Steve Sarkisian explains how Texas made its focus on 2023 evident during the 2024 SEC opponent reveal
The college football world, the burnt orange pocket of it included, tuned into the SEC Network on June 14 in order to learn who Texas would host or where the Longhorns would travel during the program’s first football season as a member of the Southeastern Conference.
Longhorn fans would soon learn Florida, Georgia, Mississippi State, and Kentucky would venture to Austin as part of the conference’s first season with Texas and Oklahoma as members, while the Horns would stampede to Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Vanderbilt for road matchups. Of course, the Red River Showdown with OU remained on the docket and in its rightful place at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
Most Longhorns had their attention on 2024, but not all. Within the UT football locker room, players wanted to make clear that their focus was on the title up for grabs during the 2023 season. Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian posted a picture of the upcoming 2023 season’s slate. Many players retweeted the post or posted the picture themselves indicating that despite the discussion around the SEC, the current team’s focus was on a successful final season in the Big 12.
How did this counter-campaign of sorts come to be? Sarkisian explained how it happened during his appearance on the Always College Football podcast.
“We were in a team meeting and I was referencing ‘hey, just so you guys are aware, they’re going to release the SEC schedule tonight,'” Sarkisian said. “These guys wanted to put out our 2023 schedule to remind everybody who we were playing this year.”
Only one player on the Texas roster, sixth year senior O-lineman Christian Jones, has been on a Longhorn roster that made it to the Big 12 championship game. The rest of the players wearing burnt orange have yet to be on the sidelines for the early December contest in Arlington to crown a Big 12 champion.
The current team includes players recruited to Texas by Sarkisian and those who originally signed on to play for Tom Herman. Sarkisian said the two groups have come together to form one team with one goal in mind.
“I really feel like our team is on a mission,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve been building for this, to win a Big 12 Championship. They will all tell you we missed an opportunity a year ago to not play for the Big 12 Championship because of our own undoing. We made some mistakes in a couple of games that cost us an opportunity to be in that game, and these guys have been in a mission all winter and all spring.”
Texas hasn’t played for the conference title since 2018, and hasn’t won the Big 12 since 2009. That written, the Longhorns are the betting favorites to win the league and many of college football’s most recognized voices believe this could finally be the year Texas takes home its fourth Big 12 title. Others believe Sarkisian hasn’t done enough to change the Texas program into one that can contend for a conference title.
Sarkisian has been forthright about wanting to leave the Big 12 as champion. How has he made sure his team hasn’t absorbed too much of what’s now infamously known as ‘rat poison?’
“I try to show both ends of the spectrum,” Sarkisian said. “I can show somebody who says we’re a potential playoff team, and I can show a national reporter who says we have no chance of winning the Big 12 Championship. When I can put both of them on the table or both of them on the overhead side-by-side, it’s really not what anybody else thinks. It’s about what we do and what we believe in this room.”
Sarkisian said he understands players will absorb commentary about their chances to win the conference and have a successful final season in the Big 12. However, his point of emphasis was what they are remembered as won’t be determined by offseason prognostications.
“We’re going to define who we’re going to be by the way we play,” Sarkisian said.
