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Longhorn Network

American sports network

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ3259110
Source-derived summary

Longhorn Network (LHN) was an American regional sports network owned as a joint venture between The University of Texas at Austin, ESPN and Learfield (formerly IMG College), and was operated by ESPN (itself owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company, Hearst Communications, and the National Football League). The network, which launched on August 26, 2011, focused on the Texas Longhorns varsity sports teams of the University of Texas at Austin, and broadcast programs such as pre- and post-game shows, event replays, coach's shows, original series and documentaries chronicling the Longhorns and their history, and live coverage of Longhorns events not carried by other Big 12 Conference media partners.

Longhorn Network was announced by ESPN on January 19, 2011. The name and logo were revealed during the Longhorns' spring football game on April 3, 2011. It held the third-tier media rights to the Longhorns, and featured events from 20 different sports involving the Texas Longhorns athletics department, along with original and historical programming. The network also featured academic and cultural content from the UT Austin campus.

Due to the Longhorns' move from the Big 12 Conference (whose media rights structure allowed for the arrangement Longhorn Network was established under) on July 1, 2024 to the SEC (whose media rights are fully owned by ESPN, and has its own cable channel in SEC Network), the network was closed on June 30, 2024. The LHN branding was repurposed for a school-run digital platform that will carry similar content, as well as archived original programming from the ESPN-run channel.

Carriage

The first national provider to carry the Longhorn Network was fiber optic television service Verizon FiOS, which announced a deal to carry the network in August 2011. On August 31, 2012, the network began to be carried on AT&T U-verse.

Editorial summary

“Longhorn Network” enters the record as american sports network. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Longhorn, Network and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2011, 2024, 2012—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2011. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Longhorn, Network and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Longhorn Network” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Longhorn, Network and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3259110. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2024 and 2012.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Longhorn Network”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Longhorn Network primary sources, Longhorn Network archive and Longhorn research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Longhorn Network”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Longhorn Network” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.