‘The Eyes of Texas’ is here to stay, UT says. So is the fight over its roots.

The choice was theirs, players were told. They would not be forced to remain on the field and sing the song following games. The marching band even elected not to play it.

But then the Longhorns lost a big rivalry game, and fans noticed the players’ absence during the playing of “The Eyes of Texas.” Cue the uproar. Fans criticized players on social media. Alumni sent an avalanche of emails to administrators, including some that invoked racist tropes. Big-pocketed donors threatened to end their patronage.

Months later, the song remains a postgame tradition in Austin. And while school officials insist that athletes aren’t required to sing it, the pressure on them appears here to stay, too.

University of Texas president Jay Hartzell, who commissioned the report, had already pledged to keep the song. He tasked the committee of faculty experts, students and archivists not with determining the tradition’s fate but with uncovering its history, he told reporters on Monday. If the committee unearthed new and damaging information about “The Eyes of Texas,” he might have reconsidered, he said. But it didn’t.

No athletes, cheerleaders or band members will be penalized for not singing or performing “The Eyes of Texas,” Hartzell said. “Nobody has been or will be required to sing the song,” he said.

But he said he hoped the report would encourage students to find ways to take part in the school tradition. This includes the most scrutinized group involved in the months-long controversy: the football players.

“We hope that as people go through the report, read through the facts that they’ll find ways to participate in some way,” Hartzell said. “But there’s going to be no punishment, no mandate, no requirement if people choose not to participate.”

There likely will, however, be backlash for players who don’t, and more frustration among players who feel pressure to sing.

“I signed up to play football, not … [to] sing a song at the end of the game,” said one current Texas football player, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retribution from the team. “That’s not what I signed up for.”

The song became a flashpoint last June, when several football players shared a letter on social media on behalf of the campus’s athletes, demanding change. The list included renaming buildings and adding statues of more diverse Longhorns. The final charge was for the school to replace “The Eyes of Texas” with a new song without “racist undertones.”

According to the current football player, Herman allowed players to express themselves about the song, and other matters of racial injustice, during a summer team meeting. Among his college coaching peers, Herman stood out as one of the first to make a statement after George Floyd was killed by a police officer. He placed the decision of whether to sing the song in his team’s hands, the player said.

In the first two weeks of last season, several players left the field before the song was played following victories over Texas Tech and Texas Christian. Then, on Oct. 10, Texas lost its annual rivalry game, the Red River Shootout, against Oklahoma. An image went viral of senior Sam Ehlinger, the team’s White quarterback, appearing to stand alone while making the “Hook ‘em Horns” hand signal during the alma mater. Many in the fan base erupted in anger.

Former Longhorn defensive back Caden Sterns, who spoke out about the song last season, said he heard about the threats from alumni that he would have to find work outside of Texas if he didn’t sing. “I’ve already received so much BS, you can say, as part of this whole thing,” Sterns said in a recent interview.

Sterns described Texas as his “dream” school but declared for the NFL Draft after his junior season. He said the controversy factored into his decision to leave school early.

“Partially, it did, honestly,” Sterns said. “I knew for sure that I wasn’t going back to Texas.”

Fans also took their complaints to the top. University administrators were flooded with emails, many obtained by the Austin American-Statesman, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma game.

“Get rid of players before you get rid of the song,” wrote one donor, whose name was redacted. “If you give in it will never end, they will just demand something else … If the University concedes to the blackmail of our student athletes and stops playing the Eyes of Texas; I will never give another dollar of donations to the Athletic department or the school that I love.”

“The players on this team … are low character thugs that are stealing from the University and embarrassing former students who love UT,” another alum, whose name was also redacted, emailed Hartzell.

In another email, the women’s volleyball team was singled out.

“If your girls do not want to sing the Eyes of Texas, then you tell them to get their butts OFF the court so we can sing it with pride and not be disgusted by their somber huddle,” wrote a person who identified as a season-ticket holder.

The Longhorn football player, who said he believes the song’s origins are racist, said there was another team meeting following the backlash from the Oklahoma game. This time, Herman and the school’s athletic director Chris Del Conte led the session.

“We start losing, his job is on the line: Okay, now you got to stand. Now you’ve got to stay out there,” the player said in an interview last month. “Now Del Conte is saying we’ve got to stay out there because it’s dividing our fan base. That’s what we were told: We had to stand out there because it’s dividing our fan base.

“Okay, it sounds to me that they’re threatening your money,” the player continued, “because just before the season, you said we didn’t have to stand out there but now we’ve got to stand out there, we’ve got to stay on the field before the song is over with.”

In the report published Tuesday, the Eyes of Texas History Committee confirmed widely-known facts about the song’s origins. It dates back to 1902, when a pair of students penned the lyrics of the song as a way to satirize a common phrase used by William Prather, the university’s president at the time.

A version of historical events that once appeared on the official Texas alumni website reported that Prather had taken and revised the phrase from Lee (“the eyes of the South are upon you”), the committee found no direct link between Prather’s line and Lee’s.

The report also confirmed that the song “almost certainly” debuted at a show in which singers performed in blackface on May 12, 1903 — a painful and uncomfortable reality of the time, members of the history committee acknowledged. Still, the committee concluded that since the lyrics of “The Eyes of Texas” were not intended for laughs, in the tradition of common minstrelsy that mocked Black Americans, it is likely the quartet removed the blackface makeup before performing the song.

“The research leads us to surmise that intent of ‘The Eyes of Texas’ was not overtly racist,” the committee wrote. “However, it is similarly clear that the cultural milieu that produced it was.”

Hartzell said he hopes the report will help change minds on campus — and in the Longhorns’ locker room. On Tuesday, he plans to meet with the football team to address the report.

“It’s going to be an ongoing set of conversations, and I know for groups like the band there’s going to continue to be those discussions,” Hartzell said, “now we believe and hope armed with a better set of facts as we go forward.”