For years, the University of Texas has used the “Hook’em Horns” hand gesture without properly crediting its originator, hard rock icon Ronnie James Dio. According to a representative from the Dio family, it’s time that Texas starts paying for it.
In a lawsuit filed in Texas Superior Court on Monday, the Dio family has asked University of Texas to pay 730 billion dollars to Dio’s estate for “taking the most significant symbol in the satanic heavy metal community and polluting it by associating it with college football and a state best known for barbeque, executions and electing half-wit governors.”
Dio’s horns have been stolen by thousands of organizations and artists in an attempt to seem more edgy. Everyone from Eminem to soon-to-be presidential candidate Hillary Clinton have co-opted the sign in order to cash in on “the metal image” while not paying any respects to the man who created the symbol. The American Sign Language community has even perverted the satanic horns gesture and made it mean “I love you”.
Dio first began using the gesture at a Black Sabbath concert in Birmingham, Alabama in 1979. In an interview with MetalRoofing.com in 2001, Dio claimed that he saw the image of the Virgin Mary hovering over an International House of Pancakes about an hour before the concert. That image was devoured by the image of the demon Azazel. When the demon finished eating the Virgin Mary it stared Dio in the eye and flashed him “the sign”. The rest is history.
The lawsuit is another in a series of blows to the once proud University of Texas football program. The team is off to a horrendous 3 and 4 start and several key players have been kicked off of the team.
Many have questioned whether the curse placed on the program by Dio at the end of the 2005-06 National Championship season is responsible. Dio, who was a huge USC fan, and his spiritual advisor Ned LaVey, son of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey, allegedly performed a ceremony where they drank a mixture of bulls’ blood, Jagermeister and the spinal fluid of Longhorns quarterback Vince Young.
This ritual has led to a series of troubles for the University of Texas including a critical injury to Quarterback Colt McCoy during the 2009-10 National Championship Game and boils developing on the face of Coach Mack Brown during a 2011 game against Oklahoma. Once the University pays the Dio family the 730 billion dollars it is owed, the curse will be removed and Texas will once again return to prominence in the college football world.
