Longhorns Coach Steve Sarkisian's End Goal? 'Be Like Mack Brown and Darrell Royal'
After a decade and a half of frustration, the Texas Longhorns have returned to the upper echelon of college football, winning a Big 12 title and falling an incomplete Quinn Ewers pass in the College Football Playoff semi-final away from reaching a national title game.
It was a journey that began with the hiring of Steve Sarkisian as head coach in 2021 - a move that many at the time felt to be risky. However, three years later, that decision has paid off, and Sarkisian has the Longhorns on a sustainable path to long-term success.
In fact, Sarkisian's goal,as he revealed during the East-West Shrine Bowl events in Frisco last week, is to have the same kind of staying power and success as the two greatest coaches in Longhorns history - Mack Brown and Darrell Royal.
“Coming out of high school we all have hopes and dreams and aspirations,” Sarkisian said. “I don’t know if anybody’s path always is exactly what they thought it was going to be. At that time, I wanted to be Joe Montana, he was my idol and who I wanted to be.
“In the end, I’m trying to be like Mack Brown and Darrell Royal.”
Brown and Royal remain the two longest-tenured and most successful coaches in the history of the program.
Royal set the standard, winning 167 games, 11 conference titles and three national championships from 1957-1976. Two decades later, Brown picked up where Royal left off, winning 158 games, two Big 12 titles and winning a national championship in 2005. Brown also got the Horns to a second national title game in 2009, where his team fell to Alabama after the injury to Colt McCoy.
Sarkisian has already proved his desire to stay long-term, passing on overtures from Alabama after the retirement of Nick Saban to return to the Longhorns for the long haul.
Now entering his third season at the helm, Sarkisian has the Horns in position to challenge for national championships once again.
While he is aware that it won't be easy, he also knows that to reach his goal of being the next Brown or Royal, he has to take the Longhorns to the mountaintop and win a national championship.
“There are challenges along the way,” Sarkisian said. “But I didn’t come to the University of Texas just to say, ‘I’m the head coach at Texas.’ I came here to win championships. We got a conference championship last year, which was a tremendous honor... But there’s more out there for us to do. We’ve built a program that is more than capable of doing that on a yearly basis. It’s hard to be a dynasty if you don’t have one (title). We need to get one first and go from there.”
Sarkisian and the Horns will start their quest toward that title next September when they open against Colorado State, followed by a matchup with the defending national champion Michigan Wolverines in Ann Arbor.
A couple of weeks later, the Horns' inaugural SEC slate begins. If Sarkisian can navigate that, and accomplish his national title goal, there is no telling how far he could take the program in the long term.
But if his tenure is anything akin to that of Royal and Brown, Texas fans will surely be happy with the results.
