing football for 125 years, and the majority of that we’ve dominated,” Umlang said. “But we’re not just a football school; I like to call us an everything school.”

Read more: https://thedailytexan.com/2020/07/05/texas-sized-brand-why-are-the-longhorns-so-valuable

[Kali]

1. of course I am the odd person who thought you meant actual longhorns

and I was gonna say...nah, nobody pays shit for them. pretty hides and horns get discounted around here. have one that is crossed with something else and normal or muley (no horns, polled) with solid black or red hide and they can be phenotypical LH body, 99% LH they will do fine

[TexasTowelie]

2. Well, I am sort of biased.

My high school mascot were the Longhorns and I came close to being a Longhorn as a college student since I received a scholarship to the University of Texas. It's probably best that I went to a smaller university since I was from a small town.

I either would have been successful at UT or I would have bombed out completely. I don't there was a "sweet spot" for me in the middle and while I was strong in math and the sciences, in hindsight I don't believe that I was really the "engineer" type.

[LeftInTX]

12. That was the first thing I thought of

[TomSlick]

3. There was this Texas A&M engineering summa cum laude graduate.

He designed a new super efficient crude oil pump that made his big-oil employer a lot of money. The employer offered any reward within his wildest dreams of avarice.

The Aggie allowed that since he was a little boy, he had wanted a Mickey Mouse outfit.

The employer bought him the University of Texas.

[TexasTowelie]

4. If I required the services of a veterinarian or some specific areas of engineering

then I would consider an A&M graduate. However, I would pick a UT graduate for almost every other job position. When my classmates at Southwestern were taking chemistry they would tell me about visiting their boyfriends/girlfriends at A&M and that we had advanced much farther than their counterparts at A&M and would tutor those students.

I also had an opportunity to tutor an A&M student about twenty years ago, plus another friend of mine at Southwestern went to A&M to get his engineering degree there. When we compared our experiences interacting with A&M students, we both agreed that if we were looking for a someone to write an analytical paper on history, politics, or if procedures needed to be documented that the A&M graduates were extremely weak at those skills. My friend is excellent at writing and spelling which is why he is the head regional engineer for the highway department and he has a lot of Aggies working under his supervision.

[TomSlick]

5. You do know it was a joke - right?

A two-fer. A crack at UT and A&M in one joke.

Have you heard the one about the two A&M agri grads who tried to start a chicken farm?

[TexasTowelie]

6. Yes I know.

I've been telling Aggie jokes for over three decades and have two brother-in-laws that are A&M alums. I also live four miles away from the campus in College Station.

I don't know if I want to hear the joke about the chicken farm. The valedictorian of my high school married a chicken farmer that she met at Tarleton State University.

[TomSlick]

7. Some of my kin are chicken farmers in Arkansas.

Of course, without the benefit of an agri degree from A&M.

I don't know where they learned how to plant chickens.

[TexasTowelie]

8. Do they rotate the crops? nt

[TomSlick]

10. They are pretty secretive about their techniques.

[Paladin]

9. Then there was that Aggie veterinarian who specialized in animal husbandry.

Until he got caught at it.....

[TomSlick]

11. I'm stealing that!

[Paladin]

13. With my blessing.

As it happens, somebody in my immediate family was an Aggie veterinarian, and nobody appreciated a good Aggie joke more than he did---even from the Longhorn side of the family.