AUSTIN, TEXAS — The University of Texas at Austin announced Monday that the Texas Longhorns will be unveiling a new team logo featuring a cow wearing a traditional Indian turban and bindi, saying the updated design will better reflect the university’s changing demographics and the increasingly international character of the state.
University officials said the redesigned mascot was created after administrators determined that the old logo no longer adequately represented the full range of people who attend the school, work in Texas or are currently being recruited to do so.
“We felt it was important for our branding to evolve alongside our student body, our workforce and our increasingly globalized economy,” said UT spokesperson Karen Whitfield. “The longhorn is still there. We’ve simply made several necessary cultural updates to it to reflect our much-needed demographic change. If we don’t import millions of foreigners into our state, Texas will not survive.”
The stunning rebrand comes just days after social media erupted over a photo of the Longhorns’ student section, which critics noted looked less like a traditional Texas tailgate and more like a call center in Kolkata.
“We don’t want to erase Texas culture,” said university President Jim Davis. “We just want to systematically dismantle every recognizable aspect of its history and replace it with people who have never heard of the Alamo.”
