re: Texas Snowflakes

quote:

---

A better understanding of both historical and present-day facts may shed some light on your question.

First of all, let us clear up the fact that UT or U.T. is not an official way to abbreviate The University of Texas at Austin (which is the full, correct name of the school). Notice that the teasips themselves concede that UT is not recognized nationally.

LINK

However, UT is, and for a good while has been, the popular stylization for that school over in Austin, so it can get under some folks' skin to hear Aggies use t.u., or perhaps make us look silly to those not in the know.

Let me pause here to mention that, in universities, things change over time. The Longhorns were once more widely known as Varsity, we were known as the Farmers, t.u. once wore maroon and orange uniforms and had a dog for a mascot (who they buried with great ceremony, so never let a sip give you grief over Miss Rev), while we had different yells (ever heard of Lizzie?) and grey wool cadet uniforms. We went three years without an A&M - t.u. rivalry before, and it seems we will do it once again.

I don't claim to be an expert on teasip history, but I have seen enough A&M history to see that the sips, once upon a time, called themselves Texas University. As an example, here is the program for the 1916 football game, which was played in Austin (and prompted the 13-0 branding of their Longhorn to remind them of the previous year's score). Unless customs were much different, I would assume the home team printed the programs. I have also seen old pennants bearing the name Texas U.

LINK

I will assume that references by Aggies to t.u. are less about the mixing up of the letters and more about the lack of capitalization. I don't have a web link for this, but the Longhorns (previous name of Aggieland yearbook) from the early part of the century refer to Texas University in a formal, not derogatory manner. The above program and other memorabilia also have the names reversed. This is somewhat akin to an Ol' Army Ag saying he went to AMC where we might say TAMU.

Based on this evidence, and the factf that t.u. is A university IN Texas, not THE university OF Texas, it's really the capitalization issue we have here. t.u. changed the name they called themselves - we didn't change what we call them. It would be like a sip trying to insult us by calling us Farmers or stylizing our name as amc. The difference is that we know and respect our own history to a much higher degree, and even refer to ourselves as Farmers or AMC in our yells.

Like I said, with a little historical perspective, it's just a matter of lack of capitalization of a non-official abbreviation.

---