Texas HC Steve Sarkisian is just as pumped and excited for gameday as Longhorns fans

The offseason is over. Strike up the Longhorn band, play some “Texas Fight,” gather down on Bevo Boulevard and escort Bevo XV into Royal-Memorial Stadium with your Horns up.

Texas Longhorns football returns Saturday in Austin, Texas.

“What an exciting time,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said earlier this week. “Any time you're kicking off the football season, you can kind of feel the excitement in the air.”

Sarkisian enters his fourth season at UT with high expectations after the Longhorns won the Big 12 title last season and reached the College Football Playoff. The Horns are now headed into the SEC after a three-year buildup, but they’ve got rocket fuel and start the year ranked No. 4.

“You know, the fact that season tickets are sold out again. The buzz on campus. I love game days, even when we even first start at the hotel,” Sarkisian said. “But I love the fact of walking down Bevo Boulevard and seeing everybody there, and seeing the parents of our players, and the excitement they have in their eyes all the way through pregame. That stuff is super cool.”

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The Longhorns have turned themselves into fashion plates while strolling Bevo Boulevard before games. Sarkisian likes doing it, too, wearing different suits or sport coats each week.

“I get to wear some of the things that maybe I don't get to wear on a daily basis as a coach, and I look forward to doing that, and I think our players do too,” Sarkisian said. “So we enjoy that aspect of as well.”

School officials have a full list of things for fans prior, during and after the 2:30 p.m. kickoff against Colorado State, a team that went 5-7 in 2023.

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Don’t come strolling in expecting to snag a ticket at the box office. Tickets for the entire season have sold out, the school announced earlier this month. Colorado State returned about 1,000 tickets from the visitors allotment; they’ve all been snapped up.

Texas officials expect to have more than 100,000 fans packed into the stadium for every home game this season.

Midland will be the pre-game performers on the LBJ Lawn for the Longhorn City Limits concert. The athletic department will honor the 15 teams that won conference titles last season as UT clinched its third Directors’ Cup in four years.

Sarkisian said the school will also honor its Olympians who performed in Paris this July, too. Athletes with Longhorn ties won 16 medals, which would have ranked 16th overall had UT been its own country.

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This is also the 100th year of Royal-Memorial Stadium itself, something that should also be celebrated. School officials have made numerous touch-ups over the years, expanding the north end zone in the 2000s and totally reimagining the entire south end zone experience in recent years.

They even upgraded the Wi-Fi, allegedly.

For all the fears over a massive heat wave, Texas fans are going to catch a break. Temperatures are expected to hover around 90 degrees during the afternoon. There’s even a 45 percent chance of rain. Here lately, rain showers have moved in, doused the Austin area and moved out just as quick.

Start the new season, and bring on the SEC.

“So a lot of cool things happening Saturday,” Sarkisian said, “but the coolest thing is we get to play football again, and we're excited for it.”