Texas certainly remembers the Alamo Bowl.

While bowl selections will not officially take place until Sunday, all signs indicate that Texas can expect to play in the Valero Alamo Bowl again this year. 

The Alamo Bowl, which takes place on Dec. 29 at the Alamodome in San Antonio, pits the second-best team from the Big 12 conference against a Pac-12 conference team annually. Since TCU is headed for the College Football Playoff, Kansas State will likely earn the conference’s top bid to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, leaving third-place Texas to fill in at the Alamo Bowl.

If selected, the Longhorns would make their record-extending sixth trip to San Antonio on the bowl’s 30th anniversary. 

Although Texas’ two most recent appearances were led by former head coach Tom Herman and not current head coach Steve Sarkisian, Texas would make its third Alamo Bowl in four seasons. Herman was fired after two-straight Alamo Bowl victories, but the Longhorns missed out on a bowl entirely in Sarkisian’s first year as coach a season ago. 

Regardless of which bowl game the Longhorns are selected for, Sarkisian said his plan for the extra weeks of bowl practice remains the same. In order to keep things from getting mundane for his players, Sarkisian will focus the first few practices on reworking the basics before ultimately shifting towards gameplanning in the later practices.

“I think you have to keep it fresh this time of year,” Sarkisian said on Monday.

If the Longhorns would have found their way into the conference championship game this weekend, they would be looking at a Sugar Bowl appearance. Instead, that fortune lies with Kansas State, regardless of how it performs against TCU.

Undefeated TCU can all but secure a playoff berth with a win against Kansas State. Should the Horned Frogs lose, they would still be in position to secure a New Year’s Six bowl game. 

With TCU and Kansas State off the table for the Alamo Bowl, Texas is left holding the best record out of the remaining Big 12 teams. 

Prior to the Big 12 championship, the Longhorns were just one Kansas State loss from appearing in the title game themselves. However, all Texas could do was watch as Kansas failed to get the needed victory over the Wildcats on Saturday.

Sarkisian, who described watching the Kansas-Kansas State game as “hard,” said he never wants his team to be in the position of having to root for another team again.

“It was a lesson learned for us,” Sarkisian said. “You never want to put your fate in someone else’s hands. You want to control your own fate and we didn’t do that.”

As Texas inches closer to its final matchup of the 2022 season, whether it be the Alamo Bowl or another bowl game, it may field a roster that looks different than it did in the regular season. In a recent trend for bowl games across the sport of college football, players with NFL Draft aspirations may choose to opt out of the bowl game in an effort to prevent injury.

When asked about his thoughts on opt-outs, Sarkisian said he tries to have candid conversations with players who are considering opting out of a bowl game.

“I hate it for them that they have to make that choice,” Sarkisian said. “(Bowl games) are a great opportunity and you get to celebrate with your team. You’ve earned that.”