Now that the Longhorns have officially been left out of this season's College Football Playoffs, it's time to start making some positive moves. This is exactly what Steve Sarkisian relayed to both the team and Longhorn Nation in his recent press conference.
He spoke on a variety of topics, per usual, but the most impactful might've been his outlook on the bowl game and how productive the team can be with the extra free time they have by not being in the playoffs.
"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."
"This is a drastically different December than we've had from two years ago and most notably from what we had last year. From schemes, to play calls, 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."
In all honesty, the Citrus Bowl is an excellent bowl game and any team would be happy to participate in it. It'll be interesting to see how many Longhorns players choose to opt-out of playing in it, but my gut says that there won't be many.
When addressing the fact that Texas obviously feels like they were robbed of a CFP chance, Sarkisian reiterated that the team isn't going to just sit around and sulk. They have to look towards to the future because college football is a pretty complicated sport right now.
"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."
Ultimately, the 2025 season didn't go the way that both Texas and it's fans wanted it to, but they still have a chance to go out and win a big bowl game in a few weeks.