Texas is ba- ... in the College Football Playoff.
For the first time in over a decade, the Longhorns are in position to play for a national championship.
Below is a compiled list of of content that we at Dave Campbell's have produced, in addition to outside content from social media, over the course of the season detailing Texas' journey to its first-ever College Football Playoff. Every headline leads back to a story we've written this past season. This page will be updated as the playoff nears.
How Steve Sarkisian turned Texas' roster into a national title contender
Steve Sarkisian arrived in Austin as head coach in January of 2021 and immediately went to work retooling the roster into an SEC image, and that meant large humans on the lines of scrimmage and speedy playmakers at the skill positions.
The proof is in the burnt orange pudding. Sark’s Longhorns won the Big 12 championship and enter the 2023 College Football Playoffs with the sixth most-talented roster in the nation, per 247Sports. The only team with a more talented roster in the CFP, at least on paper, is Alabama – a team Texas beat on the road in Week 2. Texas signed the fifth-best class in 2022, Sarkisian’s first full cycle, and the third-best class last cycle. The current class ranks fifth in the country. If the rankings hold, Texas is one of four teams to sign a top five class in each of the last three cycles alongside Alabama, Ohio State, and Georgia. Read More.
Everything's right in front of Texas, no need for manufactured drama
Here's what matters — Texas clinches a Big 12 Championship berth and keeps its College Football Playoff aspirations alive with a win Friday night against Texas Tech.
Steve Sarkisian notched 10 wins in a season for the first time in his head coaching career last weekend. Now, this weekend's ontest has the highest stakes he's faced. Aside from wide receiver Adonai Mitchell, who caught a touchdown in both of Georgia's CFP games last year, it's the most significant game anyone on the Longhorns' roster has played. Read More.
Texas Longhorns exit Big 12 same way it arrived - as champions
An “Irish Goodbye”, where guests at a public event leave abruptly and without a farewell, is well known in our lexicon. A “Longhorn Farwell” is likely to join soon. That refers to a team leaving a conference with the championship belt in tow. They did it in 1995 by winning the last Southwest Conference championship. Texas pulled it off again in a dominant 49-21 win over Oklahoma State to claim the final Big 12 championship before the program heads to the SEC. Read More.
'We didn't come this far just to come this far'
Steve Sarkisian's office window overlooks Darrel K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Every day, he looks at the years Texas won a conference championship immortalized on the stadium's upper deck, a reminder this program's only done it three times in 27 years.
Since the last-second loss to Oklahoma in October, the Longhorns faced a must-win situation in every contest to reach the Big 12 Championship Game. Oklahoma State is the final team to conquer before Texas can etch 2023 into history as well. Read More.
From Brahma to Longhorn: Jonathon Brooks remains a bell cow
The people least surprised about Texas running back Jonathon Brooks’ success over the last month of the college football season are the high school head coaches he faced en route to an historic 2020 campaign that ended in the Class 3A Division I state title game.
Brooks ran for a staggering 3,530 yards – the seventh-most all-time in a single season in Texas high school football – and 62 touchdowns as a senior at Hallettsville High School in 2020. His 70 total touchdowns that season ranks second in Texas high school history behind Aledo’s Johnathan Gray in 2011. Brooks was named Mr. Texas Football for the 2020 season. Read More.
Five years later, Jordan Whittington returns to AT&T Stadium
All season, TV commentators, Steve Sarkisian and even Jordan Whittington himself informed us that the wide receiver returned for his fifth year of college football for the chance to play in Saturday's Big 12 Championship Game. That's the partial truth.
Whittington revealed the whole truth in a Players' Tribune article published on the day of the 2023 NFL Draft. Whittington did return to Texas to compete for a championship. He also returned because he feared the NFL wouldn't accept him. Read More.
Three centuries of history ends after 94th meeting of TCU, Texas
Sonny Dykes victoriously walked off Joe Jamail Field at DKR Stadium and immediately thought of his next opponent – the Washington Huskies.
Dykes was a third-year head coach at Cal who had just achieved a childhood dream – win a game in the stadium he grew up playing pick-up football in while his dad, Spike, was an assistant coach for the Longhorns under Darryl K. Royal. Read More.
Texas Farewell Tour: Longhorns sacrificing 300-plus games of rivalry for SEC move
To spot the further erosion of tradition and rivalry in college athletics, look no further than Waco when the Texas Longhorns play the Baylor Bears for the 113th, and maybe final, time.
Texas’ move to the SEC in 2024 will cost the state of Texas a combined 280 games of rivalries between the Longhorns and in-state foes Baylor, TCU, and Texas Tech. Add Houston and the Longhorns are leaving over 300 intrastate rivalry games on the table for greener pastures of the SEC. Read More.