First let me say, I love the Texas Longhorns, and therefore I love college football. The special part of being a fan is the continued optimism behind every coaching change, every recruiting class, and every hope as a blue blood that your team is the next "It" team in college football. Currently, Saban is the standard to which fans hope their new hired coaches are like (at blue blood programs). When a guy struggles in his first season (hmmm let's say 5-7), and they have a shocking home loss (Kansas at home), fans will quickly point out Saban was 7-6 his first season with a loss at home to Louisiana-Monroe. This is why even after one bad season, you will have a group (large group, maybe even the majority) that will bring up Saban's first year and still believe the new head coach will have their team as the "next up" in college football. I must admit, this was me after Charlie's first year and Tom's first year. However, during Sark's first year, I knew he was different. I have to digress for a moment: I started a deep dive into Sark's first two classes and had posted topics looking at the flips, how guys panned out, etc. I got lazy and didn't finish, but my purpose was to address the people that were in panic mode about the 2025 class, and Sark showed us his pattern. Ok back to the topic, and let's see a pattern or trend if you will. Going back to Sark's first season: Texas was up 38-20 against OU, 24-13 against OK St., 21-10 against Baylor, 7-3 against Iowa State; all of which were first half leads and every game they ended up losing. Sark's second season saw them blow a 24-14 lead against Tech and a 21 - 10 lead against Oklahoma State, but there was improvement and more instances of them putting teams away and making plays to win games. Then came last season in which Sark had a second year QB in his system, and he had a defense that could now consistently make plays to win games, but lost to really really good college quarterbacks. This season has been a 180 compared to Sark's first season. If Texas goes up two scores (or if they get the lead), then that defense is in control. Believe it or not, I believe a Sark coached Texas team has more progression that they will eventually make. Hopefully we start to see those things this season, hopefully today. The running game the last few weeks has been dominant at times to last week dominating the entire game. Our offense moved the ball on A&M for the whole 2nd half. Getting back to my original premise for writing this topic is to remind everyone that Sark is not Saban. Yes, he learned under Saban, and he learned the personal discipline and consistency it takes to run an elite program and how to transfer those personal characteristics onto your team, but we can't forget he learned under Carroll too. From Carroll he learned the importance of stacking insane talent on insane talent and building a competitive program that translates to a competitive team on Saturdays. What makes Sark different? His experiences and his well known failures. What makes Sark different? His ability and willingness to learn under others and his humility to still see the need to grow. What makes Sark different? Him taking those lesson learned previously, knowing who he is, and then trusting and enjoying the process to become a great head coach. So I'll say it again Sark is not Saban, he is THE boogeyman to these other coaches and college program. You saw it the first time around when Kirby was talking at halftime despite a 20-0 lead and still fearful of Sark's offense being able to come up. You saw it yesterday with the signing of Justus Terry. Last time Georgia and Texas played I wrote a topic called "When Texas Loses....", now I'm telling you to enjoy this day because of the coach and the team we have, and a little birdie told me that the defense will ensure we win the championship and then THE championship. 🤘
Be blessed!