How Texas football has been warped by the national media

Texas football is far from the scariest team in the nation today, but that hasn’t stopped the media from putting a target on its back.

To survive within the scary world of college football, two things have to always be remembered: branding is everything, and Texas football is still not back. A problem arises when these two laws of nature collide, though.

Said problem is one of the biggest issues that fans take with college football media, which involves it giving an overrated team too much love. It simply drives folks furious and, quite frankly, it should.

As a result of the plethora of angry reactions, people appear to take their anger out on the team itself (even if it has no direct impact on the undeserved love that it’s getting).

This sort of thing can happen to any program regardless of reputation and how much hype it objectively deserves at the moment, with last year’s Cincinnati and Wake Forest teams being some of the most recent examples of — for the lack of a better word — “harmless” programs that received harassment on social media merely for having unusually-strong seasons.

If overbearingly-positive media attention can cause smaller college football brands to get hated on while in the process of playing well, just imagine how much criticism a big one can get for receiving hype before the season even begins. Luckily for us, we don’t have to imagine.

The Texas Longhorns are one of college football’s most renowned brands — and the media has never failed to give them a stunning amount of sugar because of it — yet there is nothing about the current state of their program that justifies it this time around.

For context, Texas is coming off of a 5-7 season, which was only its first under mediocre head coach Steve Sarkisian. And when it comes to their upcoming slate, they should be expected to suffer multiple losses this year as well, both at home and on the road.

But, despite all of this: ESPN has placed the Longhorns at No. 7 in its top 25 FPI rankings, 247Sports has humored the thought of them having “top-10 potential,” and The Dallas Morning News has predicted that they will beat Alabama. How could any objective sports fan take all of that in and not react poorly?

Treating a program so delicately while it struggles so blatantly will obviously cause anyone who doesn’t root for it to hope that it fails; people love being proven right, and situations such as these make it too easy.

The Longhorns are already seen as villains to many, whether it be due to their historical dominance, obnoxious fan base, or both, so the last thing they need is college football news outlets setting them up to miss absurd expectations.

If they were to see a spike in on-field success this season, good for them. The sole issue is that there is nothing concrete indicating that they will.

So, unless my eyes are lying to me, the Texas Longhorns are in for yet another forgettable year and, thanks to the media, they will be all the more ridiculed for it.