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Texas

CJ Baxter's journey back to the gridiron, aided by the best motivation he could ask for

by: Evan Vieth08/15/25
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CJ Baxter (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

Sitting on CJ Baxter’s nightstand is a glamorous trophy.

No, it’s not from his time at Edgewater High School in Orlando, nor is it from the Longhorns’ Big 12 Championship in 2023. It’s an NCAA national title trophy—the real thing.

Baxter didn’t order a model for motivation. When he wakes up every morning, he’s greeted by Texas Softball’s national championship trophy, won by his girlfriend and star third baseman Mia Scott.

“Since she’s won the national championship, her trophy is on my nightstand,” Baxter said. “So every morning I wake up, that’s the first thing I see. She says I gotta get me one.”

Athletic excellence is obvious in that couple. Baxter was a public supporter of Texas Softball’s 2025 College World Series run, cheering on from the stands as Scott made clutch play after clutch play at the hot corner. But what’s brought the two even closer, outside of their stardom at the University of Texas, is their shared motivation of working through impactful injuries.

One of the stories of the softball team’s journey was Scott’s ability to play elite defense and hit home runs while playing on a torn ACL. She never received surgery, electing to tough it out as a core piece of a national champion. That had to leave a lasting impact on Baxter, who missed the 2024 Texas football season with injuries to his LCL and PCL suffered in the preseason.

“She tough, she played on, I don’t know how she did it. She’s always messing with me about it. She’d be like, ‘How come I could play but you can’t?'” Baxter said. “But what do you say? She pushed me, if anything, when there were days I didn’t want to get up. And, you know, feeling lazy, she made me get up.”

Scott’s story, and her willingness to support Baxter through his own injury struggles, has brought the junior running back to the spot he’s in now: practicing in full-contact drills for the first time in over a year.

Baxter’s health has been a mystery for the team all offseason, but as we near the Ohio State matchup, it’s becoming clear that he will be ready for whatever the Buckeyes throw at him. Just a year after a gruesome knee injury to multiple ligaments, Baxter is back.

“It was a lot, more mentally than physically,” Baxter said about the recovery process. “I’m not going to sit here and sugarcoat it. The first two months were brutal—mentally, watching the games. I had surgery the week before the first game, so I had to stay home and watch from the couch because I couldn’t move around as much. And it was hard—like, it was hard for me to watch football. It was hard for me to do a lot of things.”

Baxter is far removed from his bedridden days and has a new goal: that elusive national championship. While a title would mean the world to hundreds who have impacted the Texas football program over the last half-decade, no one has more reason to fight for that trophy than Baxter.

Who knows—maybe by January, Scott’s title will have another to keep it company.

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