Big 12 Officials Told Oklahoma They Can't Do The "Horns Down" Celebration On Saturday, Which Is Outrageous
Texas won’t be able to control how Oklahoma fans conduct themselves in the stands at AT&T Stadium during the Dr. Pepper Big 12 Football Championship on Saturday. As far as the players are concerned, the Big 12 office has apparently told the Sooners that putting their horns down won’t fly.
On his coaches show Tuesday evening, Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley said the Sooners have been told they can’t do throw the ‘Horns Down’ hand sign. Josh Helmer of 1400 AM (KREF) in Norman reported on Twitter that Riley said Oklahoma reached out to the conference office to see if players would be penalized for doing the inverted Hook ‘Em Horns hand sign and the news Riley got makes the hand gesture off limits on Saturday with the Big 12 title on the line.
“Yeah, we can’t do it.,” Riley said, according to Helmer.
For as long as college football has been a thing in Texas, the “horns up” hand gesture has been something you see all the time. The same goes for the “horns down” gesture by opposing teams when they score on or beat the Longhorns. All of a sudden earlier this year against in the Texas-West Virginia thriller, Will Grier was flagged a 15 yard celebration penalty for the “horns down” when he scored this game-winning two point conversion in Texas.
This caused Oklahoma to reach out to Big 12 officials before their championship game this Saturday to see if it was okay. They told them they would be penalized 15 yards every time they do it. WHAT?!? The horns down celebration is a tradition, you can’t just stop it. It’s not offensive to anyone? It’s just a troll job to Texas, so what? Tom Herman is butthurt about it? Great. Liz thinks it’s the middle finger to Texas? Awesome. If Texas players are allowed to do “horns up” then you should be able to do the opposite of that, end of story. That’s just flat-out stupid.
So now what? Obviously you can’t risk a 15 yard penalty in a game that likely decides if you are playing the college football playoff or not. Hopefully Oklahoma is blowing out Texas, or the game is in hand late and they can do it all they want as they knee the football. The team picture will obviously have all of them do the gesture, but that should be a thing all game long. The NCAA just continues to blow and make no sense.
I have no dog in the fight, but fuck Texas.