The Texas Longhorns look to end lengthy home win streaks in back-to-back seasons

Last year in Tuscaloosa, the Texas Longhorns stopped a lengthy, five-year stretch where the Alabama Crimson Tide didn’t lose a home game. On the mic with ESPN after the game, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian dropped a heck of a line in celebration.

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“Well, I didn’t want to tell the guys that they were 52-1 in their last 53 games here,” Sarkisian said. “I guess they’re 52-2 now.”

The Longhorns’ next goal? Do something similar and make Michigan 23-1.

Michigan is 41-3 in their last 44 games, has won 16 games in a row, and emerged victorious in 23 straight home games. The Wolverines’ last home loss?

To Penn State in 2020.

Michigan’s last regular season loss?

At Michigan State in 2021.

“Moving forward to Michigan, a ton of respect for this program and this team,” Sarkisian said Monday. “You don’t go to three straight College Football Playoffs if you don’t have a great program, and they’ve got a great program. Obviously, capping it off last year being national champs.”

Sark would add, “this is a heck of a challenge for our team, but this is why you come to Texas: to play in games like this.”

Aside from that loss to the Spartans and two slip-ups in the College Football Playoff against Georgia in 2021 and TCU in 2022, the Wolverines (along with the Bulldogs) have been the class of the sport in the past few seasons. Michigan has won three straight Big 10 championships. The maize and blue have topped Ohio State three straight years. And finally, U-M got over the hump and won it all last season earning the program’s first national championship since 1997 (though not without controversy).

For Texas’ players, the matchup in Tuscaloosa was one they relished playing in. The one in Ann Arbor holds similar esteem.

“When you sign up to play college football, these are the games you live for,” Jake Majors said Monday. “With Alabama, we didn’t treat that week different than any other week. We go about our business every week. It’s never that this week is bigger than the other. Every week is a big week. That’s a mindset we have as a team. We don’t put anybody on a pedestal. We get to work every week, and we treat every opponent the same.”

The fact that the Longhorns’ first road trip is another big-time out-of-conference matchup in back-to-back seasons is a bit of a peculiarity. That’s a trend that will continue next season when the Longhorns travel to Ohio State to open the season on August 30, 2025.

Sarkisian admitted on Monday that one of the reasons this contest with Michigan, which was previously set to be a home game for the Longhorns, was switched to a road contest was so that Fox could get the rights to one more Texas game in exchange for allowing the Longhorns out of the Big 12 a year earlier than scheduled. Fox doesn’t have the rights to any SEC home games, so putting the Longhorns on its airwaves one last time was a bargaining chip used in the negotiations that moved Texas eastward one year early.

The Longhorns therefore have had to prepare for not only Michigan, but 100,000-plus Michigan fans. But during preseason camp, even without realizing it, the Longhorns were putting in some preliminary prep work for what awaits them in the Big House.

“I think our players didn’t know it until today, but we were practicing a lot of plays for this game in training camp,” Sarkisian said. “They didn’t know it as much, but now they know that we’ve started the preparation today. I don’t necessarily want to say it’s been in place for months, but we had a pretty good idea of a style in which we want to play this game. We’ve practiced a lot of these plays in training camp, and now we get to dust them off this week and use them in the ballgame.”

The experience that over half of the roster has in big game environments, whether that’s Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, Bryant-Denny Stadium, or otherwise, is going to be tapped into Saturday morning. The Longhorns feel as if the strength of their culture in hostile environments helped them to a 12-2 season and College Football Playoff appearance last season, and it can do the same this year starting in Michigan Stadium.

“It just shows the special connection and the culture we have with this team,” Jaydon Blue said. “We believe we can go anywhere and perform if we stay together and stay connected because we know we’re going to face adversity. The thing is, we’re so connected that when we do face adversity, we’re able to bounce back.”

That connection allowed for the Longhorns to earn a victory over Alabama in 2023, dealing the Crimson Tide their second loss in 54 home games.

To give Michigan its fourth loss in the past 45 games, Texas plans to draw upon lessons from last year. That said, they know this year’s team has to beat this year’s Wolverines, and that anything that happened at Alabama doesn’t factor into Saturdays’ game.

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“Anything we did last year doesn’t matter,” Jahdae Barron said. “Anything they did last year doesn’t matter, and we know that. We respect them, but we don’t fear them. At the end of the day, they’re going to give us their best shot. We’re going to make sure we deliver our best shot. It’s going to be an amazing game.”