FOOTBALL REVIEW/PREVIEW: 2022/2023

Commentary by Larry Carlson  ( lc13@txstate.edu )

It's daunting to stare at eight months of no college football.  Talk about a dry January.

Especially tough when your Longhorns have lost at least five games for the eleventh time in thirteen years (the Horns went 10-4 in 2018 and 7-3 in Covid-infused 2020).  

Sure, there were bright spots in 2022.  Playing Bama down to the gun was encouraging, at least at the time.

Beating hell out of OU was fun, even if the Sooners were missing their QB and went on to a losing season.

Knocking out eventual Big XII conference champ Kansas State on the road was satisfying.  And Bijan won the Doak Walker Award as the nation's best running back, even if some UT fans were still puzzling over why the tempest from Tucson wasn't getting the ball for long stretches during losses to Oklahoma State and TCU.

But it was unsettling, upon further review, to hear Steve Sarkisian talk about "progress" after an Alamo Bowl loss that was just plain ugly.  Post-game remarks revealed that a new season's spin cycle was under way, with leftover burnt orange kool-aid ready for peddling.

So the glass seems half empty, at least to some of us.

TCU manhandled Texas in November.  If you watched Georgia overwhelm TCU, consider the very real possibility that UT football is not close to being well prepared for a regular season gauntlet of SEC warfare.

It is coming soon.

Sark came to the Forty Acres with the rep --- based on skillfully maximizing the NFL-ready talent he supervised in Tuscaloosa for two seasons --- as an offensive genius.  But he had been an ordinary head coach in stints at Washington and USC and at Texas he's been "as ordinary as everyday wash," as Darrell Royal once described an underachieving UT squad in August drills.  Royal's Texas teams, by the way, lost five games only once, in '76, the legend's coaching swan song.  Sark's eight full seasons as a college boss have seen only two years with fewer than five losses and each of those "standout" USC teams lost four.

Perhaps Sarkisian is following the lucrative blueprint of another man regularly touted as an offensive genius.

Kliff Kingsbury's first Texas Tech team (in 2013) earned eight wins against five losses.  It was the best record he managed at his alma mater.  The Raiders under Kliffy had only one more winning year -- 7-6 -- along with four losing seasons.  But everybody knew his name and somebody sensed magic in Kingsbury.  He parlayed his lack of success in Lubbock into a head coaching job with the Arizona Cardinals.  Four years later, with a 28-37-1 mark in the NFL, and more than $22 million in earnings, the former New Braunfels Unicorns QB was "relieved of his duties" this month.  But you can't keep a critic's darling down.  Within two days of the pink slip showing in a season-ending loss to San Francisco (coached by former Longhorn Kyle Shanahan), Kingsbury was rumored to be next in line as offensive coordinator at Alabama if Bill O'Brien exits.

So excuse Sark if he displays little sense of urgency about UT football's future.  Coaching football these days is a lottery with many wealthy winners. Lane Kiffin of Ole Miss just watched as his Rebels lost five of their last six, beating only hapless A&M, after a rousing 7-0 start.  The coaching hook for Kiffin?  Of course not.  Awbarn showed interest in signing him and Lane turned five losses in six games into a $1.75 million per year raise.  Good work if you can get it.

There's a slim chance that hope and promise for UT football has at last worn thin.  You cry "Wolf!" every season and play like lambs,  maybe a few people tire of the act.  The Athletic, home to some of football's better journalism, isn't biting for now.  In its self-admitted "way too early top 25" for 2023, the Bijan-less Horns didn't cut the mustard.   While the usual suspects (Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, LSU and Bama) formed the top five, the state of Texas was represented by TCU at ten, Texas Tech at 21, UTSA at 23 and Jimbo's Aggies at 25.

Ah, but Las Vega$ still likes Texans with moolah and 1969 Cadillacs.  On The Strip right now the Longhorns have the seventh best odds of taking home the national title next January.  So rinse and repeat.

Get ready for spring drills.  The Mighty Quinn and his Arch-rival quarterback will merit marquee attention.

The top-rated running back from the nation's high school ranks is on campus, fresh in from Florida.

The offensive line, barring injuries, will return intact.

Maybe some transfer portal help arrives.  News of shiny, showy Lamborghinis and Aston-Martins travels well through the social media grapevine.

Bring on that Orange-White game.  We stay hungry for football here in Texas.  Never can get enough.

Fans will be resilient, hopes will be high.

The Longhorns won't be short on storylines, possibilities or good players in April or August 2023. 

That is always the case.

But as the incomparable Darrell Royal famously dismissed underachievers, "Potential just means you haven't done anything."