{"id":403764,"date":"2026-08-11T18:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/403764\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T18:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:48:08","slug":"san-antonio-spurs-coach-mitch-johnson-speaks-to-texas-football-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/403764\/","title":{"rendered":"San Antonio Spurs coach Mitch Johnson speaks to Texas football team"},"content":{"rendered":"

As it began its preparation for the 2026 football season, the Texas Longhorns<\/a> received a pep talk from a basketball coach.<\/p>\n

Last week, San Antonio Spurs coach Mitch Johnson was the guest speaker at a Longhorns team meeting. Texas held the first practice of its fall camp<\/a> last Wednesday.<\/p>\n

On Monday, UT coach Steve\u00a0Sarkisian was asked about Johnson’s guest appearance. He\u00a0shared that he has known Johnson, who’s a Seattle native, since Sarkisian was coaching at Washington in the early 2010’s. He\u00a0didn’t divulge what Johnson told his football players, but said\u00a0the Longhorns could benefit<\/a> from a message from a coach of a talented team that suffered a heartbreaking loss this past season.<\/p>\n

In just under two years as the leader of the Spurs after replacing legendary coach Gregg Popovich, Johnson has compiled a 94-65 record. The Spurs reached the NBA Finals this summer but were beaten in five games by the New York\u00a0Knicks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I just think\u00a0Mitch has done a tremendous job, and (it’s) not an easy job,” Sarkisian said. “We spoke about what his messaging is going to be to his team going into this NBA season, I thought was very similar to our season. Consistent messaging, I think, is important for our players. I don’t want a bunch of different messages. I want consistent messaging. I thought Mitch’s message to the team was fantastic.”<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time the Longhorns and Spurs have crossed paths. Last November, Texas quarterback Arch Manning<\/a> and San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama<\/a> exchanged jerseys for a photo that was widely shared on social media. The Spurs also have played two games on the UT campus<\/a> during each of the past four seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As it began its preparation for the 2026 football season, the Texas Longhorns received a pep talk from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3230,261,15131,82,84,83,1066,537,536,509],"class_list":["post-403764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-arch-manning","tag-college-football","tag-mitch-johnson","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-football","tag-victor-wembanyama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403764","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=403764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}