AUSTIN, Texas — When the University of Texas hosted a football recruiting weekend last summer, prospective players walked a burnt orange carpet flanked by nearly a dozen Lamborghinis with engines revving and growling as music blared.
It was an homage to head coach Steve Sarkisian’s motto since he arrived in Austin four years ago — “All gas, no brakes” — and what the program hopes to be able to deliver in the new era of excess in college football: substance with style.
Following a slow ramp-up that nearly ran off the road at the start of Sarkisian’s Texas tenure, the Longhorns have hit full speed.
After winning last season’s Big 12 title in the program’s final go-around in that conference and making the College Football Playoff for the first time, Texas entered this season ranked No. 3 in the AP Top 25. After a 3-0 start, the Longhorns were No. 1 for the first time in 16 years. Their long-awaited Southeastern Conference debut was a victory, too, with the team steered to a 35-13 home win against Mississippi State by backup quarterback Arch Manning, the scion of one of America’s most famous football families.
Texas, which returned to No. 1 on Sunday after a week at No. 2, is 5-0 and heading into Saturday’s annual Red River rivalry game with Oklahoma in Dallas (the Sooners also moved over from the Big 12 this year, making this that game’s first SEC edition). And from the Lamborghinis in June to the “TexCalibur” turnover sword that debuted on the sideline this year, these Longhorns are fully enjoying the program’s rejuvenation.
“I love that our personality is coming out of this team. I think we’ve got a pretty cool swagger about us right now,” Sarkisian said ahead of the team’s SEC debut last month. “But that swagger has been earned.”
Texas roared into the SEC this year on the heels of winning 15 of the Big 12’s regular-season or tournament championships across all sports in the Longhorns’ final school year in that league. The volleyball team is the two-time reigning national champion. The rowing team has won three of the past four national titles.
Overall, Texas has won three of the past four Directors’ Cups, awarded to the nation’s most successful athletic department.
“A united Texas,” athletic director Chris Del Conte likes to say, “is a reckoning.”
“There’s a standard here that is very high, and there’s an expectation of performance, and it’s not just in football, it’s in every sport,” said Sarkisian, a previous head coach at both Washington and Southern California who was Alabama’s offensive coordinator for two seasons before being hired by Texas. “So the conference may have changed, but our standard and our expectations really haven’t … The SEC slogan, ‘It just means more,’ matters. But I feel like at Texas, when you take this job, it just means more here, too.”
Texas has even poked at old rival Texas A&M a couple of times already. Shortly after Texas A&M’s baseball team lost in the College World Series finals to Tennessee this past summer, Del Conte swooped in and hired away Aggies head coach Jim Schlossnagle. Last week, a crowd of nearly 10,000 packed Texas A&M’s Reed Arena for the Longhorns’ SEC debut in volleyball, the highest attendance in state history for a volleyball match, only to watch the Longhorns leave College Station with a 3-1 victory.
Football is the Lamborghini of college sports, though, and after hitting some early speed bumps, Sarkisian has the program humming after more than a decade of not being in contention for national titles.
Texas went 5-7 in Sarkisian’s first year, with that 2021 season including a six-game losing skid that was the program’s worst in 65 years. Texas rebounded to 8-5 a year later, then went 11-1 in the regular season in 2023, won the Big 12 crown and was one play away from the national championship game.
Texas gave Sarkisian a four-year extension to keep him through 2030 in a contract that pays him more than $10 million per year and makes him one of the highest-paid coaches in the business.
Sarkisian, though, has to keep winning and keep pulling in the recruits and transfers in the new era of athletes being able to cash in on the use of their name, image and likeness. Few programs, if any, are better positioned to do that.
Texas has been among the most aggressive in the country in the NIL era, from the initial launch of the Clark Field Collective (now known as Clark Field Creative) and the Pancake Factory, a nonprofit that pledged $50,000 annually to scholarship offensive linemen in late 2021, just before Sarkisian signed his first recruiting class.
Those entities, and NIL projects supporting baseball and golf, were all rolled under the umbrella of the Texas One Fund in late 2022. In August, Texas announced that donations to the Texas One Fund will be rewarded with “loyalty points” within the Longhorn Foundation that can be used toward season tickets and other perks.
“Texas has one of the best NIL situations in college sports,” said sports law attorney Mit Winter, who tracks the evolving NIL marketplace and how schools are operating.
“Money isn’t an issue, and they have their donors and supporters all on the same page,” Winter said. “Talent wins in college sports, and Texas and its collective are doing everything necessary to ensure Texas continues to have the best talent.”
The Texas brand itself helps Longhorns players cash in.
Starting quarterback quarterback Quinn Ewers’ endorsements have included deals with video game, apparel and beverage companies. Another gives him use of a private jet. According to On3.com, Ewers ranks No. 6 overall and No. 5 among college football players with a valuation of $2.1 million.
Ranked just above him is his backup on the depth chart, with Manning at No. 4 and $3.1 million.
With his program humming, players cashing in and the Longhorns resting at their first open date of the season, Sarkisian was on the road recruiting over the weekend — with swagger to spare.
“It’s always a good thing when you get to go on the road undefeated and recruit,” he said. “It’s kind of like they roll out the red carpet for you.”
Even if burnt orange would be preferable to a Longhorn.