Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”
Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”
Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”
Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”
Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”
Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”
Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”
Alabama was already on Steve Sarkisian’s thoughts. So have been LSU and Georgia.
However not essentially inside the framework of the SEC.
In the course of the technique of being employed as Texas coach three and a half years in the past, Sarkisian laid out his imaginative and prescient of what it might take to make the Longhorns a nationwide energy once more to the college’s administration — college president Jay Hartzell, board of regents chair Kevin Eltife and athletic director Chris Del Conte. Sarkisian reduce straight to the purpose.
He’d spent the earlier two seasons (2019 and 2020) as Alabama’s offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide received the nationwide championship in 2020, and LSU received it the yr earlier than, each ending their title seasons undefeated.
“We have to construct a workforce that come January can beat Alabama, LSU and Georgia, and I would throw in Ohio State and Clemson, too, as a result of these are the groups that in some form or type are within the playoff nearly yearly,” Sarkisian advised his new bosses on the Forty Acres. “We will not get enamored with simply constructing a workforce to win the Large 12. We will must construct a workforce that may take down Alabama in January. I am not speaking September, however in January be geared up to beat these groups you are going to must beat to win a nationwide championship.”
Little did Sarkisian know on the time that extra change was on the horizon for Texas, the SEC and the faculty sports activities panorama normally.
“Shoot, it wasn’t 5 months later they arrive to me and inform me, ‘We’re shifting to the SEC,'” Sarkisian stated with fun.
His solely response: “When?”
That “when” is Monday, July 1, when Texas and Oklahoma formally develop into the most recent members of the SEC in all sports activities. However the actual “when” comes this fall when the Longhorns and Sooners be a part of the nation’s hardest, deepest and most profitable soccer convention, a league that has produced 13 of the previous 20 nationwide champions — 14 if you happen to embrace Texas’ title in 2005 when the Longhorns have been within the Large 12.
And once you throw in Oklahoma, which received all of it in 2000, eight groups that can play within the SEC this fall have received nationwide championships over the previous three a long time.
Whereas the joy concerning the transfer has been constructing for 3 years, each colleges acknowledge it comes with important challenges, not that they are backing away from them.
The phrase Sooners coach Brent Venables makes use of to explain the SEC is “unforgiving.” As Clemson’s defensive coordinator from 2012 to 2021, Venables had success in opposition to SEC offenses. The Tigers have been 16-7 in opposition to SEC foes throughout that span, and in 11 of these video games, Venables’ protection held the opposing offense to fewer than 20 factors.
Coming into his third yr at OU, Venables has been learning SEC groups for the reason that 2023 season concluded. What has caught out to him is how lots of the league’s video games are determined late within the fourth quarter.
“All the things issues. There is a very small margin for error,” Venables stated. “There are such a lot of issues that determine video games on this league, and also you higher be prepared for all of them. How prepared are we? We will discover out. Till you are in the course of it, you do not actually really know. So it might simply be conjecture on my half. As I stated, we’ll discover out.
“What I do know is the problem of all of it, the depth of the groups in that convention, and what I really feel greatest about is the depth of the funding that we have now from our gamers, a number of of them happening their third yr right here.”
Amongst these gamers who’re all-in is linebacker Danny Stutsman, a pacesetter of the protection who’s getting into his fourth yr with the Sooners.
“We’re hungry, man,” he stated. “Listening to all that, the discuss concerning the SEC, it will get introduced up each single day. Sooner or later, you notice that the very best is the usual for us. That does not change.
“The SEC is simply three letters. It would not actually change our mindset of how we method issues. We will put together each single sport the very same means irrespective of who the opponent is. Clearly, it is higher competitors in some methods, however when you think about your self the very best, you put together like that each single week.”
JUST ABOUT ANYONE who has ever coached or performed within the SEC references an identical theme when requested what makes the league totally different: the power to recruit and develop high quality depth within the line of scrimmage and create the form of competitors on the apply area that makes video games virtually appear simple.
“I feel again to that offensive line we had at Alabama in 2020,” Sarkisian stated. “We had nice talent individuals, too, however having the blokes we had up entrance, the variety of them, was one thing you simply do not see fairly often. I do know that is the place we have now labored so diligently right here. It wasn’t a lot the defensive position once I received right here, however the offensive line. We needed to do an entire makeover.”
One other facet ceaselessly talked about is the grind of enjoying within the SEC and the necessity to make it to November and December with the core of your workforce intact whereas additionally having second-team gamers able to stepping up when starters go down.
In April, the SEC led all conferences in NFL draft picks (59) for the 18th straight yr. 13 of the league’s 14 groups had no less than one participant chosen by an NFL workforce.
“After I speak about beating these groups late within the yr, that is why I say it,” stated Sarkisian, who led Texas to its first Faculty Soccer Playoff look final season. “You are going to have to resist the grind of a season after which beat these groups when it counts if you wish to win a nationwide championship.
“The nice factor for us is that the plan to construct this roster actually did not have to vary from what the preliminary plan was. We knew the street to successful a nationwide championship was going to undergo Alabama, Georgia and people groups.
“Now you may need to undergo them greater than as soon as.”
Historical past means that championships might be few and much between for the 2 SEC newbies, though the playoff shifting from 4 to 12 groups this season ought to make alternatives extra plentiful. Beneath the brand new format, the SEC might be in place to get 4 groups — or much more — into the postseason yearly.
The 4 colleges to hitch the SEC in its earlier two expansions — Arkansas and South Carolina in 1992 and Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012 — are nonetheless on the lookout for their first convention championship, though none of them got here to the league with the current success and pedigree of Texas and Oklahoma. Not one of the 4 have performed within the BCS nationwide championship sport or made the playoff since becoming a member of the league. And whereas there have been some rocky beginnings, there even have been some breakthroughs.
Missouri performed within the SEC championship sport in its second and third years within the league underneath Gary Pinkel. Texas A&M has had probably the most constant success among the many 4, with 11 successful seasons in 12 years, however solely three successful data in SEC play.
Since that first enlargement in 1992, solely six colleges have received an SEC title — Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, LSU and Tennessee. Alabama has received 10 of the final 25 titles, LSU 5, Georgia 4, Florida three and Auburn three.
Even so, it is onerous to discover a college within the league, with maybe a few exceptions, that does not assume it ought to no less than be flirting with double-digit wins each season.
As Venables surveyed the SEC, now from inside the league, he used Auburn’s workforce from final season for example of how slender the margin might be between enjoying for a championship and easily enjoying to have a successful season.
“You take a look at a workforce like Auburn, they usually have been 6-7 final yr, however they take a No. 1 Georgia workforce to the final drive of the sport and rush for greater than 200 yards, after which late within the yr, Alabama throws a Hail Mary ultimately zone to beat them,” he stated. “These are two video games that kind of inform you what the SEC is. Auburn performed actually shut video games in opposition to the 2 groups that performed for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn completed someplace in the course of the convention.
“I’ve by no means been in a league the place you have to play the depth of the groups we’ll each single week. You do not concede something, however in the identical breath, you may have large respect for what it will take to achieve success.”
For OU athletic director Joe Castiglione, that features Venables. Oklahoma has been engaged on methods to make the transition as seamless as doable, together with giving the coach a brand new six-year, $51.6 million contract final month that can pay him a median of $8.6 million per yr, a transfer that Castiglione stated was a part of being “SEC prepared.”
AS AN ATHLETIC director, Del Conte has to think about all of his program’s sports activities, and he’s fast to level out that Texas has received 15 nationwide championships prior to now three years.
“I feel we’re geared up in each means once you take a look at our total athletic program, and I do know our followers are excited,” Del Conte stated. “There’s been an awesome unification.”
And, sure, Del Conte is ready for the inevitable “Horns Down” gestures each time Texas walks into an opposing SEC stadium for the primary time, a transfer mocking the “Hook ’em” indicators flashed by Texas followers.
Del Conte says to convey it on.
“I really like all that, by the best way, the Horns Down stuff. I feel it is comedy,” he stated.
On the sphere, Del Conte stated he has persistently advised his athletes that “whoever you play, it is their Tremendous Bowl. It is the facility of the model.”
“That will not change within the SEC,” he added.
One of many many issues about shifting to the SEC that was so attractive to Texas, in response to Del Conte, was having the ability to renew rivalries with Arkansas and Texas A&M. Plus, the Longhorns did not lose their annual showdown with Oklahoma.
The Sooners, nonetheless, will lose their Bedlam rivalry sport with Oklahoma State for the foreseeable future. Castiglione stated there are nonetheless conversations between the colleges, however that the primary lifelike likelihood for them to play once more in soccer (due to signed contracts on each side with different nonconference opponents) could be someday within the 2030s.
Castiglione, who has been OU’s athletic director since 1998 and was Missouri’s AD for 5½ years earlier than that, stated the transfer to the SEC turned extra possible because the panorama across the sport shifted.
“I would not have envisioned it 20 years in the past. However 10 years in the past? Sure,” Castiglione stated. “That is to not sound cavalier like I might predict it, however you may see how every part was creating.”
For Texas, the transfer might have come a lot sooner. Harvey Schiller, the SEC commissioner from 1986 to 1989, advised ESPN final month that Texas would have been a part of the SEC’s first wave of enlargement, together with Arkansas, in 1992 had it not been for the Texas state legislature mandating that the SEC additionally add Texas A&M if it have been to convey the Longhorns aboard. Schiller left to develop into government director of the U.S. Olympic Committee and was changed as SEC commissioner in January 1990 by Roy Kramer, who moved SEC enlargement throughout the end line.
Requested if Texas becoming a member of the SEC was a completed deal had the politicians not gotten concerned, Schiller stated emphatically, “The reply is sure. The convention wished it. Texas wished it.”
Schiller stated the SEC wasn’t as occupied with Texas A&M on the time and that A&M officers additionally had some points with a transfer to the SEC.
“Apparently sufficient, Texas A&M ended up being the primary of the 2 colleges [in Texas] to hitch the SEC in 2012,” Schiller stated. “Now, some 30 years later, I suppose they lastly received it proper.”
Venables might have already been within the SEC, however he handed on taking the Auburn head job after Gus Malzahn was fired following the 2020 season. He wasn’t satisfied the alignment at Auburn was what it wanted to be to navigate the SEC at an elite degree. Sarkisian handed on the Mississippi State job following the 2019 season.
Oklahoma makes its SEC debut Sept. 21 at dwelling in opposition to Tennessee. Texas would not wade into SEC play till Sept. 28 at dwelling in opposition to Mississippi State. The rivals play one another in Dallas on Oct. 12.
Of the 2, Oklahoma seems to be to have the extra perilous schedule inside the league. The Sooners play six groups in ESPN’s newest preseason High 25 rankings, with 4 of these video games away from dwelling.
Texas faces Georgia at dwelling Oct. 19, the week after enjoying Oklahoma. Georgia hasn’t misplaced a regular-season sport for the reason that 2020 COVID season, when the SEC performed a 10-game, all-SEC schedule.
The Longhorns went to Tuscaloosa in Week 2 final season and beat Alabama 34-24, snapping the Crimson Tide’s 21-game dwelling successful streak.
The transfer from the Large 12 clearly is a step up for the colleges, however one Oklahoma and Texas followers, gamers and directors are able to embrace — each on and off the sphere.
“We’re on the College of Texas. Individuals do not like us. You be taught to embrace the hate,” Texas senior defensive again Jahdae Barron stated. “It is a new day for us within the SEC. We are the first workforce to do it at Texas. It is at all times one thing you need, to be in these historical past books, and that is what we’re working towards proper now, to get in these historical past books.
“We need to be remembered perpetually.”
Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold lived the primary a part of his childhood simply exterior Atlanta in Suwanee, Georgia, earlier than shifting to Texas.
“I grew up a Georgia fan. All my pals have been both Georgia or Tennessee followers,” stated Arnold, a sophomore. “I grew up across the SEC and watched all these video games.”
Aaron Murray was Arnold’s favourite quarterback, and Arnold remembers watching Murray engineer a fourth-quarter comeback with three landing passes in 2013, solely to see Auburn break Georgia’s hearts (and his) on Nick Marshall’s miraculous 73-yard tipped landing move to Ricardo Louis on fourth-and-18 with 25 seconds left.
“It was like that each week it appeared,” Arnold stated. “There’s one thing particular about enjoying in a convention you grew up dreaming of enjoying in. I understand how tremendous powerful and hard-nosed the SEC is, however we’re prepared to ascertain our personal presence. You must if you are going to succeed within the SEC.”