Bohls: Texas football, Steve Sarkisian, in sore need of a signature win — right now
It’s time.
Past time, really, to be honest.
Texas needs a big win.
Now.
Not next week against Wyoming, which wouldn’t qualify anyway. Not against Texas-killer Kansas. Not even against Oklahoma.
This week. Saturday. The sooner the better.
The No. 11 Longhorns face big, bad, No. 3 Alabama at packed Bryant-Denny Stadium, and the whole college football world will be watching. Except for maybe Deion Sanders, who will be looking at himself in the mirror.
But for everyone else, this is the showdown of the week, Steve Sarkisian’s next chance to show himself and, yes, an SEC preview of things to come. Whatcha got, Longhorns?
"I'm looking at this game as kind of a benchmark," Sarkisian said Thursday. "Where are we? We've made a lot of strides. And we've come a long way. And I think last year's game served as a good benchmark, and it helped instill some confidence in some players on our team of what they were capable of."
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Texas needs this in the worst way to get over the hump or at least reach the hump. Been a long 14 years since the Longhorns have won double-digit games in the regular season. Been a minute since they beat, OK, disinterested Georgia in the Sugar Bowl. Been that long since Sam Ehlinger proclaimed, well, you know.
Texas ain’t back. And won’t be close to being back until it wins a game of this magnitude. A statement win. A “yeah-we’re-Texas-but-not-the-same-old-Texas-that everybody-laughs at Texas.”
The new Texas.
Shades of the old Texas, but the really old Texas. Like in the ’60s Texas, the Darrell Royal Texas with three national championships in the span of eight seasons. Or the Mack Brown Texas in his heyday, and it was a heyday. Have you seen the 2006 Rose Bowl Texas? (Definitely not the 2009 Mack Brown Texas.)
Ever seen the John Mackovic-beats-Nebraska, Roll-Left Texas? Or the David McWilliams’ Shock the Nation Tour Texas? Minus the Miami part, of course.
As we said, it’s time.
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Sarkisian needs to deliver a signature win. It’s one of many things lacking on his résumé after 26 games in Austin. When you’re 14-12, a whole lot of things are missing even though the team seems a whole lot better than it's been.
"I think both teams are going to walk out of the stadium with a real firm understanding of this is where we're at," Sark said. "And then this is what we need to do to continue to develop our team for the next 10 regular-season games and trying to go win a conference championship. That's one of the beauties of playing these games."
He admitted Thursday that his team was "not ready for that hostile environment" when it traveled to Arkansas in 2021 and got splattered by the Razorbacks.
'I'm not into moral victories'
But, yes, this “ultimatum” comes with an asterisk. A loss to the Crimson Tide wouldn’t be the end of the world. After all, we’ve become way too accustomed to losing big games. And some would find another competitive loss, dare I say, acceptable.
Not Sark.
“I’m not into moral victories,” he has said. And he means it.
Texas doesn’t do moral victories. Or never used to. But no one would admonish the Longhorns for losing a close game in Tuscaloosa.
Besides, doesn’t everybody lose to Alabama? Sorry, Kirby. Didn’t mean you.
But doesn’t everybody with a normal football program lose to Alabama? Of course they do.
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The Aggies can beat Alabama once in a while so long as Johnny Manziel dazzles the Crimson Tide or the Tide waltzes into the showdown at whacked-out Kyle Field with back-to-back A&M losses to Arkansas and Mississippi State and Nick Saban’s team happens to not take A&M seriously.
Not Saban. He takes everything seriously. Even breakfast. He’s intense.
Gus Malzahn can whip Alabama, but not enough for Auburn, which ships him out to UCF.
Heck, Alabama lost games last year. Two of them. You’d have thought Saban had forgotten how to coach. Two? And the Aggies almost beat ‘em again. There.
Literally no time better than the present
But back to the point. If not now, when, Texas? It does join the SEC full-time in 10 months.
Of Sarkisian’s 14 victories so far, four have come against Group of Five teams, all at Royal-Memorial Stadium. Against Top 25 opponents, Sarkisian is 3-5. Against top 10 elite teams, he’s 0-3.
It’s time.
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If he truly wants to get over the hump here, he’s got to beat somebody he’s not supposed to beat. He’s got to whip somebody good. Open some eyes. Announce your arrival. Tell the world you’re back. Go all Deion.
When I asked nickel back Jahdae Barron if Sark was extra juiced up for this epic battle against his former mentor, the junior cracked, “He’s always juiced up. I try to calm him down some.”
Sark should be juiced up. Like take-the-Alamodome-field juiced up. This is big. Bigger than big. Win this, Texas, and you’ll be top five in the nation, not in the Big 12.
I mean, Texas coaches have done it before. Royal went 2-0-1 against Alabama. After Bear Bryant died, I mentioned to DKR that he’d never lost to Bear. Responded Royal, “And I never will.”
Royal started out with a bang in 1957, his first of 20 seasons. None of them losing seasons. He lost to No. 1 Oklahoma that year before beating four ranked teams, including No. 4 Texas A&M, and reached the Sugar Bowl.
Brown didn’t win every big game. But he won enough despite a five-year losing streak to Oklahoma for a 7-9 record against the Sooners. And he got his signature win in Year One with a shocking road upset over No. 7 Nebraska even though he told me earlier in the week that Texas had little chance.
Brown also won a Cotton Bowl shootout with a nationally ranked Mississippi State team in his first season and opened his Longhorn career with two straight wins against both the Sooners and Cornhuskers. Yeah, those were signature wins.
Fred Akers debut? Yeah, he switched from the wishbone to the I-formation, plugged in a rugged running back named Earl Campbell at tailback. He became the school’s first Heisman Trophy winner.
Akers’ 1977 team beat four Top 25 teams in his first year and rattled off 11 consecutive wins — eight of them with third-string quarterback Randy McEachern after the first two got hurt against OU — before a Cotton Bowl loss to Notre Dame denied Akers that elusive national championship.
But signature wins? He had a bunch in his first season.
So it can be done.
Ready for SEC prime-time?
If Texas truly thinks it’s ready for the weekly wars in the SEC, here’s a prime opportunity to show it.
The Longhorns were within a whisker of knocking off No. 1 Alabama year ago and would have if any of five critical plays had gone their way. A safety that wasn’t a safety. A barely tipped blocked field goal by Will Anderson Jr. A Ryan Watts sack that wasn’t. Will Reichard’s winning field goal with 10 seconds to play. And, of course, the injury to Quinn Ewers that sidelined the Texas quarterback for the final three quarters.
That was very reminiscent of Marcell Dareus' ferocious hit on Colt McCoy on Texas’ fifth offensive play of that 2009 national title game against Alabama. That helped assure Saban of the win en route to his first of six titles in Tuscaloosa and the first of Alabama’s only two wins over Texas in history.
So can Alabama actually beat a Texas team without knocking out the Longhorn quarterback? Guess we’ll see.
A signature win Saturday, of course, won’t guarantee a thing. It’s a long climb. But it’d sure capture a ton of attention, ease a lot of the skepticism about Ewers and Sarkisian and perhaps set Texas on the path to its first special season in 14 years.
And even Sark would sign off on that.
Saturday's game
No. 11 Texas (1-0) at No. 3 Alabama (1-0), 6 p.m., ESPN, 1300, 98.1, 105.3 (Spanish)
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Longhorns football needs a signature win for Steve Sarkisian
