On paper, the No. 4 Texas Longhorns appear to be a better team than the No. 9 Michigan Wolverines. It’s not by a wide margin, though, as evidenced by oddsmakers installing the SEC rookies as 6.5-point favorites over the Big Ten warhorse.
It’s true. The defending national champion Wolverines, winged helmets and all, are almost a full touchdown underdog in the Big House.
This trip to Ann Arbor is a certainly a measuring-stick game for the Longhorns as they prepare for the SEC schedule. But it’s also another intriguing test of the culture Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has built in Austin.
Sarkisian says it all the time. “The standard is the standard.” No external factors should alter what’s expected of themselves — certainly not a house full of 100,000 screaming fans decked out in maize and blue.
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Several players repeated another key phrase on Monday. “As long as we stay enamored with us and play our game, I think we'll be good,” quarterback Quinn Ewers said.
Stay enamored with us.
Before Sarkisian’s arrival, Texas was a program adrift. Throughout the 2010s, the Longhorns went from mediocre to bad (2010-16), back to average (2017), had a false sense of hope (2018) and then sputtered along through the pandemic (2019-2020).
Sarkisian went 5-7 in his first season in 2021 while hitting control-alt-delete on the entire organization. Then came an 8-5 campaign that had some thrilling last-minute victories. Last year was the 12-2 breakthrough that included a stunning 10-point win at No. 3 Alabama, a victory that some believe triggered Nick Saban’s ultimate decision to retire.
Steve Sarkisian open, honest with his players
Sarkisian has done all of this his way, being honest with his players about his past and unafraid to have hard conversations. He’s talked openly about battling alcohol addiction. This summer, Sarkisian and his wife Loreal said in a joint announcement they were filing for divorce.
The players see a coach who is unafraid to be honest and truthful. In turn, it’s fostered a family atmosphere where team goals are put above individual goals. If quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning can accept their roles in this world of NIL cash grabs and the transfer portal and still thrive, everyone else can, too.
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This is a team that reached the College Football Playoff semifinals last year and lost to Washington on the game’s final play. This is a program that wants so much more.
Sarkisian’s standard is now the Texas standard. This program lost 11 players to the NFL Draft this April, and the current team is still ranked fourth nationally. That says something. The Longhorns should “be enamored with us.”
“We have, I think it’s 46 guys that are going to be traveling this week with us that were at Tuscaloosa a year ago,” Sarkisian said. It’s an eye-opening statistic about the program’s veteran depth.
“You have to have great poise and composure when you’re on the road in these types of environments,” the coach added. “You know, this is a game of emotion, there’s no question. But we need to make sure that we don’t get emotional in the arena. That’s the first part.
“Two is playing with a real sense of confidence and belief in who we are in our style of play. We know this is a heck of a challenge. We know this will be a four-quarter game, but stay in the course, especially when adversity strikes, because it will strike.”
Don't count out the Wolverines just yet
The Wolverines may be the underdog this weekend, but the reigning Big Ten and national champs have won 23 straight at home. It’s the best home winning streak since Bo Schembechler won 28 straight at home from 1969-73.
This is the kind of game that launches a potential national championship run. However, the loser isn’t doomed. With the new 12-team postseason playoff format, there’s plenty of time to bounce back and win a national title.
Texas players won’t worry about the crowd. “There’s going to be over 100,000 people that want us to play bad,” Sarkisian said, “and there’s going to be about 100 of us that want us to play good. And so we need to lean into that 100 and making sure that we're as strong as we can be stay in the middle.”
The Horns aren’t concerned about the 11 a.m. kickoff time, either. Every day, the Horns start their pre-practice meetings just after 7 a.m. and they’re done by 11.
They’re simply headed north on a business trip, just like they did last season going east to Tuscaloosa.
“It definitely helped us get a boost of confidence,” left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. said. “It was only week two, so we had so much more season to play. But it definitely helped us kind of understand we can go into big places, play good teams and come out on top.”
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