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It is New Year’s Day – and you know what that means.
For some, this is the day to start focusing on your health. Time to dust off those Billy Banks Tae Bo DVDs. Some of you may still have Richard Simmons's “Sweatin To The Oldies” on VHS. The gym will be packed with new members who sign up this week and the regulars are forced to wait until March for the newbies to quit and join the Whataburger gym. Speaking of food, this is also the day when many pledge to eat healthier - until the McRib returns.
For others, this is the day to make goals for the upcoming year. Some of the guys will need to buy magazines and work on that vision board with your wife today. It is time to invest in Dave Ramsey material and set financial goals. Time to look into traveling somewhere new. Considering many engagements occur on New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, this will be a year of wedding and honeymoon plans for some.
When we think about the goals for this Texas Longhorn football program, the New Year’s resolution is simple.
Texas must win a conference championship in 2023.
No pressure, right?
Let us begin with the reality of the upcoming season.
If everything falls into place, this will be the last year we watch Big 12 games and wonder if the referees need Lasik surgery or are paying homage to their mentor, Tim Donaghy.
Texas and Oklahoma are trying to enter the SEC in 2024. If that occurs, Longhorn fans will never have to travel to Lubbock again.
Admit it, you will miss the smell of fertilizer in the morning.
Unfortunately, if Brett Yormark was in charge of the Big 12 before 2022, he may have done enough to keep both teams in the conference. Yormark probably would have been proactive and strengthened the league through expansion instead of being reactionary after both programs decided to leave. He successfully moved up the date for negotiating with the TV partners from 2024 to the summer of 2022. Yormark wanted to negotiate his league’s deal before the Pac-12. According to the Sports Business Journal, “The once-beleaguered Big 12 has stabilized its future by coming to terms with ESPN and Fox Sports on a six-year media rights agreement worth a total of $2.28B, an annual average of $380M, according to sources. The Big 12 has two years remaining on its current deal, which runs through the 2024-25 season at an annual average of $220M in its final years. The new six-year extension runs through 2030-31.”
Oh, what could have been ...
If Texas enters the SEC in 2024, Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian must lead this program to a Big 12 Championship this season.
Why?
This is the "easiest" path Texas will have to a conference title.
Texas is about to enter a conference with Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, and LSU. I mentioned the premier teams before throwing in South Carolina, Mississippi, Mississippi State, Florida, Arkansas, Auburn, and Texas A&M. There are more teams but you get my point.
In case you missed it, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said he intends to get rid of a two-division structure after Texas and Oklahoma enter the conference. It will be interesting to see which teams Texas will play annually.
Here is what the Greenville News reported:
“Sankey said the 2025 schedule and beyond will likely be conference-wide, allowing for programs that have never met to play. He noted that during the 2022 football season, Missouri traveled to Auburn for the first time since joining the conference in 2012.
“We right now are not thinking about maintaining a two-division format for football scheduling in the SEC,” Sankey said. "It would potentially be one single division with the idea that we want to rotate our teams through our campuses more frequently. We have big brands with big interest and large following ... that want to go to places like Fayetteville, Arkansas or have their fans come to Columbia, South Carolina."
“Sankey said the move to do away with divisions is encouraged by the conference's success during the 2020 season, during which SEC teams played all 10 games against conference foes due to COVID-19 restrictions. Each team plays eight conference matchups per season under the current system, but Sankey that could increase to nine after expansion.”
Winning a conference title is not going to get easier for Texas in the SEC.
Just ask Texas A&M.
Instead, the “easiest” path for Texas to win its first conference title since 2009 is by having success in the Big 12 this year.
In addition, this is a huge year for Sarkisian.
He is currently 13-12 after two seasons at Texas. Sarkisian is an excellent recruiter. Yet, Texas won only eight games with Bijan Robinson, Roschon Johnson, DeMarvion Overshown, and several other future NFL players on the 2022 roster. Texas won four straight bowl games under former coach Tom Herman before Sarkisian’s arrival. After Sarkisian missed the postseason in his first year, Washington recently defeated Texas in the Alamo Bowl.
Sarkisian’s job is not in jeopardy. Nevertheless, we saw Herman guide his team to the Big 12 Championship Game im year two, and Sarkisian was hired to exceed those accomplishments. Winning in recruiting is fun, but Longhorn fans want – and deserve – to have meaningful on-the-field victories.
More importantly, the majority of starters in 2023 will be players recruited by Sarkisian. The players who Sarkisian did not recruit entered the transfer portal, have graduated, are not major contributors, or have been molded into good players. In other words, the 2023 squad we be “Sarkisian’s team.” The quarterbacks, offensive line, receivers, defensive line, linebackers, defensive backs. Each position group needs to improve substantially for Texas to succeed this year.
In fact, Sarkisian gave a list of reasons why Texas can take the next step this year.
“I think, one, our culture,” Sarkisian said. “I know I've been harping on this, but I mean that. I think we have a team that is full of competitors. I think we have a team that really is fighting to win and they're fighting to win together. I think we can still make improvements there, of just making sure that we're really poised and composed in critical moments of the game. But I also look at just the improvement we made defensively. That offense is a high-flying offense, and they’ve shredded a lot of people. To make them earn it the way that we did tonight, again, we would have loved to have gotten off the field on 3rd down better, and I think that that’s something that we need to address in the off-season is our own ability to convert 3rd downs. I think that needs to improve, and our ability to get off the field on defense on3rd down needs to improve. There’s a lot of factors in that that go into it.
“There's a lot for me as a coach to be proud of these guys and what they were able to do from year one to year two, but a sign of a good program is continued growth and improvement, and I think that our developmental program has got to come right back into effect in January and our off-season conditioning program and our football development, and then get ourselves ready for spring ball so we can continue to grow and then implement these young players that are showing up here mid-year.”
The New Year’s resolution is simple.
Texas must win a conference championship in 2023.
Funniest Things You Will See This Week
Oh, Southwest
Somebody is not trying to win employee of the month
Leave poppa alone (bad language alert)
This is called living your best life
Sports On A Dime
1. Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian on the game plan against Washington: “Obviously when you don't have your two top runners, we had to shift a little bit of focus. We knew we were going to throw the ball a little bit more tonight. Had more than enough confidence in Quinn, the receivers and the offensive line, tight ends that we could do that. I felt like there were runs there early. We just didn't -- if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. It was just spotty in the run game early on. Then when we got a couple runs, it felt pretty good, and then we end up getting a hold on another one. We just didn't quite get the rhythm.
“On a different night, maybe a month ago, we're running the ball a lot more and we're going to maybe run ourselves into a rhythm in the run game. But the plan tonight was we knew we were going to throw the ball more than we had kind of throughout the season. We felt like that gave us the best chance, and it did. I thought the pass game was effective. I would have liked for us to run the ball better than we did, no question. Just didn't quite execute the way we wanted to.”
2. Sarkisian on the performance of Casey Cain: “I'm really happy for Casey. Kind of felt like all year we were searching for a third wide out, and he made plays tonight and showed up, and I was happy for him. I was proud of him to do what he did, to make the plays that he did.”
3. Sarkisian on the dropped passes against Washington: “I think inevitably we're going to look back at the season when we come back as a staff and we'll evaluate every aspect of it, and I think we're seeing a lot of growth in Quinn, and I was saying it all month long, just kind of his growth from where he was at and his ability to mentally persevere through some tough times, and that's part of it. To watch him rebound, to play the way that he played tonight -- I think ultimately passing game is about continuity, it's about confidence, it's about throwing, catching, it's about anticipation of him throwing the ball where receivers are going to be and receivers anticipating where balls will be thrown. That's going to be a big point of emphasis of ours to go along with a lot of other things. We definitely have to improve that area of our team from a consistency standpoint. It should be a strength of ours. This year it was hit and miss. Tonight was kind of a microcosm of kind of how the season went for us. We've got to improve that area of our team, like a lot of areas, but that's going to be one in particular because that should be a real asset of ours. We should be a dynamic passing football team, and we're close to being one, but we just can't have the missed ops when they present themselves.”
4. Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers on not being able to connect with Xavier Worthy: “Yeah, you know, it's tough, but I didn’t lose any confidence in him and I know he didn't lose any confidence in himself. Stuff like that happens every now and then. But it sucks to see it happen in crucial situations like it was. But then again, we didn't lose any confidence, and we have a lot to build on, and I'm excited for the future.”
5. Ewers on the next developmental step he needs to take: “I think I need to fill more of a vocal role on this team, be more of a vocal leader instead of just leading by what I do on and off the field. I think that’s the main thing for me, honestly. I need to maybe mature in that area a little bit more.”
6. Texas defensive tackle Keondre Coburn on not being able to generate a pass rush: “I mean, the game plan was getting after him. You saw it today. We did. We got a lot of QB hits, a lot of QB pressures. He was a good quarterback for a reason. He made plays. He knew that -- I think he knew that effectively how good our D-line was, especially interior, that he knew he didn't have that much time to throw the ball or hold the ball like he wanted to, so it was just quick throws, quick passes and stuff like that which they were doing, and they executed it the right way. You seen it, we were in there literally. I thought I got it, but it's football, and they had a great game plan.”
7. I look forward to watching Bijan Robinson’s NFL journey in 2023
8. I have consistently argued that coaching matters during recruiting conversations. The Athletic’s Ari Wasserman wrote a fantastic article that detailed how TCU used the transfer portal to achieve success this season. If you have a subscription, it is worth reading.
Here is a small portion of Wasserman’s piece:
“Now? Talent is still king … unless TCU proves that it’s not the end-all, be-all.
“TCU’s team talent doesn’t compare to the two teams on the other side of the Playoff bracket. So while we sit here and marvel at how far TCU has come, which is tremendous given the Horned Frogs were a 200-1 long shot to reach the Playoff before the year, the job isn’t done. There is a final boss.
“Georgia has 68 combined former four- and five-star recruits on its roster, 15 of whom are five-star prospects. Ohio State has 66 blue-chip players, 14 of whom are former five-star prospects. TCU has 17 total blue-chippers. It has one five-star, Marcel Brooks, who doesn’t even play. Michigan, which had 44 blue-chip prospects, had a talent advantage against the Horned Frogs in Glendale Saturday night and it didn’t matter. But the Wolverines — who beat Ohio State in Columbus in November — can’t compare to what Ohio State and Georgia bring to the table on this stage.”
9. This should not come as a huge surprise, but Texas received an A+ recruiting grade from Rivals recruiting analyst Nick Harris during his recent Big 12 breakdown.
Texas came into the 2023 recruiting cycle with a major target in mind on each side of the ball, five-star quarterback Arch Manning and five-star linebacker Anthony Hill, and the Longhorns signed each of them along with a large group of difference makers as their surrounding cast. It's hard to find many major misses for Texas in 2023, especially after landing commitments from two four-star west coast prospects during the Early Signing Period, but the defensive line room could use a little bit of help from the transfer portal moving forward.
Grade: A+
10. Enjoy this trip down memory lane
Happy New Year
I want to wish everyone a healthy and prosperous new year in every area of their life in 2023.
