Texas players hyped about playing for Big 12 title at AT&T Stadium

If there’s a Mecca of football in the Lone Star State, it’s Jones AT&T Stadium in Lubbock. 

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Er, hold on… no, sorry. That’s wrong. With all due apologies to Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire, it’s not that AT&T Stadium that teams apparently must go through to win the Big 12 Championship. It’s the other, bigger one in Arlington, the expansive and opulent AT&T Stadium that’s the home of the Dallas Cowboys that hosts the league’s title game.

It’s also been the home of the UIL State Football Championships every year since 2015, when Houston’s NRG Stadium last hosted the championships. That means that if a player won a state championship over the past eight seasons, they knew that the goal was to play in “Jerry World.”

Texas safety Michael Taaffe won back-to-back state titles at Austin Westlake in the stadium.

“I’ve had some luck in the Cowboys’ stadium in the last couple of years,” Taaffe explained. “I love playing in that stadium. It’s treated me well so far. If that’s the trend, then that’d be awesome.”

Tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders had a couple of big high school games with Denton Ryan in AT&T Stadium, too. 

“It’s obviously going to be a great feeling for me,” Sanders said. “My state championship game was live. Hopefully we get the same outcome as my high school game. It’s all going to come down to whether we execute or not.”

No. 7 Texas has earned the right to play No. 23 Oklahoma State in this year’s Big 12 Championship game on Saturday, something several players dreamed about when in the stadium in Arlington during Big 12 Media Days. 

“I remember me, (Jordan Whittington), and a few other guys were in Arlington for Big 12 Media Days in July, and we were just talking,” Texas defensive back Jahdae Barron said. “Me and J-Whitt, we’ve had several talks about this… Just being there, looking at (the trophy) and knowing this piece can mean so much for the city of Austin and this university, it played a big role in my heart. 

“We knew as a team this is something that we want, and we worked all season for it. To finally be here, we can’t get caught up in the game. We just have to go out there and make sure we handle business so we can have that.”

And while the Longhorns have played in some pretty spectacular locales this season – like in Tuscaloosa, Ala. where they beat the Crimson Tide and in Dallas at the Cotton Bowl where they lost to Oklahoma – getting to strap it on and butt heads under the big dome in Arlington has been the goal all year.

“Me and Whitt came over there and said ‘let’s look at it now, because the next time we see this thing is when we’re back here,” Texas linebacker Jaylan Ford said about viewing the league’s trophy at AT&T Stadium during his Media Days appearance in July. “For me and for him and for the rest of the guys that have been here for a while, we hadn’t got to that point. At the time, we had known what this team was capable of and it was our job to help lead everyone in that direction. To say we’ve gotten to that point now is a full circle moment.”

If Texas beats Oklahoma State it will secure its first Big 12 title since 2009, the season it went undefeated until losing to Alabama in the BCS National Championship game in the Rose Bowl. That campaign, like this one, went through AT&T Stadium (then called Cowboys Stadium) as Texas had to hold off Nebraska in a wild 13-12 win to advance.

The Longhorns have played in AT&T Stadium just twice since that game: in September of 2014 they lost to UCLA 20-17 and in 2018 they fell to Oklahoma 39-27 in the Big 12 Championship before a crowd of 83,114, the largest throng to ever attend the league’s title game.

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“This will be my first time actually playing a championship game,” Texas offensive lineman Kelvin Banks said. “I’ll be taking every moment in. Being able to have the opportunity to play in the stadium and play on the team we have is going to be very exciting.”