3rd & Longhorn podcast<\/a> was about his legacy.<\/p>\nAfter mentioning graduation rates, players sent to the NFL, and leaving the program better than he found it, Sarkisian delved into what will actually determine his legacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope at some point when people look back, one of the topics of conversation will be about the championships we won, right? And that\u2019s a journey to win championships with an S, right?\u201d Sarkisian said.<\/p>\n
Sarkisian doesn\u2019t have to hope for that, it\u2019s the reality. In that pursuit, Texas has already won a championship under Sarkisian, notching a Big 12 title in 2023 on its way out of the conference, but that isn\u2019t a legacy-defining achievement.<\/p>\n
The standard is higher at the fourth-winningest program in college football history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will say this. At the University of Texas, the standard is the standard. The standard is the standard. And I know the expectations are high outside of our building. I know everybody wants to say what percentage we are to make the playoffs or what percentage it is for us to win a conference championship or make the CFP or be a national champion,\u201d Sarkisian said at SEC Media Days.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the expectations are always high within our organization. They\u2019re higher than you would imagine. They\u2019re higher than they are in the outside world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Considering the outside perceptions of a boom-or-bust, all-in season with a national championship as the standard, that\u2019s the only expectation those inside the football facility can harbor.<\/p>\n
History is staring down Sarkisian from multiple angles.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the school history, where Sarkisian seeks to place himself in the exclusive pantheon of the greatest head football coaches at Texas, a list that only includes two names \u2014 Darrell K Royal and Mack Brown, who combined to win all four of the school\u2019s national championships.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the next tier in which Sarkisian hopes not to land, coaches stuck in the shadow of those two greats like Fred Akers, Royal\u2019s replacement who wasted two opportunities to win national championships.<\/p>\n
In 1977, Akers\u2019 first season, he squandered Earl Campbell\u2019s Heisman Trophy-winning campaign thanks to a decisive 38-10 blowout loss to Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl that exposed the previously-undefeated Texas team.<\/p>\n
Six years later, the Longhorns raced through the SWC slate to another undefeated regular season and a No. 2 ranking heading into another Cotton Bowl appearance, this time against the Bulldogs.<\/p>\n
The day before, No. 1 Nebraska had opened up the path to a national championship in a dramatic 31-30 Orange Bowl loss to No. 5 Miami that saw Tom Osborne attempt a two-point conversion for the win after scoring a touchdown in the final seconds, an attempt that fell short.<\/p>\n
Once again, Texas also came up short, losing a defensive slugfest when Georgia scored a 17-yard rushing touchdown in the fourth quarter to win 10-9.<\/p>\n
The Akers era never recovered \u2014 by 1986, the Horns were 5-6, the program\u2019s first losing season in 30 years, and Akers left to coach the Boilermakers, where he was forced to resign after a 2-9 season in 1990 that included significant discipline issues.<\/p>\n
For Sarkisian to avoid a similar place in school history, that 2023 conference title isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
The other side of the history staring down Sarkisian is more likely to factor into the short-term outcomes in Austin, especially this season \u2014 the realities of attempting to win a national championship as a head coach calling plays on offense.<\/p>\n
Since Osborne won three national championships in four years running the Wishbone at Nebraska in the 1990s, marking the end of that seminal offensive attack dominating college football for four decades, only two head coaches have won a national title calling offensive plays.<\/p>\n
In 1996, Spurrier split the Nebraska dynasty by using his pass-heavy Fun \u2018n\u2019 Gun offense to secure a title for Florida.<\/p>\n
It took nearly two more decades for another similarly-constructed team to top college football before Jimbo Fisher led Florida State to an undefeated national championship season despite starting the year ranked outside the top 10 in both major polls.<\/p>\n
Perhaps a more telling recent example of the difficulty facing Sarkisian is Ohio State head coach Ryan Day.<\/p>\n
Heading into the 2024 season, the Buckeyes had lost three straight games to the Wolverines as Jim Harbaugh led Michigan to the 2023 national championship, forcing Day to make the difficult decision to give up his play-calling duties in what amounted to an act of survival sitting on an increasingly hot seat, convincing spread guru Chip Kelly to leave his head coaching job at UCLA to come to Columbus in what amounted to an act of survival on Kelly\u2019s part after posting a 36-35 record over six seasons in Westwood.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t enough to win The Game, but Ohio State did peak at the right time, avoiding the strain of playing in the Big Ten championship game and surging to four straight College Football Playoff wins, including a semifinal victory over the Longhorns in the Cotton Bowl and a 34-23 triumph over the Fighting Irish in Atlanta to secure Day\u2019s legacy and his job security.<\/p>\n
Sarkisian faces a Michigan-like road block in Kirby Smart and Georgia, winners of two regular-season games and the 2024 SEC championship game against Texas, leaving college football observers reticent to predict the Longhorns to even win the conference until Sarkisian can overcome his Kirby Smart problem, one unlikely to resolve itself as easily for the Texas head coach as it did for Day when Harbaugh left Ann Arbor to return to the NFL and the subsequent Sherrone Moore scandal left the program reeling.<\/p>\n
In assessing the Longhorns program after missing the CFP for the first time since 2022, Sarkisian hoped that he could blaze another path forward \u2014 keeping offensive play-calling duties while hiring a defensive coordinator capable of serving as a head coach of the defense.<\/p>\n
So Sarkisian fired Pete Kwiatkowski in order to bring Will Muschamp back to Austin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I felt like was happening to me as the offensive play caller and an essentially offensive coordinator with [Kyle] Flood and [AJ] Milwee, I was taking more time with defensive players. I was taking more time on visiting with them on how I wanted to play certain opponents, and I was kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and in the end, the offense wasn\u2019t up to par, nor was the defense,\u201d Sarkisian said.<\/p>\n
In 2025, the Texas offense ranked ninth in SP+, but tied for 51st in plays of 20 yards or more, so Sarkisian is delegating game planning and in-game decision making to Muschamp in order to focus on improving a running game that struggled to take pressure off of Manning as it averaged 4.2 yards per carry, 10th in the SEC.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the type of boldness demanded by the expectations placed on this season, and a dream hire for a coach who wasn\u2019t able to secure Muschamp\u2019s services five and a half years ago when he arrived in Austin.<\/p>\n
The hire, which touts Muschamp\u2019s well-earned reputation as one of the best defensive minds in college football with the capability to handle head coach-level decision making, also ensures that if Sarkisian is unable to match the size of the moment facing him in 2026, he\u2019ll have no one else to blame but his own abilities as a play caller, just like Day after the 2023 season.<\/p>\n
Those are the stakes as Sarkisian stares down the nation\u2019s toughest schedule and faces the risk of wasting Manning\u2019s time in burnt orange and white if the Longhorns come up short this season and Manning moves on to the NFL.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the highest possible standard, but it\u2019s the standard that Sarkisian embraced when he got to the Forty Acres \u2014 now he\u2019s rebuilt the program into a contender, and College Football Playoff semifinal appearances are no longer the measure of success as Sarkisian seeks to define his legacy at Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That\u2019s the overarching question facing sixth-year Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian embarking on a 2026 season during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,536,28],"class_list":["post-426345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns-football","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426345","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=426345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}