National Champions

Here in Austin we all are still celebrating the Longhorns winning the NCAA 2005 National Football Championship. Not to take anything away from that, but another local university recently won a different college championship. Just this week the Texas University Bobcats won the 2006 College Cheerleading and Dance Team Championship. It was the all-girl squad and was their third time to win the competition. The co-ed squad also did well, reaching the finals and placing eighth.

Granted, UT is a Tier 1 university and is one of the largest, most prestigious schools in the nation, but sometimes it feels like the accomplishments of the other local universities (there are at least five, not count community colleges, within 30 minutes of UT) are overshadowed by UT. Shouldn't we get some recognition too?

Last semester I was talking to someone who said that their little sister had transferred from Texas State to UT because of the strength of UT's advertising program. This person didn't realize that Texas State consistently wins the state American Advertising Federation student advertising competition (usually the biggest competition comes from SMU, not UT) and does well in the national competition. In fact, this summer the team won the national championship for the second time.

As for the Texas State football team, the conference it plays in actually has playoffs, and not bowl games. This fall the team made it all the way to the national semifinals before being beat. Since this happened during the lull of the UT season, we did get a bit of coverage on this, but the high school playoffs received more.

I'm sure this is not unique to Texas State -- I bet the other local colleges also sometimes feel like the redhead step-child compared to UT. I'm not saying that UT is unimportant, I would just like to see more press coverage regarding the other schools. The news doesn't have to be all UT. After all, isn't winning a national advertising championship just as newsworthy as losing the bid to run Los Alamos?