Jump to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Surly Horns

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.

Featured Replies

  • Author
14 minutes ago, Darth Tron said:

It's up there, but '05 Texas and '01 Miami take them, methinks.

I don't think that any objective person could really argue against 01 Miami being the GOAT if you are considering the totality of players careers. I would also throw 95 Nebraska into the mix. I think Tommy Frazier is still scoring on Spurrier to this day.  

  • Replies 3.7k
  • Views 448.7k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Most Popular Posts

  • Gucci_Suit
    Gucci_Suit

    I had lasik a few years ago and immediately went from banging 9s to banging 6s. Worst decision ever. 

  • Red Five
    Red Five

    CJ Baxter has been cleared and is back practicing with the team. (IT)

  • chad.ihrig
    chad.ihrig

Posted Images

1 minute ago, Vertigo said:

I don't think that any objective person could really argue against 01 Miami being the GOAT

who led those teams?  it’s Ken Dorsey vs VY

this is not a debate. 

12 minutes ago, Vito Andolini said:

Are you a Blanchard or Davis guy?

Tex Coulter. 

 

Edit: The list isn't really up for debate. You have to put following teams in some order - 

1899 Sewanee

1945 Army

1995 Nebraska

2001 Miami

2019 LSU

If we want to throw 2005 Texas into the mix, I won't push back. But that's not the consensus. The 5 teams listed above are the ones that everyone agrees on. 

Edited by Park Gothic

  • Popular Post

2019 lsu? the fuckers that cramped up EVERY FUCKING PLAY for our first 2 drives of the 3rd quarter? when they were playing in the exact same september night temperature and humidity conditions as death valley where they have never experienced this type of cramping ever before?  that lsu?  the one that would have lost if dipshit turtle had taken 3 points after SEVEN stops in a row at the goal line?

 

that lsu?

47 minutes ago, Jkwellborn said:


How much LB has Moore played? I’d be hesitant to count on him early on for that.

I get what you’re saying, but I’m expecting Lefau and Hill to be in the majority of the snaps.  I’m guessing Moore comes in for short yardage work.  We dropped him into coverage a lot last year and he was pretty good from what I recall.  We will see.  Either way, I’m pretty damned excited for this team.

  • Popular Post
17 minutes ago, Park Gothic said:

Tex Coulter. 

 

Edit: The list isn't really up for debate. You have to put following teams in some order - 

1899 Sewanee

1945 Army

1995 Nebraska

2001 Miami

2019 LSU

If we want to throw 2005 Texas into the mix, I won't push back. But that's not the consensus. The 5 teams listed above are the ones that everyone agrees on. 

2005 Texas would dismantle that 2019 LSU team

  • Author
33 minutes ago, futureman said:

who led those teams?  it’s Ken Dorsey vs VY

this is not a debate. 

01 Miami has 4 current or future hall of famers - Ed Reed, Andre Johnson, Devin Hester, and Vince Wilfork should be abducted soon

It also produced 38 draft picks and had guys with long NFL careers like - Clinton Portis, Jonathan Vilma, Jeremy Shockey, Bryant McKinney, etc. 

QB was the weakest position on the team and Dorsey still played the same number of years in the league as VY and was drafted. 

Edited by Vertigo

  • Popular Post
8 minutes ago, Vertigo said:

Vince Wilfork should be abducted soon

should we alert the authorities?

 

8 minutes ago, Vertigo said:

Dorsey still played the same number of years in the league as VY and was drafted.

elite argument here. 

17 minutes ago, Fondren & Main said:

I get what you’re saying, but I’m expecting Lefau and Hill to be in the majority of the snaps.  I’m guessing Moore comes in for short yardage work.  We dropped him into coverage a lot last year and he was pretty good from what I recall.  We will see.  Either way, I’m pretty damned excited for this team.

Some of us might give a shit about your opinion if we knew how much football you played.

36 minutes ago, Vertigo said:

QB was the weakest position on the team and Dorsey still played the same number of years in the league as VY and was drafted. 

nfl dorsey: 2 wins, 11 losses, 15%

nfl vince: 31 wins, 16 losses, 62%

45 minutes ago, Had Enough said:

Some of us might give a shit about your opinion if we knew how much football you played.

He needs to have played football in order to have an opinion about future CFB outcomes on a message board? 

‘83 Daingerfield

You sound like a bunch of fucking people I know. I’m pretty sure Danny Stutsmans dad played on that 83 Daingerfield team.
50 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

He needs to have played football in order to have an opinion about future CFB outcomes on a message board? 

Well, yeah, you don’t see me running my mouth on the rowing thread do you?

20 minutes ago, Jkwellborn said:


You sound like a bunch of fucking people I know. I’m pretty sure Danny Stutsmans dad played on that 83 Daingerfield team.

I thought he was a TE from around the 1990’s from Plano or some such place.

2 hours ago, Vertigo said:

I don't think that any objective person could really argue against 01 Miami being the GOAT if you are considering the totality of players careers. I would also throw 95 Nebraska into the mix. I think Tommy Frazier is still scoring on Spurrier to this day.  

But we're not.  We're discussing the totality of a particular season for each team.  Catch up.

1 hour ago, Hagbard Celine said:

nfl dorsey: 2 wins, 11 losses, 15%

nfl vince: 31 wins, 16 losses, 62%

So same?

01 Miami has 4 current or future hall of famers - Ed Reed, Andre Johnson, Devin Hester, and Vince Wilfork should be abducted soon
It also produced 38 draft picks and had guys with long NFL careers like - Clinton Portis, Jonathan Vilma, Jeremy Shockey, Bryant McKinney, etc. 
QB was the weakest position on the team and Dorsey still played the same number of years in the league as VY and was drafted. 

A couple of those guys were backups or third string on the team weren’t they? It’s crazy how talented the depth on that team was. However, strictly taking the two deep on both? I’d let VY do his thing.
2 hours ago, closetojumping said:

He needs to have played football in order to have an opinion about future CFB outcomes on a message board? 

That’s how the baseball board works. Several of the guys over there must have stadiums named after them

4 hours ago, Park Gothic said:

Tex Coulter. 

 

Edit: The list isn't really up for debate. You have to put following teams in some order - 

1899 Sewanee

1945 Army

1995 Nebraska

2001 Miami

2019 LSU

If we want to throw 2005 Texas into the mix, I won't push back. But that's not the consensus. The 5 teams listed above are the ones that everyone agrees on. 

I dont agree. 

5 hours ago, Vertigo said:

 Ed Reed, Andre Johnson, Devin Hester, and Vince Wilfork should be abducted soon 

Well then they should alert the authorities, sounds like shit is getting pretty real

48 minutes ago, honolulu horn said:

Well then they should alert the authorities, sounds like shit is getting pretty real

You can leave the U, but the U never leaves you. 

8 hours ago, Park Gothic said:

Tex Coulter. 

 

Edit: The list isn't really up for debate. You have to put following teams in some order - 

1899 Sewanee

1945 Army

1995 Nebraska

2001 Miami

2019 LSU

If we want to throw 2005 Texas into the mix, I won't push back. But that's not the consensus. The 5 teams listed above are the ones that everyone agrees on. 


I think VY and 2005 Texas would beat 1899 Sewanee. 

11 hours ago, Park Gothic said:

Tex Coulter. 

 

Edit: The list isn't really up for debate. You have to put following teams in some order - 

1899 Sewanee

1945 Army

1995 Nebraska

2001 Miami

2019 LSU

If we want to throw 2005 Texas into the mix, I won't push back. But that's not the consensus. The 5 teams listed above are the ones that everyone agrees on. 

not everyone

20 hours ago, Boko Bevo said:

Tough to find a weakness at any spot.  I would've loved a thumper type ILB to backfill the role Gbenda played last year.  Lefau is the better football player, and will make splashier plays but Gbenda made some very solid plays in late down/short yardage situations.  There was a 4th and 1 stop against A&M on their second or third drive that changed the complexion of that game pretty early.  Never desirable to count on a freshman, but Bo Barnes may be able to provide some snaps in those situations akin to freshman Bobino on the 05' team.  However it shakes, I'm picking at nits here and really searching for any potential holes.  

 

19 hours ago, Fondren & Main said:

Brad Spence and Trey Moore should be able to fill that role for short yardage as well as provide pass rush from the edge position.  I really think this D could be better this year than last year.  Secondary will be hit hardest with the losses of Mukuba and Barron.  We have tons of talent back there though.

 

19 hours ago, horngrad03 said:

Admittedly I don't know a great deal about the guy but I feel like Brad Spence might have brought in for that role. Experienced and not light in the ass.

I think Ant Hill is being underrated here. I am betting this is the year that he puts it all together and becomes a complete LB. He is already one of the better hitters and playmakers in CFB. I will bet year 3 you see him make a big step in ability to read his keys and diagnose plays. 

  • Popular Post

 

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

Spoiler
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

52 minutes ago, speed817 said:

 

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

  Reveal hidden contents
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

image.jpeg.cb28c57146915e5c7e053747b61601ef.jpeg

icegif-10.gif

2 hours ago, Codaxx said:

 

 

I think Ant Hill is being underrated here. I am betting this is the year that he puts it all together and becomes a complete LB. He is already one of the better hitters and playmakers in CFB. I will bet year 3 you see him make a big step in ability to read his keys and diagnose plays. 

Agree overwhelmingly with the Ant Hill take.  He can do it all as it stands.  I'm talking about those heavier packages when you'll need Ant Hill and another ILB in tandem that can diagnose the fit and stuff a lead block or clean up the tackle (Aaron Harris and Bobino vs Lendale White) or Ant Hill and Gbenda on several occasions last year.  I did watch Brad Spence's highlights, and there was tape of him doing this thing well.  To be clear, this is a Championship defense.  Probably better than last year's.   Not calling the baby ugly in the least. 

2 hours ago, speed817 said:

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

  Hide contents
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

Robin Williams Thats The Good Stuff GIF

1 hour ago, Boko Bevo said:

Agree overwhelmingly with the Ant Hill take.  He can do it all as it stands.  I'm talking about those heavier packages when you'll need Ant Hill and another ILB in tandem that can diagnose the fit and stuff a lead block or clean up the tackle (Aaron Harris and Bobino vs Lendale White) or Ant Hill and Gbenda on several occasions last year.  I did watch Brad Spence's highlights, and there was tape of him doing this thing well.  To be clear, this is a Championship defense.  Probably better than last year's.   Not calling the baby ugly in the least. 

I get it, but it is more about getting there in time than needing a big ass. I anticipate LB being one of the strongest positions on the team. It's to the pt that I am wondering how much we see Moore playing off-ball LB (outside of specialty packages). (Sark was very complimentary of Lefau and Spence during Spring ball. Since its the off-season I am going to assume that is 100% accurate and not just coach speak) 

41 minutes ago, Codaxx said:

I get it, but it is more about getting there in time than needing a big ass. 

Uh, I'm sorry... What were we talking about again?

4 hours ago, speed817 said:

 

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

  Hide contents
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

I wish the article had given a little more detail about how Sark ended up talking to San Jose State's head coach, whom I've never heard of and who wasn't previously a friend of Sark's, about his team's culture.

6 hours ago, speed817 said:

 

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

  Reveal hidden contents
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

Thank you for sharing that article.

Hook’em!!!

7 hours ago, speed817 said:

 

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

  Reveal hidden contents
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. 

Doubt Skepticism GIF by NRK P3

9 hours ago, speed817 said:

 

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

  Reveal hidden contents
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

This is so refreshing.  A coach close to the apex of the profession with a willingness to seek and implement new ideas around his program.  I remember the Herman hire and early years where the program was an echo chamber.  The guy put up a wall around the program, extending to former players and anyone with a voice other than his own.  There are so many great minds and ideas around football and team development in general - gruntling to see Sark be agnostic to where/who they come from.

2 hours ago, chad.ihrig said:

White chocolate with the PSA
 

You know that NIL has become completely unhinged when this fucking guy is making it rain.

  • Popular Post
5 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

You know that NIL has become completely unhinged when this fucking guy is making it rain.

Idk it seems pretty reasonable that the WR1 at Texas would get some good NIL opportunities. 

On 6/2/2025 at 9:31 PM, BurntEyes said:

I was on my motorcycle heading to a horseback ride in northwest Yellowstone about 6 years ago.

I came around a corner on a thin mostly dirt with a bit of gravel road without any shoulders. Across the middle of the road stood a Moose nibbling on a tree. 

He slowly changed his gaze towards me. Summed me up, turned back to the tree slow and easy like. He then took another bite of whatever was on the tree, then, slowly, real damn casual strolled off never giving me a second look.

I'm not prone to sudden freezing during high stress situations.

I was fucked if he got mad. I think he thought "everyone look what's going down". 

So.... like a good puny human, I waited.

I’ve had about the same. I was riding my bike uphill in Red Lodge (kind of NE Yellowstone) and there was a small Moose (maybe a yearling) eating on the side of the road. I sat there for about 10minutes waiting for him to go away. Then he started to trot in my direction. I had already turned my bike sideways so I finished the turn and headed downhill. He was not scared of me in the least.

11 hours ago, speed817 said:

 

https://www.texasfootball.com/article/2025/06/04/how-culture-wednesdays-changed-fortunes-for-texas-longhorns

  Hide contents
AUSTIN – Steve Sarkisian spent his first year as the head coach of the Texas Longhorns as an observer. He wanted to get under the hood and figure out why one of the most powerful and resource-rich football programs in America was struggling to win.
 
After blowing multiple second-half leads and finishing the 2021 season 5-7, he surmised that the issue was culture.
 
Sure, his Horns needed to recruit better, develop more and improve schematically, but the root cause was a lack of togetherness. Texas wasn’t a tight-knit team. There was no brotherhood, and that was causing them to fold under pressure. Sarkisian needed to change something so he began looking for outside opinions on how he could transform the Longhorns from a talented group of individuals into a formidable unit. 
 
That led him to San Jose State head coach Brent Brennan. The two weren’t exactly best friends in the spring of 2022 when Sarkisian reached out for help with his culture problem in Austin, but the two coaches were close enough for Brennan to visit and spend a day with Sarkisian in his office talking about everything except for Xs and Os. 
 
The two started brainstorming exercises that improve culture. They discussed different things that Nick Saban and Pete Carroll did as head coaches before Brennan mentioned some of the things he did the night before games like sharing life stories and working on mindfulness with guest speakers. 
 
“I just didn’t think we could wait until the Friday before the first game,” Sarkisian explained. “I decided to implement it in June when the whole team gathered for the first time together in the summer.” 
 
Sarkisian approached Torre Becton, Texas' Director of Football Performance who oversaw the Longhorns' strength and conditioning program, with a radical idea. He only wanted his herd of Longhorns to work out four days a week and to reserve Wednesday for mind, body, and soul. Becton looked at Sarkisian like he was crazy. After all, what strength and conditioning coach wants to sacrifice power cleans and wind sprints for sharing sessions?
 
Sarkisian decided to call it “Culture Wednesdays” and the first one was June 1, 2022. 
 
“I didn’t want it to be about football,” Sarkisian said about his idea. “I really wanted them to get to know each other so that they could have a little bit of empathy for one another so that they could start to forge a connection to each other and inevitably start to love their teammates and coaches.” 
 
But Sarkisian knew there was a major hurdle to overcome if this plan would work. He was about to ask a room full of 18- to 22-year-old alpha males to be vulnerable with each other. To share personal tragedies and triumphs. To let others in and to reveal their “Four Hs” as Sarkisian calls them – their home life, a hero in their life, a hardship in their life, and an honor that they’ve received. 
 
Sarkisian planned the first Culture Wednesday for months during the 2022 offseason and landed on a realization – he needed to set the example. 
 
Sarkisian said that the initial Culture Wednesday on June 1 was the most nervous he’d ever been for a team meeting. He knew he had to tell his story. And not the PG version, either. He needed to be real. To be open. To walk a room full of young men through his very public fall from grace as the head coach at USC and how he walked through fire to earn another opportunity to lead a program. He spoke to the team for over an hour. 
 
“If I wanted to create an avenue where they feel like they could open up and share with me, I surely better pave the road for them to do that,” Sarkisian said. “When I walked through my whole story, I think they were like, ‘holy shit, coach literally opened up to us about everything. And not on the night before a big game, on a random Wednesday in June at 7 a.m. in the morning.’” 
 
After Sarkisian finished talking, he divided his team up into 10 groups of 12 and sent them to different corners of the football building with assistant coaches to begin doing the same. The assistant coaches began first and then the players spoke in those smaller groups. Sarkisian estimates about 10 of the 12 in each group jumped in right away. Over 75% of his team was on board from the jump and Sarkisian says that on that day he stumbled into the “secret sauce” of team building and knew it was a matter of when, not if, his program would turn the corner. The leadership within the team agreed. 
 
“We started learning about each other and where we came from and what we’d been through outside of football,” former wide receiver and current Los Angeles Ram Jordan Whittington said about the first Culture Wednesday. “We gained a better appreciation for each other as people and that directly impacted how we played as a team on the field.” 
 
Not every Culture Wednesday is a therapy session. Some include mindfulness experts and others were recovery circuits. The team does simple things like gratitude trees. The Longhorns were 3-10 in one-score games during the first two seasons of Sarkisian’s tenure. That means 13 of his first 25 games as head coach on The Forty Acres came down to one possession. Since the start of the 2023 season, Texas is 5-3 in those games. They no longer let teams hang around and have only played in one-score games eight times in the last 30 contests. 
 
The first Culture Wednesday of the 2025 campaign takes place on June 4 as Sarkisian breaks in a new crop of players. He no longer has to win over the whole team on that first Wednesday in June, however, because the returning players know the drill. The Horns are no longer splintered and playing for themselves. They’re a team that’s been to back-to-back College Football semifinals and are on the verge of playing in a national championship game.
 
Outsiders think it is all about talent, which Texas always had. But the truth is that the vulnerability shared on those Wednesdays has helped more than any training session could. 
 
“Our team knows the drill. They know what (Culture Wednesdays) mean and why they’re important,” Sarkisian said. “The younger guys are still very reserved at first and that is completely understandable, but we’ve got buy-in from the team and that’s what is important.” 

 

Something our 3 previous coaches would never do.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.