Yes, the SEC will be penalizing teams for the 'Horns Down' gesture as Texas begins play in the conference beginning this fall. An official explained the reasoning behind the decision.
SEC football official explains how 'Horns Down' penalty will be enforced for 2024 season
SEC coordinator of officials John McDaid fielded questions Tuesday at SEC Media Days about the "Horns Down" celebration and whether it will be penalized in 2024, the Texas Longhorns' first season as SEC members. The Big 12 added "Horns Down" as a taunting penalty in its rulebook last season. McDaid said the SEC's approach to the gesture will be more "contextual."
"Unsportsmanlike conduct needs to fit one of three categories: Is it taunting an opponent? Is it making a travesty of the game? Is it otherwise compromising our ability to manage the game?" McDaid said. "There's a difference between a player giving a signal directly in the face of an opponent, as opposed to doing it with teammates celebrating after a touchdown or on the sideline. Every single occurrence is not an act of unsportsmanlike conduct. If a player just does it to celebrate with his teammates, I call that a travesty. I don't have that directed at his opponent. It's contextual."
McDaid said he ultimately doesn't want officials to insert themselves into the game, and the approach to penalizing "Horns Down" will reflect that.
"We hear all the time, 'we don't want officials factoring into the game, let the two teams decide it,'" McDaid said. "Guess what? You put a flag down for unsportsmanlike conduct, you're moving someone 15 yards. You're giving the offense an automatic first down if it's the defense. That's inserting yourself into the game."
McDaid added that the same applies to players taunting Florida with the "Gator Chomp" and Ole Miss with the "Land Shark" signal.
"We already have some of this in our conference," McDaid said. "We've had opponents down in Gainesville winning and not using the Gator Chomp in a positive manner. As long as it hasn't been directed at an opponent for taunting, we haven't had a problem with it."
The taunt took on a new life in recent years for opponents of the Longhorns in just about all sports. Some Alabama football players wasted no time in displaying that to Texas players in Week 2 of the 2022 season after the Crimson Tide squeezed out a 20-19 victory against the Longhorns at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin. Then-Alabama coach Nick Saban wasn't a fan of it.
"I said it after the game, 'Don't do that stuff,'" Saban said following the contest. "I told our players, 'We're not doing this. Don't do it. It's not classy. We don't need to degrade the other team's traditions. Just go play.' You make choices and decisions, whether it's in school, as a person or as a player. Every time you think you're not doing the right thing — and most people who don't do the right thing know it's not the right thing before they do it, they just do it anyway. So don't do that stuff. Maybe we need to have that as a motto."
