Texas Longhorns get down to business as fans dream of national championship

Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian wants consistency as Texas prepares for its season opener Aug. 31 against Colorado State.
Julien Alfred, a former Texan, is the first in school history to win the Olympic 100 meters. She also qualified for the 200-meter final.

Steve Sarkisian doesn’t have much use for preseason polls, but you can’t blame fans for being excited about this growing hype machine surrounding Texas football. Right now, it’s all about the work. Getting ready for the season is of utmost importance. The rest will take care of itself.

Texas opened at No. 4 in the first-ever LBM U.S. Coaches Poll released Monday, behind No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 Ohio State and No. 3 Oregon.

Preseason hype aside, the Texas head coach is only concerned with what happens at the facility, but for those who can’t help but get excited about this first year in the SEC and being mentioned alongside blue-blood champions like Georgia, don’t hold back. Enjoy the arts.

After all, it’s the time of year when “hope” is the worst word on the planet. There isn’t a fan base in the U.S. where at least one follower hasn’t asked, “Why not us this year?”

Further: Celebration in Austin for ailing former Texas player and future Hall of Famer Steve McMichael | Golden

Let them ask. For many of them, this is the best they can get.

As for the Longhorns, the hope is that their biggest moments will come in that inaugural 12-team playoff, though there are some big regular-season games to get through, including an ugly Oklahoma-Georgia doubleheader in October and the renewal of the Texas A&M rivalry on Thanksgiving weekend.

Texas will have its first practice in full pads on Tuesday and hold its first scrimmage on Saturday.

Further: The Texas Longhorns get to work during their second football practice with pads of the season. Check out the photos.

“There are two characteristics you have to have as a player in our program,” Sarksian told reporters Monday. “The ‘A’ is availability. If you’re not available, it’s hard to know what you’re capable of. The second is reliability. Reliability is about confidence and confidence over time. Confidence equals time plus consistency. And that’s what I want to see in our guys.”

August is the time when players who haven’t proven themselves in the spring can make a realistic run up the rankings. It’s also the crucial period when newcomers and veterans can build that all-important chemistry, with the opener against Colorado State set for Aug. 31. There’s a lot of football to be played (and more importantly, practiced) before those bright lights come on.

The hottest days of summer have arrived for the local football team. This is where championships are won and lost.

Former Texan Julien Alfred is the new queen of the 100

It’s Alfred’s time: Hey, Texas Hall of Honor, get an exhibit ready for Julien Alfred. She just became the best sprinter in school history. And St. Lucia.

Further: Golden: Texas’ Julien Alfred is racing toward track stardom

With the Olympic gold in the 100 meters comes immortality.

That’s what many commentators wrote after Saturday’s epic victory in the 100 metres over world champion Sha’Carri Richardson. And it was written by Alfred herself, hours before the race began.

“When I woke up this morning, I wrote it down: Julien Alfred, Olympic champion,” Alfred told reporters in Paris on Saturday. “I think believing in myself and trusting that I could do it is what really mattered to me.”

No Longhorn, male or female, had ever won Olympic gold in the 100 meters until Alfred did. She is the fastest woman in the world.

The Caribbean nation of 180,000 people had sent athletes to seven previous Olympics, but none had returned with a medal. When you win the Olympic 100-meter race, the title of fastest on the planet comes with that coveted gold medal. At just 23 years old, Alfred has just taken the sport by storm. With the gold medal hanging tightly around his neck, stardom has arrived.

Thousands of supporters gathered in the capital, Castries, and watched on a giant screen as the woman they call JuJu crossed the line first. They went crazy.

Could that 100-200m double sprint be just around the corner?

It’s true that Alfred doesn’t like running the 200 meters, but she qualified for the final on Monday by winning her semifinal heat in 21.98. She will join American runners Brittany Brown, McKenzie Long and favorite Gabby Thomas (a Texas graduate who volunteers at a health clinic in Austin) in what promises to be an electrifying final on Tuesday.

If she wins, it will be her third consecutive Olympics with a 100-200 double. Jamaican Elaine Thompson-Herah did it in 2016 and 2020. She injured her Achilles tendon earlier this season and was unable to compete for a triple Olympic title.

By the way, men’s 100-meter champion Noah Lyles is the favorite to win the 200 and become the first American to win gold in the 100 and 200 at the same Olympics since Carl Lewis did it in Los Angeles in 1984. Of course, the legendary Usain Bolt did it three times (2008, 2012 and 2016).

Before winning Olympic gold…

A global question: In March 2023, Alfred carried herself with a healthy dose of confidence, but she hesitated when I asked her the one question she didn’t see coming and paused when I interviewed her on the eve of the Texas Relays.

She was already a decorated sprinter, having earned All-America honors 11 times and at the time was the second-fastest woman in 60-meter history. So when I asked her if she was the fastest woman on the planet, it wasn’t an exaggeration, though there were more accomplished sprinters out there, such as Olympic champions Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Shericka Jackson, all of whom were absent from the 100-meter race this time around.

On Saturday, Alfred won the sport’s biggest race with a dazzling run of 10.72, a season-best (world champion Sha’Carri Richardson and Melissa Jefferson took silver and bronze, respectively), then took a celebratory lap around the rainy Stade de France stadium.

Texas coach Edrick Floreal never misses a beat and sometimes has his athletes train in the rain just in case. So Alfred was prepared for a slippery surface.

“He’s been my rock,” she said. “He’s been there through thick and thin.”

This could be classified as a rise.

Longhorns dominate in Paris

Horn hardware: As of Monday, the Texas Longhorns had won 12 Olympic medals. Among them, the incomparable Ryan Crouser, who became the first to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the shot put. That came after winning four straight NCAA outdoor titles.

Forty Acres is experiencing a true Olympics. If UT were a country, it would rank 12th in medals, ahead of Brazil, New Zealand, Hungary, Spain and Sweden, to name a few. The 2024 Longhorns have already doubled the school’s previous best medal haul of six, achieved in 1992 in Barcelona and 2000 in Tokyo.