After nearly a decade and a half of disappointment, underachievement, and national ridicule, the University of Texas is finally a legitimate college football national championship contender once again. Put more succinctly, Texas is back.
After winning the Big 12 Championship Game in dominant fashion – 49-21 over Oklahoma State on Saturday – to round out a 12-1 season, the Longhorns on Sunday were selected to College Football Playoff for the first time in the 10-year history of the format. Texas will compete for its fifth national championship and first since the 2005 season.
The Longhorns were awarded the No. 3 seed in the four-team playoff and will face No. 2 seed Washington in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, with a spot in the national championship game – taking place at Houston’s NRG Stadium on Jan. 8 – on the line.
Texas came out on the right side of the most heated and controversial playoff debate the sport has ever witnessed, which resulted in the exclusion of undefeated ACC champion Florida State at the expense of one-loss Texas and one-loss Southeastern Conference (SEC) champ Alabama, whom Texas beat in Tuscaloosa in September. The Tide will play undefeated top seed Michigan in the Rose Bowl, the other national semifinal game.
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian told ESPN after learning his team’s fate that the program is exactly where he hoped it would be in year three of his tenure. It’s been a rapid rise for Texas under “Sark,” after the Longhorns went 5-7 in his first season. The team showed improvement in year two, going 8-5 with all five losses coming in one-score games that Texas seemingly found new ways to lose each time.
This season, Sark’s ‘horns found ways to win close games when necessary. Then, late in the season when it became clear that “style points” would factor heavily into which teams make the cut for the playoff, Texas rose to the occasion and won its last two games by a combined margin of 78 points.
“This has been a heck of a journey for us, so to earn a seat at the table, to be at this tournament, is one that we’re humbled by, but we’re excited for it as well,” Sarkisian said.
Despite being the weaker seed, Texas opened as a 4.5-point betting favorite over Washington for what promises to be a top-tier quarterback battle between Heisman candidate Michael Penix Jr. for the Huskies and UT’s Quinn Ewers, coming off the best game of his career in the Big 12 title game. Ewers completed 76% of his passes for 452 yards and four touchdowns against the Cowboys, with one interception.
It’s not just the Texas football team that’s returned to elite form, either. If anyone around the nation had forgotten what an amped-up UT fan base is capable of when fully engaged, just ask Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark, who felt the wrath of 40,000-plus Texas fans when his postgame speech was completely drowned out by unrelenting booing along with chants of “S-E-C,” the conference Texas will join next season. (Yormark brought this on himself when he publicly told Texas Tech’s head coach to “take care of business” against Texas ahead of a game Texas ended up winning 57-7.)
Perhaps the most exciting part about Texas’ season is that regardless of what happens in the College Football Playoff, Sarkisian’s program appears set up for sustained success in the years to come. As recently as last season, the thought of Texas competing in the mighty SEC in 2024 was intimidating. But after UT stormed the house of the eventual SEC champions and came away with a double-digit victory, it now appears as though the SEC should be more intimidated by mighty Texas. Whether Ewers elects to return to Austin for his senior season or 2024 marks the dawning of the Arch Manning era, UT looks primed to have the advantage at quarterback against just about any team it might face in the coming season.
A fifth national championship would easily cement 2023 as the most important season in Texas football history. But what the program has already achieved by simply making it back into the championship picture after 14 years on the outside looking in can’t be underestimated.
Texas is back, and it looks like they might stay awhile.
This article appears in Gift Guide 2023.
