A meeting between Texas football players and officials last October took on new light in the wake of the launch of several donor emails supporting the school song “The Eyes of Texas”.
Two Texas players told Kate McGee of the Texas Tribune that sports department officials told the team that they should stay on the pitch for “The Eyes of Texas” to sing along with the fans. Before the meeting, several donors were upset after players chose to skip the post-game to sing, with some threatening to pull financial contributions to the university because of the issue.
During the meeting, officials reportedly conveyed threats from angry donors that players could face difficult job prospects if they continued to protest against music, which has racist roots as part of a minstrel show.
A player’s account through the Tribune:
“They said that you don’t have to sing. But you have to stay in the field. You have to go there and at least show your fans your appreciation for coming and watching you play, ”said junior linebacker DeMarvion Overshown in a phone interview on Tuesday.
“It was really revealing,” said Overshown. “These are some high-powered people who come to watch you play and can prevent you from getting a job in the state of Texas. It was shocking that they said that. To this day, I still think about the moment. They really used it as a threat to get us to try to do what they wanted us to do. “
Another unnamed player:
“He kept saying that these guys provide this for you. … He was mentioning: ‘We have donors talking about withdrawing money from the southern end zone [stadium addition project], interrupting your donations’, “said the second player.
The unnamed player reportedly told the Tribune that former coach Tom Herman and sports director Chris Del Conte were the officers who transmitted the donor threats.
These charges come two days after Texas security guard Caden Sterns tweeted basically the same story on Monday, when donor emails became public.
My teammates and I were threatened by some alumni that we would have to find jobs outside of Texas if we didn’t participate. https://t.co/owWwHF50ri
– Caden Sterns (@ CSterns_7) March 1, 2021
Texas officials claimed they were not forcing players to sing ‘Eyes of Texas’
The existence of this meeting was already known; Del Conte himself discussed the meeting in October. However, Del Conte and Herman’s reports differ significantly from these more recent reports.
In a newsletter, Del Conte said he simply described his expectations for the team, via the Dallas Morning News:
“I want to clarify that I had a lot of conversations with our head coaches outlining my expectations that our teams will show appreciation for our University, fans and supporters by staying together as a unified group for ‘Os Olhos’ while we work on this issue.”
Herman also denied that his team was given a “mandate”, with involvement in singalong still voluntary.
In any case, the result was clear. The Texas players remained on the pitch for next week’s game against Baylor.
When approached with the latest player accounts, Del Conte again denied that any player was forced to remain on the pitch:
“We simply asked for their help – no one was forced or forced to do so,” he said in a statement.
“I never said that, nor would I say it to a student-athlete, and I never heard that from any donor or alumni. My message has consistently been about unity. I am disappointed if anything else that someone said to our student-athletes made them feel that way. It worries me, ”he said in an e-mailed statement. “I have already talked to several student-athletes about this and I am happy to speak with anyone to let them know that this is not true. I only saw our former students working to support our student-athletes ”.
This back-and-forth is the last episode of a saga that has been taking place in Austin since last summer, when athletes from Texas publicly requested that the song be replaced after the death of George Floyd. Then, as now, the request was met with a vocal response from alumni and other Texas residents.
Eventually, Longhorns players were openly skipping the song, leading to emails like this one published by the Texas Tribune:
“It is sad that this offends blacks. As I said before, blacks are free and it is time for them to go to another state where everything is in their favor.”
Texas denounced these emails as “some extremist views”, but it appears that the sports authorities involved may have responded by giving these extremists exactly what they wanted.
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