November 21, 2023
Many just view LHN as a punchline of a joke. But as we approached its final season before shuttering, I found myself realizing that when the Longhorn Network was first announced, it set off the first of a series of moves that would ultimately upend college sports as we know them.
Speaking with the people who created the network and other leaders in college sports and media, I tried to tell the definitive story of LHN and its place in the evolving landscape of legacy media and college sports.
Here’s an excerpt:
A Longhorn sat across from an Aggie with, depending on whom you asked, the purest of intentions. At least that’s how the Longhorn saw it, but you can’t blame the Aggie for cocking an eyebrow. This was back when Texas and Texas A&M remained Big 12 rivals, when Longhorn football was a perennial powerhouse, and when the Aggies hadn’t fielded a contender since before Vince Young had arrived in Austin. The two schools had played each other every year since 1915 and competed for just about everything else: not only wins and recruits, but top high school students, faculty members, and state funding too. But on this particular day, the Longhorn didn’t want to work against his counterpart—not on this project. The Longhorn was there to cut a deal.
Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds had been in the job since 1981, and in that time, he had seen waves of seismic change rattle college athletics again and again. In the early 2010s, he sensed another wave forming. That’s what led him to call A&M’s athletic director, Bill Byrne. College football, Dodds understood, had grown to become nothing less than a television product disguised as a sport; the attention games garnered could be sold for media-rights deals that had exploded in value. The Big Ten Conference had just created their very own cable network, and the Big 12 discussed making one too. What if, Dodds asked Byrne, Texas and A&M cut out the rest of the Big 12? What if the two of them—together—were big enough to create a channel on their own?
Texas, Dodds revealed to Byrne, had been exploring the idea of launching its own network. All Longhorns, all the time, beamed into every home in the country. He believed a Longhorn Network could succeed on its own, but it would be stronger with the Aggies on board. “Maybe we’re thinking in the wrong direction,” Dodds had said to other UT administrators ahead of his meeting with Byrne. “Maybe we ought to talk to A&M about this.” So, Dodds made his pitch. What if they went in as partners? They could call it the Lone Star Sports Network, or something like that.