Texas Longhorns
intercollegiate sports teams of the University of Texas
The Texas Longhorns are the athletic teams representing the University of Texas at Austin, a public university in Austin, Texas, United States, and the flagship institution of the University of Texas System.
The teams take their name from Longhorn cattle that were an important part of the development of Texas, and are now the official "large animal" of the state of Texas. The Longhorn nickname had begun appearing in Texas newspapers by 1900, and is often shortened to the Horns Generally, both the men's and women's teams are referred to as the Longhorns. The mascot is a Texas Longhorn steer named Bevo. The Longhorns have consistently been ranked as the biggest brand in collegiate athletics, in both department size and breadth of appeal.
The University of Texas at Austin offers a wide variety of varsity and intramural sports programs, and was selected as "America's Best Sports College" in a 2002 analysis by Sports Illustrated. Texas was also listed as the number one Collegiate Licensing Company client from 2005 to 2013 in regards to the amount of annual trademark royalties received from the sales of its fan merchandise.
Until Athletic Director Chris Del Conte altered the organizational structure of the athletic department in 2017, Texas was 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.
Varsity sports
A charter member of the Southwest Conference until its dissolution in 1996, the Texas Longhorns competed in the Big 12 Conference until 2024. The Texas Longhorns joined the Southeastern Conference for the 2024–2025 season with the University of Oklahoma for a reported $100 million, as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
“Texas Longhorns” enters the record as intercollegiate sports teams of the University of Texas. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Texas, Longhorns and intercollegiate can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2615493. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1900, 2002, 2005 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Texas Longhorns” 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.