Steve Sarkisian believes Texas players are locked in, not focused on SEC move

The SEC is looming large, but Steve Sarkisian believes his Texas Longhorns team is focused on their final season in the Big 12.

Speaking with Greg McElroy, Sarkisian stated his belief that his team has tunnel vision, and they’re looking to make good on what they felt like was a missed opportunity to win the Big 12 in 2022.

“I really feel like our team is on a mission,” started Sarkisian. “Like we’ve been building for this, to win a Big 12 championship. I felt like, you know, they will all tell you that we missed an opportunity a year ago, to not play for the Big 12 Championship Game, because of our own undoing.

“You know, we made some mistakes in a couple of games that costed us the opportunity to be in that game, and these guys have been on a mission all fall, or all winter, all spring.”

Moreover, while Texas fans and media members alike may like to look ahead to the Longhorns’ move to the SEC, Sarkisian and his team aren’t interested in that at the moment.

“What was interesting is we were in a team meeting and I was referencing that, ‘Hey, just so you guys are aware, they’re going to release the SEC schedule tonight,’ these guys wanted to put out our 2023 schedule, to remind everybody who we were playing this year. So it didn’t take much,” added the Texas head coach. “I mean, we’ve got great leadership on this team. We’ve got guys that, really the full allotment of our team now are players that I inherited that have now been with us for three years, and have completely bought in to who we are, and what we’re doing. Or they’re kids that we recruited, that believed in what we were doing, and that’s why they came here.

“So we really have a locker room full of guys that are believing in what we believe, and have really good leadership, and are putting forth the necessary effort and means to try and be a champion, and that’s why they came here, and hopefully we’re giving them the platform and the tools to go do that.”

That’s simply the only mindset to have if Texas is to have success in 2023. Steve Sarkisian and the Longhorns are keeping the main thing the main thing, and that’ll help them in the long run, during their final season in the Big 12, and their first season in the SEC come 2024.