#TXLEGE: About Larson's "Restore the Rivalry" Bill

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right."
Ephesians 6:1

Yesterday, Lyle Larson filed a football bill:

A Texas House member wants to bring back an annual football game between the state's two flagship universities: the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University.

On Tuesday, state Rep. Lyle Larson, a San Antonio Republican who earned a bachelor's degree from A&M, filed House Bill 412, which would require the two teams to "play a nonconference, regular-season football game against one another on the fourth Thursday, Friday, or Saturday of November each year."

We confess mixed feelings, let us explain.

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Our first reaction was that it's about damn time the legislature reminds the universities who's boss.

It's not a secret that this author has been advocating for many years for the legislature to shorten the leash on which the universities are kept.  Honestly, we've been at it so long that we've lost interest in the topic.  One can only be proven right so many times.

If football can be the topic that rouses the legislature to exercise its atrophied oversight authority, maybe that's the start of something good.

Lord knows, the two teams should certainly play each other.

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That being said, for Lyle friggin' Larson to be the one filing this bill...is quite something.

Never forget: Lyle Larson was on the Wallace Hall impeachment committee.

This was a committee that spent a year and a half claiming that constitutional oversight of the higher ed. bureaucracy was "micromanaging."

Larson might be right on the substance.  The legislature has authority.  Still, for Lyle Larson to involve himself in football scheduling, when he turned a blind eye to criminal financial mismanagement is...ironic at best.

[Note: We could say the same thing about Larson's "Save Muny" bill from last session.]

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Bottom Line: We don't have a problem with the substance of the bill, but the bill author's chutzpah is a sight to behold....