Texas senior center Connor Robertson is as, well, Texas as you can get.
He was born in Austin, starred in high school there at Austin Westlake and then took his talents right down the road to Texas to play his college football. He was born and raised in the Longhorns culture, with all of that tradition and all of that burnt orange burned into his blood.
What Robertson isn’t nearly as familiar with is the SEC‘s other orange program over there in Knoxville. That’s the program his top-ranked Longhorns are going to have to slay on Saturday if they want to keep that No. 1 ranking and if they want to stay undefeated. It’ll be Texas heading to face No. 14 Tennessee at iconic Neyland Stadium in a noon ET kickoff on ABC, and on Monday, in the beginning to the leadup to the showdown, Robertson got a first-class lesson in another iconic Tennessee football tradition.
He got to hear “Rocky Top” on blast during Monday’s practice.
Perhaps it was a motivational tool by Steve Sarkisian to get his team focused and ready to go on the road and hand Tennessee its first loss of the season in the battle of 3-0 teams who’ll be playing their SEC openers.
Or perhaps Sarkisian just wanted to remind his players what they’re stepping into on Saturday in the stadium with those checkerboard end zones.
Whatever the reason was, Robertson was down with the song.
“It’s a pretty good song. I like it,” Robertson said to reporters on Monday.
So there, Tennessee. No bulletin board material was provided by the veteran Texas center.
Texas is going to have to conquer Rocky Top to stay undefeated on Saturday, and here is what the Kalshi market is currently saying about the top-ranked Longhorns’ chances to escape Knoxville unscathed in Week 4:
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
