Despite being four-time national champions, the 2024 Sugar Bowl marks Texas’ first appearance in the College Football Playoff. 

The Longhorns won their first three championships in 1963, 1969 and 1970 through the National Polls, which lasted until 1991, while the College Football Playoff made its debut in 2014. The most recent title, in 2005, came in the Bowl Championship Series, which ended in 2013 at the induction of the new playoff format. 

“Winning the National Championship is the ultimate goal and we are so fortunate to have four of them here at Texas,” former Texas coach Tom Herman said on the 50th anniversary of the 1969 title.

The undefeated Longhorns would go on to beat the also undefeated and defending national champions USC Trojans 41-38 in the 2005 Rose Bowl to secure its most recent national title. 

In 1963, Texas football was recognized as champion for the first time after beating Navy 28-6 in the Cotton Bowl, earning its second title six years later by defeating Notre Dame 21-17 in 1969.

“There’s the old saying around here, and it’s true — the pride and winning tradition of the Texas Longhorns will not be entrusted to the weak nor the timid,” former Texas running back Ted Koy said to the 2019 team, 50 years after winning the championship. “Everyone who wears the burnt orange and white carries that tradition. We (the 1969 Longhorns) didn’t build it. We carried what those before us built, and that’s what you all are doing today.”

The National Polls worked differently from the current tournament format. In 1970, Texas lost its final game in a rematch with Notre Dame, but was nevertheless awarded the National Championship title after previously beating Arkansas 42-7. 

“What Texas had earned was not only the National Championship and the SWC title, it had achieved the right to be a part of more history,” the late Texas Athletics administrator Bill Little wrote in his book. 

Before losing to Notre Dame, Texas had a 30-game win streak that remains the 10th-longest in NCAA history.

Since the College Football Playoff started, Texas has only finished the season as an AP Top 25 ranked team five times, including this year’s No. 3 spot. The 2023 season also marked the first time Texas won a Big 12 Championship since CFP was introduced, most recently winning in 2009. The 2009 team was also the last to compete for a National Championship, losing 37-21 to Alabama in the Rose Bowl. 

“This is Texas, you always get everyone’s best,” 2005 national champion Quan Cosby said in September after being inducted into the Texas Athletics Hall of Honor. “And I think (the current team) gets that, they embrace that.”

Texas will play Washington at the Allstate Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on New Year’s Day with hopes of reaching the National Championship game on Jan. 8 in Houston.