SAN ANTONIO — Texas football carries with it the nation’s longest true road-game winning streak at 11, dating back to November 2022 against Kansas State. Along the way, the Longhorns have overcome Alabama — dealing Nick Saban his largest home defeat of his Crimson Tide career — Michigan, the defending national champions last September, and, of course, Texas A&M in the renewal of the Lone Star Showdown last November in College Station.
Arguably, Texas’ biggest away-game challenge will come in just over 30 days when the Longhorns travel to Columbus to take on the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, the team that knocked UT out of the College Football Playoff semifinals almost seven months ago. And this time, there’s no season-opener to get the engine churning before the big matchup. It’s Week 1.
“I’ve been down this road a couple different times throughout my career,” Steve Sarkisian said recently at the THSCA Coaches School. “This is probably the most daunting challenge of a first game, because some of those games were neutral-site type games. Really early in my career, way back in ’03, we opened at Auburn when I was at SC, and that was a heck of a challenge. We had a new quarterback, Matt Leinart. We had a couple freshmen running backs, Reggie Bush, LenDale White. We were a young team, and we got a great defense that year and found a way to win on the road against Auburn.”
Sound familiar? New quarterback, strong defense? That’s a very general assessment of this year’s Longhorns. That 2003 USC team went into a hostile Jordan-Hare Stadium and came out with a 23-0 win. The Tigers were ranked No. 6 in the nation and drawing plenty of championship buzz ahead of the opener.
“You just try to tap into those things throughout your career that you’ve been through, and then how can you benefit from that,” Sarkisian added. “For us, historically what we’ve done, the first two and a half weeks of training camp have been truly that: training camp. Then we’ve kind of adjusted into that third week where we’ve gotten into that first bigger opponent. A few years ago, it was Alabama for that week; last year it was Michigan; this year, it’s Ohio State. That was really implementing the game plan for that game. Then the fourth week, we would game plan and prepare for our first opponent. This year, it will look more like a two-week process to get ready for the game. Similar in a sense, I guess you could say, almost to a bowl game. The reality of it is probably a little more physicality, a little more opportunity to tackle and to do those things to make sure that you’re sharp.
“That’s always your biggest concerns going into your first game: A.) tackling, that you make sure you get people on the ground; B.) ball security, that your ball carriers are used to being tackled so you’re not giving up short fields; and then three, dealing with performance anxiety. For some of the players who it’s their first time on that stage, that they’re ready to perform. So if I can put them in some of those elements, as well as the staff putting together a good game plan, and then we can get up there, cut it loose, and go play.”
Ohio State will start a new quarterback this season as well, whether it be Julian Sayin, a high-profile recruit from the 2024 class, or Lincoln Kienholz, a redshirt sophomore. Regardless of who starts for the Buckeyes, OSU boasts one of the most talented rosters in the country and is right there with Texas as a preseason favorite to win the CFP championship. The Longhorns are currently 2.5-point underdogs to the Buckeyes, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
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