Head coach Steve Sarkisian has created a winning culture in Austin, with a Big 12 championship and a position in the College Football Playoff.
The Texas Longhorns trailed the Alabama Crimson Tide by three points in the fourth quarter in Tuscaloosa in the second week of the 2023 college football season, when at least a dozen schools believed this would be their year of destiny—and long before we could have known Steve Sarkisian had built one of the best teams in the country.
We can now look back on that single quarter of football and see how it was the beginning of the end for Texas football. At least, that’s when the difference became clear.
Sarkisian would subsequently explain that his unsuccessful first two seasons as head coach at Texas were part of a rebuilding process for a school that had fallen out of contention for the national championship. Since the Longhorns’ national title run in 2009, Texas has gone through four head coaches and received nearly nothing in return, finishing a season rated higher than nineteenth in the Associated Press Top 25 only once.
This had been a shocking decline for a school that considers itself one of college football’s blue-blood programs—an institution that boasts to the world that its riches are the deepest, its facilities are the swankiest, and its recruits are the best. Sarkisian was hired in 2021 as the next coach charged with rekindling the Longhorn flame after Mack Brown was fired in 2013. Sarkisian had a unique journey to one of the country’s most high-profile coaching jobs, having spent five seasons as the head coach at Washington and two at Southern California before being sacked for drinking on the job in 2015. Sarkisian’s career was in tatters when Alabama’s Nick Saban hired him to the Crimson Tide coaching staff, giving him a chance to rebuild his reputation.
Chris Del Conte, the athletic director at the University of Texas, hired Sarkisian in 2021, a much questioned decision that could prove to be the defining move of his tenure. “I took this job with the mindset that we’re going to come here and win championships,” Sarkisian told reporters recently. “I said it at the start of the news conference. I expressed it in my very first encounter with these [players]. I’ve said it to them more politely. I’ve told them in other ways.”
But this autumn in Tuscaloosa, with the Longhorns down three games and mediocre results in Sarkisian’s previous two seasons, there was still plenty of uncertainty that the coach could turn things around. Texas had a total record of 13-12 in his first two years, and he began his third with an odd 37-10 victory over Rice. They were now in the Deep South, behind 16-13, with practically all of the 100,077 shouting supporters expecting the home team to win.
Since Saban took over as coach in 2007, Alabama has nearly never lost a game like this. The writing appeared to be on the wall for Texas. Only this time it went differently. In the fourth quarter, Texas dominated Alabama, scoring 21 points on two 75-yard touchdown drives and one shorter drive after forcing a turnover. Texas won 34-24, and Alabama supporters were startled when the Longhorns danced happily off the field.
This was the first time Sarkisian’s Longhorns had delivered after all the hype about creating a new culture and forging a team based on talent, toughness, and accountability. “A lot of people walk into the stadium, and the mystique of Alabama—they’re beat before the ball gets kicked off,” Sarkisian remarked at the time. “I had to make sure that our players understood that we are capable of coming in here and winning.”
“But the moment doubt creeps in,” he says, “that’s when you can start making mistakes that will get you beat.” I wanted to make it clear to our players that we are not afraid of them. We appreciate them… But we were good enough to win here.”
Texas overcame practically every other challenge on route to a 12-1 record and a spot in the College Football Playoff for the first time. The Longhorns will face Washington in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day for a chance to face the winner of Alabama-Michigan in the national championship game on January 8 in Houston.
The Longhorns appear to be capable of defeating anyone entering the Playoffs. Quinn Ewers is every bit as excellent as he was advertised to be when he departed Southlake Carroll High in the Dallas suburbs before his senior season in 2021 to play at Ohio State. His decision to return to his home state for the 2022 season has become the most essential acquisition for the Longhorns’ resurgent program.
Ewers rededicated himself to his skills and training after an uneven first season in Austin, and his 21 touchdown passes and 70.5 percent completion percentage this season are at the heart of an offense that has averaged 36 points and 476 yards per game. Texas returned all five offensive line starters from 2022, and with four- and five-star talent strewn throughout the squad, the Longhorns have looked unbeatable at times.
With 73 catches for 969 yards and five touchdowns, wide receiver and return specialist Xavier Worthy may be the fastest player in college football. Adonai Mitchell, who transferred from Georgia and caught ten touchdown passes, is one of four Longhorns with at least 25 receptions. When standout running back Jonathon Brooks (1,139 yards and ten touchdowns) went down against TCU with a season-ending knee injury, rookie CJ Baxter and others stepped up admirably. It’s the same story on defense. Texas has playmakers all over the field, including linebacker Jaylan Ford and defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat, who are two of the best in Longhorns history.
The Longhorns’ lone blunder this season was allowing Oklahoma to drive 75 yards late in the fourth quarter of a 34-30 Sooner victory. Otherwise, UT handled business in the end game. Texas tied Houston in the fourth quarter before going on to win 31-24. They overcame Kansas State in overtime, 33-30, then held on to beat TCU, 29-26, after leading by twenty points.
Texas ended the regular season with a 57-7 thrashing of Texas Tech, and then won its first Big 12 Championship in fourteen years with a 49-21 thrashing of Oklahoma State on Saturday in Arlington. With Michigan, Washington, and Florida State all undefeated, the College Football Playoff committee considered style points when selecting its final four teams. It eventually defeated 13-0 Florida State, who lost Heisman Trophy hopeful quarterback Jordan Travis to a season-ending injury in November, as Texas and Alabama earned the final two semifinal berths.
“I told these guys to come out here and play like no one’s ever seen us before,” Ewers remarked on Saturday. “Prove to them what Texas football is all about.” There’s no finer feeling, especially for the guys who have always dreamed of playing here and visiting their home state. Achieving anything of this size has been nothing short of a privilege.”
In the Big 12 championship game, he threw three of his four touchdown passes in the first quarter and finished with a career-high 452 yards. Six different Longhorns caught at least three receptions, but his two-yard touchdown ball to Sweat, the 362-pound defensive end, may have been the highlight.
Sarkisian started the week by reminding his players that Oklahoma State will put them to the test in a variety of ways, and that they needed to answer in kind. “He didn’t want us coming out and throwing jabs,” said running back Keilan Robinson. “We’ve got to come out with haymakers and uppercuts.” We wanted to terminate it right away. And that’s exactly what we did.”
As Texas neared its best season since 2009 last month, Sarkisian provided reporters a lengthy five-minute description of how the Longhorns have restored the program’s culture since 2021. “Culture is organic,” he explained. “There is no sign in your building. You’re not wearing a T-shirt. It is not dismantling the team and saying, ‘Hey, culture on three.’ ”
He stated that it “manifests itself with the relationships that you build” and went through a list of characteristics that teams with strong cultures have: dedication, discipline, accountability, mental and physical toughness, love, vulnerability, and transparency. “I just can’t say those things,” he explained. “We have to live those things, and then we have to have teachable moments along the way, A) to celebrate the guys that are doing those things, [and] B) point out when maybe we’re not.”
“Who you are some of the time is who you are all of the time,” he added. So, if you want to be a disciplined football team on the field every weekend, you must also be disciplined off the field. How are things doing at school? How are we doing in terms of community service? That becomes your culture… Because you are who you are. That is how we go about our daily lives.”
Sarkisian stated that culture can be evident in the smallest of details, such as when former UT running backs Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson began cleaning up meeting rooms after meetings. “When those guys were gone, the running backs [were] the ones that cleaned up the team room,” he went on to say. “Now, when we break a team meeting, everyone looks around [to clean up].”
“I know them seem insignificant. But, in the end, those are huge things to me because it means that’s how we think all the time,” he remarked. “I believe those actions and behaviors lead to big wins, leads to first-and-goal on the five and your defense has to make four stops, leads to third-and-twelve backed up on the road and you convert a first down.” I believe that leads to those guys relying on one another because they are doing the correct things on a daily basis.And, while we aren’t perfect, and I don’t want our players to be, if they can be coachable on and off the field, and if they can learn from one another, we will continue to grow and our culture will continue to flourish.
“But it takes being vulnerable,” Sarkisian explained. “It takes being open and honest with one another.” It takes getting to know one another to have empathy for what a player is going through—not only on the field, but off.”
“We invest a lot in that,” he added at the end of his diatribe. “And I think it’s obvious to me that it’s paying dividends.” Because I believe that if your culture is strong enough, culture will triumph over talent. Culture and talent combined are a really potent force. And that’s what we’ve trying to achieve here.”
Sarkisian’s investment in culture has paid off, with a chance to contend for Texas’ first national championship since the 2005 season.
