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Don't underestimate the importance of cultural development as Texas prepares for the 2025 season

by: Justin Nash08/20/25
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Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Texas players take the field for warm up at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor on Saturday, September 7, 2024. © Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“Culture” gets thrown around a lot these days to the point where the word starts to lose some of its weight. But at Texas, you can simply look to the shirts that the players are wearing to tell if they have bought into the culture.

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About a year and a half ago, 3rd and Longhorn brought on Gunnar Helm for an interview. One of his answers told us a lot about the 2025 Texas team even though he’s catching touchdowns for the Tennessee Titans in the preseason.

Texas has a color coding system for its workout T-shirts, one that lets others know exactly where you stand that week.

“We’ve got a T-shirt system,” Helm said. “So we’ve got a white shirt, a gray shirt, an orange shirt and a black shirt. Black shirt is you’re perfect. You go to every meal, go to every class, study hall. Orange shirt is, you miss one or two things. Maybe you miss a weigh in, maybe you miss a meal, something like that. Gray shirt is you miss, like, multiple things. A white shirt is like… you don’t want to be in a white shirt.”

To make it simple
Black shirt – you are an excellent teammate
Orange shirt – you are a good teammate
Grey shirt – you can be a good teammate
White shirt – you aren’t a good teammate and are selfish

You want to be in a black shirt. However, it isn’t something one hangs onto like a medal for crossing the finish line. As Torre Becton explains in this 3rd and Longhorn episode, players get a new shirt each week.

“Guys may have fallen short in some areas or some days and they have to go down a level from week to week,” Becton said. “They come into my office early in the morning about 5:45 a.m. like ‘coach, why is my shirt (a different color)?”

He also explained part of the mentality of why the Longhorns do the color system.

“It’s funny because it’s a really small thing, it’s almost an adolescent thing but because the guys are such competitors, (they) get an opportunity to get to a black shirt, and that black shirt looks cool,” Becton said. “It’s got stars on the back, so on and so forth. Guys want to get to that black shirt because it’s a badge of ‘this is what I decide to do during the week, this is how I decide to live, this is what kind of teammate and what kind of young man I decided to be.'”

So let’s look at some of the offseason workout photos and see how the culture has grown. The first post is from the beginning of winter workouts. You can see some star players in gray. The last post is from the summer.

The five stars on the shirt all have a word listed on them, and they all build up to one star.

‘All the time.’

If that sounds familiar, it’s because you have heard Steve Sarkisian say who you are some of the time is who you are all the time. The other words listed are Discipline, Commitment, Toughness, and last but certainly not least Accountability.

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After Texas lost to Iowa State in 2020, Cyclones running back Breece Hall had a quote that stung quite Texas fans a bit.

“It’s five-star culture vs. five-star players.”

It’s easy now to admit that Hall was right, but only because Texas does have a five-star culture once again.

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