Texas football, which begins its first season in the SEC in 2024, is projected to compete on the national scene in Year 4 under head coach Steve Sarkisian. Texas was projected to finish second in the SEC media preseason poll during media days in Dallas last week.
Where does Texas football move after an impressive 2023 season in the Big 12?
Following a season in which the Longhorns won the Big 12 Championship for the first time since 2009 and made their first berth in the College Football Playoff, Texas fans have high hopes this autumn. Sarkisian may have an even deeper and more skilled roster on both sides of the ball this fall than he had on last year’s Playoff club.
Texas should be in the playoff conversation again in 2024, especially with the increased field of 12 teams, which adds eight more teams than the four-team CFP had previously.
Sarkisian has the Texas program in far better shape than it was in the decade before he took charge in 2021. Texas has progressed from being a middle-to-upper tier Big 12 program under former head coach Tom Herman to competing on a national scale again after a few years under Sarkisian.
With preseason camp starting in a little more than a week and the publication of the main preseason polls approaching, now is a good time to look back at prior years’ expectations for the Longhorns.
Here’s a look back at three Texas teams over the last few decades that lived up to the preseason expectations.
The Longhorns last reached the National Championship Game under the BCS era, in the 2009-10 college football season. Star Texas quarterback Colt McCoy led the Longhorns to an unprecedented 13-0 regular season record, winning the Big 12 title and defeating major rivals such as Texas A&M and Oklahoma.
Texas had high expectations going into the 2009 season after coming just short of competing for a BCS national championship the previous year in 2008. McCoy was a standout for the Longhorns in 2009, receiving Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year and being invited to New York City as a Heisman nominee for the season.
Mack Brown’s success with Texas on the national stage and in the Big 12 continued in the mid-to-late 2000s, as the Longhorns won at least 12 games for the second straight season.
Unfortunately, Texas fell one step short of claiming its second national title of the decade, losing to the Alabama Crimson Tide in the BCS National Championship Game after McCoy’s injury forced him to leave early in the first half.
We’ve all heard this a million times, but there is some validity to the notion that Texas could have won its second title since 2005 if McCoy had stayed healthy versus Alabama in the 2009-10 BCS title game.
