When I was a kid, back in the waning Southwest Conference days of Arkansas sports, the only religion in our house was hating on Texas.
One of the few cultural advantages of growing up in a state like Arkansas, a land without big pro sports, and only one big-time college program, is knowing that gospel was statewide, undiluted. The SWC was, except for Arkansas, full of schools from Texas, a state whose self-regard outpaces even its ample waistline. It made being a hater so straightforward, in a sense. There were Texas schools, and then there was us.
Every one of Arkansas’ most detested rivals could fit inside that single word, and indeed, the spiritual core of Arkansas sportsdom — the forever sense of being an outsider, of getting a raw shake from the in-club, and of regarding every victory as a blow for underdogs everywhere — grew out of that unshakable geographical fact.