Mystery of the Texas "Teasippers" nickname

[Barry Popik]

My Texas Longhorns lost to the Oklahoma Sooners today. Bunch of tea-sippers.
...
I looked again, and it appears that the nickname comes from the
November 1936 and should appear when I check the Houston Post.
...
...
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3 November 1936, Galveston <i>Daily News</i>, "Here's the Dope" by
Bill Van Fleet, pg. 6, col. 1:
WE'VE never been lynched, nor have we seen any other sports writer
lynched, but the stage was pretty well set for one or two sports
writers we could name to be the main-most characters at a first-class
neck-stretchin' over the weekend on the University of Texas campus.

We wandered up there Saturday in the course of a trip to cover the S.
M. U.-Texas game, and found the students to be in an uproar,
principally about what Lloyd Gregory of the Houston Post had said
about the Longhorns and their type of play against Rice the week
before.

Gregory, having seen the Longhorns play a dirty brand of football
against Rice, had charged them with that kind of play in black and
white, and it wasn't sitting so well with the Texas campus.

It so happened that we had written along the very same lines as
Gregory, and any charges that the two of us might have "framed up" the
charges can bi dissipated by proof of the fact the two of us didn't
see each other at the game or afterward, and that neither knew the
other was there.

FRIDAY NIGHT at the pep rally preceding the S. M. U. game the students
were given a new song, purportedly written by Gregory, to sing. They
sang it then and at the game Saturday they kept singing it until S. M.
U. became too stout for the Steers. Then there wasn't much singing at
all.

The song, funny enough if you forget that it is doing an injustice to
a guy who had the nerve to write what he saw, follows:

<i>A gridirons' just for tea and toast
Take if from the Houston Post
If a man would run and twist
Only slap him on the wrist. (...)</i>
...
...
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26 November 1936, San Antonio <i>Light</i>, pg. 5B, col. 1:
<i>Tea, Toast,</i>
<i>Honey All</i>
<i>The Boys Get</i>

AUSTIN, Nov. 26. -- (INS) -- The life of a football player is a hard
one, the University of Texas Longhorns agreed today as they sat down
to their Thanksgiving dinner.

Thinking of turkey and all the trimmings, they found only tea, toast
and honey on their bare Thanksgiving training table.

Coach Jack Chevigney (Chevigny is correct -- ed.) ordered the rations
cut so none of his team would be too full for the Aggies.
...
[Texas beat Texas A&M 7-0 that game -- ed.]

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