Texas turned corner, but will that continue in SEC?
NEW ORLEANS – A 12-win season is rarely easy.
Repeating that success? Even harder. Sustaining it over time? Another level altogether.
Fans sometimes have the bad habit of assuming big seasons happen for reasons beyond the obvious. But it takes sustained effort to make it to the college football semifinals, and no matter the result, one should not assume their team can use a great season as some sort of get-into-the-CFP-free card.
The 2023 Texas Longhorns will be remembered as the team that broke a 13year drought between Big 12 titles, the one that started a possible return to national relevance and, sadly, the one that came within one Sugar Bowl win of getting a shot at a fifth national title.
Monday night’s 37-31 finale in the Big Easy was anything but because Washington was that good. Huskies quarterback Michael Penix was surgical and No. 2 Washington (14-0), which will now take on undefeated Michigan next week in Houston, deserved to win.
Texas has sent a message to the college football universe that it can win in hostile environments, recruit with the very best and compete in the transfer portal marketplace as well as anybody.
With that said, it would be a huge mistake to assume the Horns will all of a sudden turn into Alabama or Georgia and start collecting CFP appearances like they’re some coin collection. To assume “This is who we are now” after one 12-2 season would be to overlook what it took to get here. Head coach Steve Sarkisian did one hell of a job to turn a 5-7 Austin nightmare in 2021 into something beautiful two years later, but he understands that it all starts over in 2024 with no bonus points given because of what went down this season.
“This doesn’t just happen,” he said. “It took 12 months of hard work. We have to make sure that complacency doesn’t set in . ... And then we go right back to the foundation of building the team, whether it’s winter conditioning, spring ball, summer workouts, training, camp, Culture Wednesdays, all the things that we do.”
Then, later: “Every year, a coach must rebuild the character of a football team.”
Mack Brown’s run of double-digit winning seasons from 2001 to 2009 didn’t happen because he was adept at remembering names and kissing babies. Mack, like Sarkisian mentors Nick Saban at Alabama and Pete Carroll at Southern Cal, put in the hours needed to make the Horns a national player.
For Sarkisian, getting to this point was a painstaking process that came with a lot of dark days, but the building blocks are there, culturally for sure.
The loss will sting because No. 3 Texas (12-2) didn’t play to the level to which we had become accustomed in big games. This wasn’t the same team that spanked Alabama in Tuscaloosa in September or the one that smoked Texas Tech and Oklahoma State to close out the regular season.
The Longhorns didn’t play well on Monday night, but that doesn’t take away from a program-changing season in Sarkisian’s third year.
Yes, the Longhorns won 12 games for the first time since Colt McCoy was leading the program to a 25-2 finish over the 2008 and 2009 seasons, the program’s last real moment of national relevance. Those teams went 12-1 and 13-1, finished in the top three of the final rankings and it was at that point that Mack’s run of dynastic seasons hit a wall.
There are zero guarantees that the Horns – or anyone else – will make it back to the CFP semifinals next season, but it’s particularly daunting for Texas’ case because the Longhorns will no longer be in the Big 12.
The SEC brings with it a whole new set of challenges because of the obvious step up in blue bloods within the league. We already know the Horns will travel to Michigan and host Georgia in 2024 in addition to the annual Red River Rivalry game with Oklahoma and the resumption of their century-old rivalry with Texas A&M.
Making it back to football’s Final Four will be a steep uphill climb with the start of the 12-team playoff.
Sarkisian knows only one way to get things down and that’s to attack with effort. “I think that there’s a lot of lessons to be learned that the value of that hard work that we put in is the reason that we’re in this position,” he said. “So we’ve got to get right back to it again.”