Texas Longhorns athletics programs include the extramural and intramural sports teams of the University of Texas at Austin. These teams are referred to as the Texas Longhorns (or variously as Longhorns or 'Horns), taking their name from the Longhorn cattle that were an important part of the development of Texas, and are now the official "large animal" of the US State of Texas. The University of Texas at Austin is the apparent flagship institution of the University of Texas System. The women's teams are sometimes called the Lady Longhorns, but generally both the men's and women's teams are referred to as the Longhorns, and the mascot is a Texas Longhorn steer named Bevo.
The Longhorn nickname appeared in Texas newspapers by 1900.
The University of Texas at Austin offers a wide variety of varsity and intramural sports programs. Due to the breadth of sports offered and the quality of the programs, Texas was selected as "America's Best Sports College" in a 2002 analysis performed by Sports Illustrated. Texas was also listed as the number one Collegiate Licensing Company client from 2005–2007 in regards to the amount of annual trademark royalties received from the sales of its fan merchandise.
Texas is the only remaining NCAA Division I school to operate separate men's and women's athletic departments, after the other remaining holdout, the University of Tennessee, merged its men's and women's athletic departments at the end of the 2011–12 academic year.
Read more about Texas Longhorns: Varsity Sports, Halls of Honor, Longhorns At The Olympics, Championship History, Rivalries, Facilities, Traditions, Merchandise, TV Channel, Boosters
Famous quotes containing the words texas and/or longhorns:
“The pleasure of jogging and running is rather like that of wearing a fur coat in Texas in August: the true joy comes in being able to take the damn thing off.”
—Joseph Epstein (b. 1937)
“Worn down by the hoofs of millions of half-wild Texas cattle driven along it to the railheads in Kansas, the trail was a bare, brown, dusty strip hundreds of miles long, lined with the bleaching bones of longhorns and cow ponies. Here and there a broken-down chuck wagon or a small mound marking the grave of some cowhand buried by his partners “on the lone prairie” gave evidence to the hardships of the journey.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)