Texas still touchy about Horns down, taunt thats not going away

A gesture that pokes fun at Texas’s longtime hand signal has been irritating the Longhorns of late, and on Saturday in Provo, Utah, fans of the BYU men’s basketball team decided to literally spell it out.

A group of Cougars fans, each of whom was wearing a shirt bearing a letter, sent the “HORNS DOWN” message from the front row near the Texas bench in the early stages of BYU’s 84-72 win. Officials quickly asked them to remove the shirts and, after the No. 21 Cougars improved to 15-5, BYU Coach Mark Pope said, “that’s not how we roll.”

“From the [Roar of Cougars student section] and from our players, and from our student body, that’s just not us,” Pope added. “That’s not how we roll, and it was just a miscalculation on a couple eager kids, which — we love the eagerness of these fans — but that’s not what we do here … That’s not something that we’re supporting.”

“Horns down,” which displays the inverse of Texas’s “Hook ’em Horns” gesture of index and pinkie fingers extended upward, got under the skin of the Longhorns when Central Florida overcame a 15-point second-half deficit to earn a 77-71 upset Jan. 17 in Austin. Several UCF players gathered in a circle near their bench area and celebrated the comeback by performing the gesture.

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But in the handshake line after the game, Texas Coach Rodney Terry shouted “that’s classless” at the UCF players, adding, “Don’t do that s---.”

“When you do those kinds of things, it looks very classless and it also looks like you were just hoping to win,” Terry later said in his postgame news conference. “We never go into games trying to hope to win. We go into games expecting to win. So we don’t act like that. We expect to win. We don’t jump up and down and act like we won the national championship. We sure don’t step on anyone’s home court and act crazy and try to show them up in any way. We don’t do that. You guys won. Hey, we shake your hand and tip our hat to you, but we’re not going to let you act that way in our building. You’re not going to put your horns down and do all that nonsense.”

Terry was heavily criticized, with ESPN’s Seth Greenberg urging him to “Coach your own team! Control your controllables! End of conversation.” Greenberg then added: “You know what? Horns up, horns down, who cares!”

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His fellow “College GameDay” commentator Andraya Carter piled on, pulling a few tissues from a box and saying: “This is Coach Terry to me. In that moment. It’s soft. It’s soft, and it’s going to be used against you.”

Terry later apologized, saying his remarks might have been excessive. “I had no intention of trying to show up anyone or offend anyone in terms of what occurred at the end of that game,” he said Jan. 20 after Texas beat Baylor. “[UCF Coach Johnny Dawkins] has a good program, and they’re having a good year. Personally, if I offended him or his program, or anyone for that matter, that was not my intention.”

The Longhorns, 14-6 overall and 3-4 in the Big 12, may have tipped their hand when it comes to ways for creative college hoops fans to make them lose their cool. Their next road game is Saturday against TCU.

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