{"id":367324,"date":"2026-07-09T20:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T20:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/367324\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T20:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T20:40:12","slug":"texas-football-steve-sarkisian-arch-manning-eyeing-elusive-cfp-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/367324\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas football, Steve Sarkisian, Arch Manning eyeing elusive CFP title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas Longhorns\u00a0<\/a>athletics hasn’t been a sleeping giant for a while.<\/p>\n

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Athletic director Chris Del Conte <\/a>picked up where the legendary DeLoss Dodds left off and the Forty Acres has become the unquestioned most successful sports winner in America.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019re still waiting on football to break through.\u00a0Only then will the national reckoning that Del Conte has mentioned on many occasions becomes complete.\u00a0<\/p>\n

TEXAS BASEBALL: Horns land UCLA outfielder\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian celebrates a interception late in the 4th quarter against Texas A&M Aggies offense in an NCAA college football game in the Lone Star Showdown in Austin, Texas, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025.<\/p>\n

Ricardo B. Brazziell\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

Texas just won its third straight\u00a0Learfield Directors Cup<\/a> \u2014 its fifth in six years \u2014 after the university grabbed four national championships: men\u2019s swimming and diving, softball, rowing and men\u2019s tennis. Mad props go out to those teams, but Texas football<\/a>, the program that cuts the biggest checks, has yet to fully cash in at the hardware store under current management.<\/p>\n

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When SEC media days kick off July 20 in Tampa, the Texas contingent will include head coach Steve Sarkisian and quarterback Arch Manning \u2014 the two most important figures in the program \u2014 and the conversation will eventually take on a familiar tone with a question we\u2019ve been hearing for more than two decades:<\/p>\n

Is this the year the Longhorns return to the winner\u2019s circle?<\/p>\n

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Sign up for Cedric Golden\u2019s newsletter<\/a> for hot takes and expert analysis each Tuesday on Texas Longhorns football and beyond. \u00a0It’s called Ced\u2019s Corner, from the mind of the American-Statesman\u2019s resident sports columnist, the NSMA’s 2025 Texas Sportswriter of the Year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Football hasn\u2019t won a national championship since Vince Young danced into the end zone <\/a>at the 2006 Rose Bowl to end USC’s dynasty that had won 33 straight games and a pair of crystal balls. That was the greatest college football game ever played. But\u00a0Texas\u2019 juggernaut program of the 2000’s has appeared in just one more title game since then \u2014 a loss to Nick Saban\u2019s Alabama Crimson Tide at the end of the 2009 season \u2014 before Mack Brown\u2019s run that produced nine straight 10-win seasons began to take on water.<\/p>\n

Steve Sarkisian enters his sixth season\u00a0<\/p>\n

Under Sarkisian, the ship has steadied and the expectations remain bigger than the Pacific in these parts. The Horns have been knocking on the door for awhile with playoff appearances under quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Manning, but a championship game appearance has proven elusive. There’s a big difference between knocking and kicking the son of a gun in.<\/p>\n

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Sooner or later, Sarkisian has to separate himself from the others who haven\u2019t put boot to wood \u2014 Kyle Whittingham, Lincoln Riley, Kalen DeBoer, James Franklin, Lane Kiffin, Marcus Freeman and Dan Lanning are a few names that come to mind \u2014 for his fan base to fully embrace the feeling of being numero uno. It\u2019s the top program in the state, but that hasn\u2019t equated to the obvious goal on a national level.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) looks for a pass in the second quarter of the Citrus Bowl against the Wolverines at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida, Dec. 31, 2025.<\/p>\n

Sara Diggins\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

TEXAS FOOTBALL: How the offensive line compares to others<\/a><\/p>\n

The business model has changed in today\u2019s game and while the Horns have one of the biggest war chests in the country, they still have to figure out how to play \u2014 and win \u2014 within the parameters of the NCAA’s portal era, something that isn\u2019t easy despite the big stacks of greenbacks.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have a responsibility to go recruit the best players in the country,\u201d Sarkisian told reporters at the SEC spring meetings earlier this year<\/a>. \u201cWe have a responsibility to retain our roster, and in the end we have the responsibility to field the best team possible every weekend, every year that we go take the field as the Texas Longhorns, representing the university. So that’s where the portal’s got to come into play. And how do we do all those things and do it with the right balance, and at the end make our team feel like a team and not a bunch of hired hitmen, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Breaking through will mean having to figure out the sphinx that is Georgia football and coach Kirby Smart, who literally has Sarkisian\u2019s number<\/a> at present, so much that Smart texted his fellow Saban disciple on the morning of Texas\u2019 overtime win at Mississippi State in late October. They\u2019re friends, but you can\u2019t convince me Smart wasn\u2019t playing a bit of college football chess since Smart’s team was to host the Longhorns two weeks later, a game the Bulldogs won convincingly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Horns and Dawgs won\u2019t play in the regular season this year, but methinks the SEC championship will run through Athens, Ga., though the Horns can still make the 12-team College Football Playoff without winning the deepest league in the country.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Texas Longhorns athletic director Chris Del Conte, left, and head women’s basketball coach Vic Schaefer, right, attend game one of the NCAA Women\u2019s College World Series against Texas Tech at Devon Park on Wednesday, June 3, 2026 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n

Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

Others waiting to break through\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of Texas’ four major sports, women\u2019s basketball is the most intriguing because Vic Schaefer\u2019s 2026 crew lost four huge pieces<\/a> from a second straight Final Four team: point guard Rori Harmon to the WNBA and wings Jordan Lee, Aliyah Crump and Justice Carlton to the transfer portal.\u00a0All-America forward Madison Booker is a top-flight player, but she’ll largely be surrounded by unprovens in 2027 except for her head coach who coached in two national championship games at Mississippi State.<\/p>\n

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Men\u2019s basketball boss Sean Miller<\/a> will enter his second year after an unexpected three wins in the NCAAs. Miller lost his three best perimeter players \u2014 NBA first-round draft pick\u00a0Dailyn Swain plus Jordan Pope and Tramon Mark \u2014 but has brought in some nice portal pieces to join returning big man Matas Vokietaitis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jim Schlossnagle\u2019s baseball team made it to Omaha this year, but a 1-2 showing at the College World Series<\/a> doesn\u2019t cut it, especially on a team with five players who made various All-America squads.<\/p>\n

While the championships stack up in other Texas sports, football isn\u2019t exactly a sleeping giant because of its recent playoff experience, but there has to come a time when Sark and Co. must figure it out and put it all together. A quick peek at the 2026 schedule reveals that Sarkisian will face only one head coach \u2014 Ohio State\u2019s Ryan Day \u2014 who has captured a natty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Texas\u00a0history tells us that both Darrell Royal and Brown won championships in their eighth seasons in Austin, but that came at times when fans were more patient with coaches when it came to program building.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Those were the good old days.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t exist anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Longhorns\u00a0athletics hasn’t been a sleeping giant for a while. Athletic director Chris Del Conte picked up where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,11511,265,31075,261,96710,29020,266,3231,537,536],"class_list":["post-367324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-cedric-golden","tag-cfp","tag-chris-del-conte","tag-college-football","tag-columnist-opinions","tag-kirby-smart","tag-sec-football","tag-steve-sarkisian","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}