“Texas isn’t SEC ready” is a narrative that welcomed the Texas Longhorns football team into their new conference this season and one that they would successfully prove wrong.
Saturday’s final game of the regular season saw Texas and Texas A&M each fighting for their first chance at the SEC title. Yet the Aggies’ 13 years of experience were dormant against the newcomers, and the Longhorns dominated in the Lone Star Showdown 17-7 in one of the most rigorous environments in college football.
Texas leads the conference with an 11–1 record and has stunned the 14 teams left out of the championship. The same team’s fans that pushed this narrative will be watching the Longhorns from the couch on Saturday. There have been questions on Texas’ strength of schedule.
But each opponent has been a test of strength and resilience, according to head coach Steve Sarkisian. He said week in and week out, even the best teams in the nation have found themselves troubled by unranked programs, which is why this conference is so difficult.
“We see it all over our conference every Saturday, that if you’re not prepared to play in this conference, you will get beat,” Sarkisian said during Monday’s media availability. “It doesn’t matter what you think of an opponent or not. There’s too many talented players on every roster. The coaching is too good, the environments are too tough when you go on the road, and if you’re not prepared to play, you’ll get beat.”
Even before Texas entered the SEC, Sarkisian was no stranger to the intensity that the conference brings. The few SEC opponents the team faced in non-conference games during Sarkisian’s tenure at Texas provided a glimpse into what brand of football he needed to prepare for.
“Year one, we played Arkansas, we didn’t have a very good game, you know. In year two, we played Alabama here, and I thought we played better, (but) we didn’t come out on top,” Sarkisian said. “In year three, we go to Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Bryant Denny Stadium, and we play a brand of football that we felt was good enough in the Southeastern Conference. Then this year, you have to do it over eight weeks, and now nine weeks.”
The fourth-year head coach said it’s taken years of tweaking his roster, his staff and his play calling to make sure that the Longhorns were in position to compete against programs that have consistently made it to the College Football Playoff. And now, they hold a better record than Georgia, the four-time national champion and two-time SEC champion.
“It’s one thing to continue to adjust schemes to fit the personnel that you have. It’s another to recruit players to fit the schemes that you really want to run, and then it’s another to have players be in your system over time that really have a good grasp of what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it,” Sarkisian said. “I think we grew naturally over time.”
Fifth-year senior offensive lineman Jake Majors said Sarkisian’s perseverance in training the program for higher-level competition has made for a seamless transition from the Big 12 to the SEC.
“In that first year, we weren’t sure what was going on. We were just kind of getting used to (Sarkisian). Now, people have left, people have (come) in, and we’ve all gotten accustomed to the culture and what’s expected, the physicality, the accountability, the responsibility,” Majors said. “I think all that contributes to our success in the SEC, because football isn’t just a hobby for us anymore. It’s what we do.”
