Big 12 play begins with TTU, who Texas won't overlook on quest for elusive conference title

On3 imageby:Joe Cook09/23/21

josephcook89

As Big 12 Conference play begins in earnest this Saturday, Texas will begin its quest to end an 11-season run without a conference title. That number ties the longest drought in program history, matching the 1931-1941 title-less stretch ended by Dana X. Bible’s 1942 team.

A program with the resources, clout, and bravado of Texas has a yearly goal of contending for the conference championship, if not winning it altogether. But since Hunter Lawrence toed Texas to the 2009 Big 12 crown, the Longhorns have realistically competed for the title only two times.

The lack of conference titles is not the fault of current Longhorn head coach Steve Sarkisian. However, his job is to end that drought. With Big 12 play beginning and the Longhorns hosting the Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday, Sarkisian isn’t looking backward when it comes to the program’s struggles to compete for a title.

On Monday, he responded to a question about the drought by mentioning this is his first season at Texas, and his focus is on what’s in front of him, not what’s behind him.

“We’re not here to make up for anything in the past,” Sarkisian said Monday. “We’re here to do the best job that we can do this season. The next challenge we have is Saturday against Texas Tech. That’s kind of our mindset and our process as we go through it.”

“I think it’s a slippery slope when you start trying to look down the road of what could be, and then you get hit in the mouth with something that’s right in front of you. We try to keep focused on what’s in front of us.”

Even with that in mind, the quest for a Big 12 title is one Sarkisian signed up for when he took the job in Austin in January.

“We recognize we came here to win championships,” Sarkisian said Thursday. “We recognized that in the locker room after last week’s ball game, and this (game) is the first step in trying to achieve that.”

The Longhorn football program was in reach of a conference title on two occasions during the 2010s. In 2013, Texas was “one half away” from its fourth Big 12 championship before surrendering 27 points in the second half to Baylor in blizzard-like conditions at Floyd Casey Stadium. In 2018, a well-timed corner blitz by Oklahoma’s Tre Brown in the current iteration of the Big 12 championship game stifled Texas’ attempts to de-throne the Sooners.

Players from the 2018 team are still on the roster. They have a sense of what it takes to make a trip to AT&T Stadium at 11 a.m. on December 4.

“I tell my teammates all the time, this feels like the 2018 season,” safety BJ Foster said Monday. “This could be the season that we go back and that we can do things like that again.”

But like their head coach, players still have eyes on the short-term in September as opposed to the long-term in early December.

“I definitely see it, but the big thing is we’ve just got to focus on Tech,” O-lineman Junior Angilau said Monday. “Tech is our next game, and you keep taking care of business game after game after game, that will lead you to where you want to be in the end.”

Texas Tech is the first of a nine-game journey Texas wants to make ten games. Two teams, Baylor and Kansas, got a head start on their conference schedule with the Bears handling the Jayhawks last week. But as league play begins, the entire conference is staring down difficult questions as the calendar approaches October.

Oklahoma, the perceived frontrunner, put together two performances against Power 5 opponents that have failed to inspire confidence for a playoff run. Iowa State couldn’t solve its Iowa problem and Brock Purdy has not been extremely effective. He was even benched against the Hawkeyes.

No one from the seven-team clump in the middle, a clump Texas is a member of, has yet done anything to turn the “top two” into a top three. Of course, Kansas wallows in its continued misery and is looking forward to basketball season.

The conference may be more up for grabs than anticipated over the summer when Sooners and Cyclones dominated most conference championship prognostications.

Texas is one of the schools whose hands will be grasping for one of the two spots, but as Sarkisian alluded to in an analogy on Monday, the Longhorns can’t claim one of those places without taking care of what’s next on the schedule.

“When you’re driving in a car, there’s a reason the windshield is so much bigger than the rearview mirror,” Sarkisian said. “You don’t spend much time looking in the rearview mirror or you’re going to miss what’s right in front of you. Also, you need to keep your awareness up on what’s right in front of you and not try to look too far down the road. That’s our process to doing it.”

What’s right in front of Texas is Texas Tech. The car arrives at the next stop Saturday at 11 a.m.

Discuss this and other Texas Longhorns and Big 12 topics on Inside Texas Members Only.

You may also like