Texas A&M football should look at what’s happening in Austin and take copious notes.
A championship window isn’t forever but when it’s open, you had better take advantage.
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The Texas Longhorns will soon find out if its cracked window has closed while Texas A&M is embarking on what could be an historic end to the 2025 season.
Aggies, your time is now. Don’t assume a chance to make history will carry over like cellphone minutes. Answer the championship call now because it may not come again.
Nov 30, 2024; College Station, Texas, USA; Texas A&M Aggies head coach Mike Elko, left, shakes hands with Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian after the game. The Longhorns defeated the Aggies 17-7. at Kyle Field.
Maria Lysaker/Imagn Images
Just ask the Horns who have come close but are still searching for some new memories since Vince Young loped into the end zone to deliver the 2005 championship win over USC.
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With a showdown against the title-starved Aggies coming up in two games, Steve Sarkisian wore the look of a coach visibly frustrated with the current situation during his Monday media availability. He bristled after Houston Chronicle’s Kirk Bohls asked for the main reasons the 7-3 Longhorns have underachieved.
“Underachieved, according to who?” Sarkisian retorted.
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Well, let’s see. Before the season, the Longhorns were voted the nation’s No. 1 team in the US LBM Coaches Poll. Those are Sarkisian’s peers, by the way. They were also picked tops in the Associated Press poll and other major publications and websites. Quarterback Arch Manning was the sexy pick to win the Heisman Trophy.
Yet here they sit on the outside of the CFP top 12 looking in. Manning has emerged of late but has admittedly endured some growing pains in his first year as a starter.
In short, they haven’t met those lofty expectations, for one reason or another. The prognosticators may have been off but it will do little to dull the ache in the guts of Longhorn Nation who believed Texas would break through this season after a pair of national semifinalist finishes.
The odds are they won’t be back in the College Football Playoff for a third straight season unless they beat Arkansas and Texas A&M then have other teams fall out of the top 10 in the same span. The Horns dropped seven spots from 10th to 17th in the latest CFP rankings and that sounds as bad it reads.
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“Texas is toast,” ESPN college football reporter Heather Dinich said after Tuesday’s rankings update.
Sarkisian, predictably, fiercely defended his team Monday, saying the Horns have competed their tails off but great effort hasn’t added up to great results.
Texas Longhorns receiver Ryan Niblett (21) is tackled during the game against Georgia at Sanford Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025 in Athens, Georgia.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
“They’ve been faced with a lot of different adversity and injuries and a lot of stuff has come across this team’s plate, and I’m very, very proud of them with their resiliency,” he said. “At the end of the day at the University of Texas, we’re held to a very high standard, and the standard is to compete for championships year in and year out, and we’re going to play the best teams in the country. We’re going to schedule the best teams in the country.”
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Texas does have a chance to become the first team since to beat three top-10 teams in the regular season since LSU did en route to winning a national title. It would be some feat but it still might not be enough to get them in the CFP since it would come in the same year they lost to a team on track to finish with at least seven losses.
His passionate defense doesn’t explain away the measly seven points they scored in the opening loss at Ohio State, the 29-21 no-show against struggling Florida — the Gators are 3-7 — or the 21-0 fourth-quarter bludgeoning they just took at Georgia in a 35-10 embarrassment that was the worst loss suffered by a preseason national No. 1 since 2011. And all of that came with a pair of near-disasters in overtime at Kentucky and Mississippi State, teams that still haven’t qualified for a bowl game.
Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) leaves the field after the loss to Georgia at Sanford Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025 in Athens, Georgia.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman
Title windows eventually close
Title windows can be fleeting and this conversation isn’t about dynasties like the one Nick Saban built at Alabama or Georgia’s back-to-back champions in 2021 and 2022 — but for programs like Texas which has one just one natty and two title-game appearances in 55 years.
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While Saban and Georgia’s Kirby Smart have sent double-digit draft picks to the NFL and still produced double-digit regular-season wins the following season, Sarkisian is new to the club. The Horns didn’t reload this time around. It’s more like a clunky reset.
This came after the Horns had two bites at the title apple in the 2023 and 2024 semifinals. The title window was wide open at the time because Sark had built a roster equipped to win it all: a veteran quarterback in Quinn Ewers, elite defensive tackles, at least one future NFL running back, play-making pass catchers like Adonai Mitchell and Matthew Golden and All-American defensive backs in Jahdae Barron and Michael Taaffe.
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Those teams came came oh-so-close to crossing over into the promised land but Ewers’ end zone pass to Mitchell sailed incomplete in the 2023 semifinal loss to Washington and last season’s goal-line attempt to tie Ohio State midway through the fourth quarter proved disastrous.
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It was there that the window may have slammed shut.
To expect a first-year starting quarterback in Arch Manning to pick up where Ewers left off…that was a tough sell, though many bought in to the notion, hence the lofty preseason ranking.
The current team, ranked No. 18 by AP, isn’t mathematically dead when it comes to CFP hopes but so much has to go right for them to sneak in there — including beating the battle-tested Aggies, who showed their mettle by overcoming a 30-3 deficit to turn back South Carolina.
Getting in feels more hopeful than realistic at this point.
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Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed (10) celebrates with head coach Mike Elko after win against South Carolina on Nov. 15, 2025, in College Station.
David J. Phillip/Associated Press
Texas A&M’s time is now
Speaking of the Aggies, we know they haven’t sniffed a national title since winning it all during World War II and have only two top-10 finishes over the last 30 years, but history has nothing to do with what’s happening right now.
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The window is open and cool breeze in blowing in the faces of a smiling 12th Man. Whether it’s slightly cracked or fully ajar is anybody’s guess but at 10-0 for the first time in 33 seasons with a chance to run the table and win the SEC, coach Mike Elko must seize this opportunity. It’s more difficult to navigate this playoff bracket now that it’s 12 teams instead of four, but it doesn’t change the sense of urgency that should exist in College Station.
“When you start having success, you’ve got to make sure that you understand the process it takes to continue to have success,” Elko told reporters this week.
His blueprint is working and he understands the cut-and-paste dynamic doesn’t apply because every team is different.
Many fan bases witness a couple of nice seasons from their team and then blindly assume “This is who we are” without taking into the account the hard work it takes to build a consistent winner.
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Elko looks to be ahead of schedule in Year 2 and now with expectations at an all-time high in the program with dynamic quarterback Marcel Reed leading the way, he will have to deal with being the hunted after the Aggies have spent the entire modern era of the sport on the chase.
Special seasons aren’t guaranteed but when they happen, the time to take advantage is yesterday.