The Peach Bowl win was a moment worth remembering for Steve Sarkisian

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian now has multiple wins at Texas that came outside of the bounds of the 12-game regular season. He lifted a trophy after the 2023 Big 12 Championship and then was able to flip a ceremonial down marker to the quarterfinal round after the 2024 College Football Playoff first-round game versus Clemson.

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But in the eyes of the record-keepers of college football, neither of those two games counted as bowl wins. So entering the New Year’s Day showdown with Arizona State in the Peach Bowl, it had been a decade since a program Sarkisian was leading had won a bowl trophy.

Bowls have varying meanings for different Football Bowl Subdivision programs. A school whose football team is mired in mediocrity in a region of the country looked down upon from airplanes that gets to, say, a seven-win threshold loves the idea of a trip to El Paso in late December with a chance to prove their ability on the big stage.

On the other hand, a team like Alabama, who didn’t like being left out of the College Football Playoff at 9-3, probably wasn’t too pleased to be in and lose the Reliaquest Bowl to a flawed Michigan team.

The bowls that are cared about more than any other, however, are very clear these days. They are part of the New Year’s Six and the 12-team College Football Playoff.

For the first time since the 2014 Holiday Bowl, and for the first time at Texas, Sarkisian lifted a bowl trophy as the Longhorns moved onto the next round of the College Football Playoff by winning a New Year’s Six game.

The significance was not lost on Sarkisian.

“I mean, we took a moment,” Sarkisian said Friday. “We took a moment after the Clemson game and took a moment after the Peach Bowl. It’s always probably a good thing when the confetti is falling on you, and it’s your colors. So, we try not to miss those things. As much as there’s the big prize at the end that we’re striving for, there’s victories along the way, and those small victories need to be celebrated. And this, by no means, was a small victory.”

The events in between Sarkisian’s bowl wins are well-documented, including his departure from USC, his stint in the NFL, his work with Nick Saban, and his return to the head coaching ranks. It was an important step for his career on and off the field, as it netted him a little bit more bonus money and a bowl win of his own at Texas.

The Longhorns had not won a bowl game in four years, just longer than the time between the 2012 Alamo Bowl win over Oregon State and the 2017 Texas Bowl win over Missouri but nothing compared to the winless stretch in the postseason between 1987 and 1994.

It was an achievement for Sarkisian of course, but also for Texas football. Texas became the first program to win all of the New Year’s Six bowl games, which consists of the Rose, Sugar, Cotton, Fiesta, Orange, and Peach.

As the process-oriented program-leader would tell you, there’s more to be done.

“We didn’t come this far just to come this far, I guess would be what I’d tell you, how it’s manifested itself,” Sarkisian said. “The journey is not done; the mission is not complete. It’s still a driving force behind what we do every day. Why we wake up so early. Why we stay so late. Why our players are coming in on an off day when we’re asking them not to be here, and they’re in here watching tape, stretching, striding, getting rehab.”

Sarkisian hopes this bowl win is the first of many. But he understands that it is the first for him at Texas, and that’s worth acknowledging especially when they occur at this point on the calendar.

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“You’ve got to celebrate your victories as you navigate your way through it, because they’re hard to get,” Sarkisian said. “If they weren’t that difficult, there would be a lot of other teams in this position.”