The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: What Are Best and Worst Case Scenarios For Texas Football.
Entering the 2024 college football season, hype has never been higher for the modern-era Texas Longhorns.
For the first time in 14 years, Texas will likely enter the season as a top-four ranked team, as most sportsbooks currently have the Longhorns as a top-three odds to win the national championship.Expectations are high for head coach Steve Sarkisian entering his fourth year as head coach. He’s had three straight years of top-six recruiting classes, and the 2024 team is ranked as having the sixth-best transfer class in the nation, all according to 247Sports.
But what is the ceiling for this uber-talented team, and just how low is the floor for a squad that has been criticized for underperforming throughout the 2010s? Here are five tiers of the Texas football 2024 season, from Amazing, to bad, to the worst possible outcome.
The Ceiling: National Champions
For the first time since Mack Brown left Austin, it feels like the sky is the limit for the Longhorns, From the start, opening with the third-best odds, according to BetMGM, to win a national championship proves that you’re a title favorite. But it doesn’t just feel like a pipe dream like it did in the twilight of Brown’s tenure.With Nick Saban retiring, there’s a real chance Sarkisian can solidify himself as the second-best coach in college football behind Georgia’s Kirby Smart with another stellar season. If everything goes right for Texas, the team could have the best quarterback in the nation in Quinn Ewers, the best offensive line, the best-receiving core, and the best pass-rushing group. Entering the season, it’s hard to predict that even one of those is the best in the nation, let alone all four, but with a fantastic season who says the team can’t have a meteoric rise in all four of those groups?
Texas’ schedule isn’t easy, but it’s also not as bad as SEC schools like Florida and Oklahoma. Texas faces four pivotal matchups: at Michigan, hosting Georgia, the Red River Rivalry, and of course, the reinstallment of the Lone Star Showdown, heading to College Station to face Texas A&M to end the season. That game could have serious national title implications.
The Good: A Top Six Team in the Nation to End the Year.
This may seem a little light on expectations for “the good” result for Texas. If they are seen as a top-three team heading in, how is being just top six “good”?
With the new setup in the College Football Playoff, there’s a chance the fourth-best team in the nation is a No. 6 seed. The conference champions will hold a first-round bye, and only one team out of Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Ole Miss or LSU can be in first place. If Texas loses a conference game at the wrong time, the Longhorns could still be one of the best teams in the nation at 11-1, but miss out on a bye.
