Texas is finishing back-to-back trips to the college football playoffs under head coach Steve Sarkisian. Sarkisian has once again transformed the Texas Football Program into a national powerhouse after the longtime Longhorns struggled to regain their success.
However, the transition did not occur overnight. When Sarkisian arrived in Austin in January 2021, the first red flag he saw came at the end of his first spring as head coach.
He saw the team’s cumulative GPA of 2.33. This was what Sarkisian thought of as a prestigious university in Texas. That average was to write on the wall of what that first season looked under his guidance.
“Then the season rolled, it’s 5-7. We blew through the second half of the six straight lead,” Sarkisian recalled in a recent interview with Josh Patty. “Not very good. There are no draft topics. What was the problem? What was our problem? We said there is a cultural issue. We are not accountable. We are qualified. … In that moment, it is a real problem.
“We want talent, right? And we want talent, we want to keep talent, and we focus on the line of scrimmage and things like that. But it wasn’t a matter of talent we had that year. It was a matter of culture.”
A year later, Texas solidified the Longhorns as one of the best teams in the country over the past two seasons after improving to 8-5 overall in 2022. They finished the 2023 season with a 12-2 record. This included the Big 12 Championship and the final four-team CFP spot.
The Longhorns followed suit with 13 win seasons during their first season with the SEC, not to mention winning two games in the playoffs. Their success is set in 2025 for large expectations for the Sarksian group.
“And now, now we are moving on to our fifth year and what is coming out is that we have a group of players who have grown up with us, and I am thinking about what Kilby (Smart) can do in Georgia, what he could do in Clemson, or what he could do in Ohio State.
“They’re right in front of us in that cycle, but their cycle is going well. Our cycle is really just beginning. Now we’re just players who don’t know what we’re doing and why they’re important.”
The Longhorns efforts begin in the first week on the road with Ohio as Texas is considering making a three-straight appearance at CFP under Sarkisian’s guidance. The first week matchup was a rematch from last season’s national semi-finals, with the Buckeyes winning on their first national title in a decade.
