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Live Updates: Steve Sarkisian, Sherrone Moore preview upcoming Citrus Bowl battle

Joe Cookby: Joe Cook4 hours agojosephcook89

The No. 13 Texas Longhorns will battle the No. 18 Michigan Wolverines on New Year’s Eve in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl, the two teams announced Sunday. Both Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore are scheduled to be available to the media starting at 3:30 p.m. Central.

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Moore will be up at 3:30 p.m. and Sarkisian will speak at 3:45. Inside Texas plans to have video from both head coaches uploaded to the Inside Texas Football YouTube channel later today.

Updates from Steve Sarkisian

Steve Sarkisian: “It’s an opportunity for us to go win 10 games for the third consecutive season, something that hasn’t been done at the University of Texas since 2007 through 2009. We’ve had a great season, accomplished a lot of great things.”

Steve Sarkisian says for him and his players, one of the key message is “it’s not about what just happened to us, it’s about what are we going to do moving forward. That’ll be our message starting tomorrow morning with the team and the players. Naturally, we’re going to have discussions with a variety of players, some that have NFL aspirations, some that may be thinking about potentially going to other schools. That’s the reality of the state of college football right now, but I think jumping to that too soon and making an emotional decision I think can be where we can make a mistake. So we’ve got to be cognizant of that’s the reality of the state of college football. But also, let’s make sure that we’re making really good, conscientious decisions with the right information and not do anything out of emotion or frustration. That’ll be the process starting tomorrow, and I’m sure it will take a little bit of time to get to the final number of who may or who may not play.”

Steve Sarkisian says they did not consider opting out of the bowl game: “We felt like if we didn’t get into the CFP, being right on the cusp, we’d have an opportunity to go to a really good bowl game.”

Steve Sarkisian on the effect ND opting out of its bowl game can have on college football: “I don’t know about the ripple effect for everybody. We all have goals and aspirations of winning conference championships and winning national championships, at least we do. But I also think there’s an experience factor in all this, there’s a growth in all this. There’s development in all this. There’s camaraderie. There’s so much that goes into this that sometimes a bowl game is about celebrating a season and finishing a season the right way.”

Steve Sarkisian: “I think we all can agree we’ve got a flawed system right now that needs to be revamped, needs to be looked at from a lot of different angles. Where it goes from here, I don’t think anybody really knows.”

Steve Sarkisian on if this gives Texas an opportunity to step back and audit the program in a way they haven’t been able to do in CFP years: “This is a drastically different December than we’ve had from two years ago and most notably from what we had last year.” — Says the program has more time on its hands to audit the organization from top to bottom “from schemes, to playcalls, to personnel, to roster, to what we have coming in that we just signed, to where we maybe can enhance that through the portal, to the way we do our offseason program. There’s a lot of things that I’ve been evaluating last week when we had that time off and we’ll continue to do so throughout January.”

Steve Sarkisian on the possible benefits the Citrus Bowl gives to a young team: “I think it’s the quality of the opponent. We’re playing a Michigan team that won 5-of-their-last-6 games. They’ve got elite players. They’ve got a fantastic young quarterback who got better as the season went on. Got a really good young runner. They’ve got talent and really good schemes on both sides of the ball. We know that. We faced them a year ago. So I think what it does, it raises the level for some of our younger players and an opportunity to play them and to get them in the game but also, some players that have been developing as the season has gone on.”

Steve Sarkisian: “One thing we’re going to look at that we haven’t had the luxury of last year but we had going into the Washington game in the Sugar Bowl is how do you manage the time off?” — Mentions just looking at the calendar and ‘tinkering’ with the program’s future plans if it makes the CFP going forward.

Updates from Sherrone Moore

Sherrone Moore on Texas: “A little bit different. A little less experienced but still a lot of talent, a lot of guys that we played last year played this year. Very talented team. Obviously starts with Arch at the quarterback position. They’ve got skill guys all over the place. They do a really good job scheme wise. Coach Sarkisian does an outstanding job from an offensive standpoint scheming up different defenses and executing at a high level. Defensively, they’re fast, physical, good up front. It’s going to be a great challenge for our program.”

Sherrone Moore: “We’re excited about the challenge of playing Texas and we know we’ve got to play them later on down the road.”

Did Texas look like a CFP team? Sherrone Moore says yes. “They do, especially watching them in that last game against A&M. They play their tails off. They’re physical on defense. Offensively they’re explosive. They’ve got playmakers all over the place. Yeah, absolutely they do.”

Sherrone Moore on bowl games and why Michigan elected to play: “I think another opportunity to go play football, especially against a great opponent on a great stage, is another opportunity and why you come to places like this. For us, it felt like it was important not only for the development of our coaches and our players, but just the development of the program.”

Sherrone Moore says Kerry Coombs will coach in the bowl game for Michigan.

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