Texas learning important lessons from Arkansas, including the need to hate losing

Whenever Steve Sarkisian and his Texas football program reviewed the film of their 40-21 loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks, they encountered play-after-play with a deficiency that consistently hampered all three phases. Lessons learned in that manner are difficult ones both for coaches and players. But for Sarkisian, there was one positive situated among all those pills that were hard to swallow.

“My message was I’m glad it happened now and not five weeks from now when we’re in Big 12 play,” Sarkisian said Monday. “There’s plenty of things to fix. Sometimes, fixing issues, they’re hard to see and they’re hard to fix when you win. When you lose, things get magnified, and we had a lot of issues in this game that got magnified. We’ve got an experienced coaching staff that will get it fixed, and we’ll get the players ready to play.”

Sarkisian’s positive spin has some merit. Though Texas will eventually join the SEC, the loss to Arkansas does not count against its current conference record. The Longhorns are also set to face the Rice Owls on Saturday, a weak opponent who enters Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium 0-2 with losses to common opponent Arkansas and the Houston Cougars.

Sarkisian’s spin was shared by several of his players.

“My dad texted me this the other day; Bill Gates says failure is almost the best way to learn,” Moro Ojomo said Monday. “Early in the season, we haven’t gotten to conference play yet, we played a formidable opponent and things didn’t go the right way. But we get another opportunity to get better.”

DeMarvion Overshown put it this way: “We’re just glad it happened then. The stuff that we need to work on was exposed Saturday. We’re glad we got that out of the way. We’re able to work on that this week and on into conference play.”

Ahead of the other former Southwest Conference matchup on the non-conference schedule, Sarkisian explained his belief that great teams hate to lose more than they like to win. He told of how that mentality doesn’t just appear on Saturdays but is built via work done Monday through Friday.

The Longhorns were riding high after a win over top 25 Louisiana in Week 1. They were brought back down to earth Week 2.

“We got slapped in the face with the feeling of loss,” Sarkisian said. “Hopefully, that triggers some thoughts and some things in our preparation to ‘I don’t want that feeling again. I hate to lose as much as I love to win. I hate to lose and that’s what drives me. I don’t want to lose.’”

On Monday, Ojomo relayed his feelings on defeat and how he reacted to the gut-punch at Fayetteville.

“It’s pitiful,” Ojomo said. “I can’t put into words the pain from losing, but you have to use it and transfer it into a positive, almost being immersed by the situation. And taking that loss, molding it to something that’s going to be great, look back on it, and be like ‘yes, this happened for a great reason.’”

Ojomo said Monday both players and coaches must have that hate-to-lose mentality and use it as motivation to succeed for the rest of Texas’ 2021 slate. It wasn’t any sort of finger-pointing or blame-shifting, rather it was a call for the entire program, coaches and players alike, to move forward from the loss.

“I believe players and coaches have to work in unison to create something special and beautiful from a loss,” Ojomo said. “Coaches have to realize some of the things they did wrong and the players also have to realize why this wasn’t my best game, why didn’t I execute at a high level. It’s got to be a mixture of coaches getting on us and us looking yourself in the mirror.”

“I lost, what could I have done to be a better player and to help my team win?”

After a few days of practice following his Monday statement, Sarkisian said Thursday he could sense that disdain for defeat he was looking for.

“You don’t like something bad to happen like a loss that we had to stoke that fire, but clearly that did,” Sarkisian said Thursday. “I’d have been really concerned if that didn’t do that to us, if it didn’t make us feel like ‘I need to do more. I need to dig deeper to make that happen.’”

On Saturday, Texas will have another chance to prove how much it hates to lose against the Rice Owls. At 7 p.m., it’ll become clear whether that fire Sarkisian mentioned was stoked enough following the trip home from Arkansas.