DALLAS — Texas may be in a new conference, but the Longhorns’ opponents still have the same question.
Will the “Horns Down” gesture garner an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty now that Texas is in the SEC?
“We’ve talked a lot about that,” John McDaid, the conference coordinator of football officials said during SEC Media Days at the Omni Hotel in Dallas on Tuesday. “I’m asking my officials to use a framework of judgment where the act to be a foul needs to be one of three buckets. It needs to be taunting an opponent, it needs to be a travesty of the game or it needs to otherwise compromise our ability to manage the game …
“The act needs to be offending to the senses. If you took that act out of a football stadium and did it in a shopping mall or a grocery store, would it offend the senses to a majority of the people in the area? That signal would not.”
McDaid explained further.
“I could see a scenario where an opponent of Texas makes a big play and is celebrating with his teammates, possibly going back to the sideline they’re giving the signal,” McDaid said. “It’s not taunting, it’s not making a travesty of the game, it’s not affecting our ability to manage the game.”
Discussion about how officials would penalize the “Horns Down” gesture was a common topic annually at Big 12 media days.
“Let me put it this way: if you do a Horns Down to a Texas player as an opponent, that’s probably going to be a foul,” Big 12 coordinator of officials Greg Burks said in 2021. “If you turn to your crowd and do a Horns Down, you’re not taunting an individual or an opponent, so it probably won’t be a foul.”
With Texas and its rival Oklahoma joining the SEC this year, the question unsurprisingly arose again. In his first SEC Media Days appearance, Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables said he has no opinion on whether the gesture should be a penalty.
“If they say that’s going to be a penalty, then don’t do it. And if they say it’s a free-for-all, then have at it,” Venables said. “Everybody celebrates different. But whatever rules that they have in place, we’ll follow those.”
Oklahoma defensive back Billy Bowman Jr., a Denton Ryan product and at one time a Texas commit, made his opinion known.
“It shouldn’t be a penalty anyway,” Bowman said during SEC Media Days. “Everyone has a hand signal. If you let a hand signal affect you and affect the game, maybe you shouldn’t be there.
“Allowing us to throw the ‘Horns Down,’ that’s cool and all, but if it can’t be part of the game, that’s pretty tough.”
