Arch Manning Looking to Lead Texas to a National Championship

They’ve been the team on the hump the last two years. Back-to-back appearances in the College Football Playoff semifinal, and two straight times that they came within just a few plays of advancing to the national championship.

Now, as Steve Sarkisian prepares for his fifth season as head coach of the Texas Longhorns, he is looking to get them over that hump.

“We’ve been close. We’ve been there. We’ve been knocking on the door the last two years,” Sarkisian said. “But to go do that, we need to take it one step at a time as we embark on the summit that we’re looking for, and that’s going to take great discipline.”

That will be easier said than done, though, for the Longhorns in 2025. Not only will they have to replace 12 NFL Draft picks from this past April, bringing the total to 23 in the past two years, but they will also face some of their toughest competition on the road.

“We’ve got road games at Ohio State, at Georgia, at Florida, at Kentucky, which are
all going to be very difficult environments to play in,” Sarkisian said. “We’ll be the most traveled team in the SEC this year, which is a great challenge for us. We’re looking forward to it.”

New Faces

Going on the road is never easy, but especially when teams will have as many new faces in starting roles as the Longhorns will. One of the most prominent new faces is quarterback Arch Manning, who, after playing behind Quinn Ewers for two years, will finally get his chance to prove the hype and attention surrounding him are deserved.

“I learned so much from Quinn in my two years behind him. I think he handled it like a pro,” Manning said. “It’s definitely not easy having me as the backup with all the media. I’m forever grateful for him.”

While it likely wasn’t easy for Ewers to have such a popular backup, that wasn’t easy for Manning either.

“I think I would say probably from going — I played — this is not a really big deal, but I played every year in high school,” Manning said. “It was a 2-A high school. That doesn’t mean anything. But from sitting out and not playing, that was pretty tough.”

Yet despite not playing much outside of two starts and a few appearances off the bench, Manning said that the idea of entering the transfer portal “never crossed” his mind.

“I knew Texas was the place I wanted to be. It was the city I wanted to be in, a great education,” Manning said. “I had friends there. I was still developing and growing as a football player and as a person. So I never really wanted to leave.”

Yet even as he prepares for his first full season as a starter, the expectations are not going away. The goal in Austin is simple: win a national championship.

“So we’re back to work, and the leadership on this team is full of winners, and that’s the way they want to go about the season, is try to go win a championship,” Sarkisian said. “That’s the goal.”