No, Texas didn’t pull scholarships of kneeling athletes | Fact check

An Aug. 29 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows two separate images of female basketball players taking a knee on a court and cheerleaders kneeling near a crowd of people.
“KNEELING: After the University of Texas, all students who knelt during the national anthem were rounded up and REMOVED FROM SCHOLARSHIPS,” reads the post’s caption.
It was shared more than 300 times in six days. A similar post was also shared widely on Facebook.
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A spokesperson for the University of Texas told Reuters the claim is false. Both images in the post show athletes from other schools.
Nothing on the university’s website supports the claim in the Facebook post, and John Bianco, a spokesperson for the university, said it is false.
“There’s no truth to this rumor,” Bianco told Reuters.
Neither of the images in the Facebook post shows Texas Longhorns athletes.
The larger image is from Jan. 7, 2021, when members of the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team took a knee before a game to promote racial equality, The Daily Beacon reported. That same day, the Knoxville News Sentinel published an image that showed the same scene from a different angle.
The smaller image is even older – it’s from Oct. 21, 2017, when cheerleaders for Kennesaw State University in Georgia kneeled in the tunnel before a football game, according to the Associated Press. In late 2019, one of the cheerleaders settled for $145,000 after she filed a lawsuit claiming her constitutional rights were violated when she was punished for kneeling by the university.
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The NCAA’s bylaws say schools can’t revoke an athlete’s scholarship during the academic year unless one of several conditions is met. Those range from submitting fraudulent applications or financial aid forms to being involved in what the school’s student disciplinary authority determines to be serious misconduct resulting in a “substantial” punishment.
In 2016, then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest racial inequality. His demonstration inspired other athletes to do the same and prompted a national debate about the act of kneeling during the anthem.
At the time, then-University of Texas System Chancellor Bill McRaven addressed the issue in a memo he sent to presidents and athletic directors in the system, The Texas Tribune reported. McRaven wrote, “While no one should be compelled to stand, they should recognize that by sitting in protest to the flag they are disrespecting everyone who sacrificed to make this country what it is today – as imperfect as it might be.”
USA TODAY debunked a similar claim in October 2023 that the University of Texas revoked the scholarships of three football players for kneeling during the national anthem.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
PolitiFact also debunked the claim.
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