Media Day Notebook: Texas

Big stadiums don't win national championships. All the resources in the world don't win you a national championship. Sweet facilities and locker rooms don't win national championships. They don't hand out rings for recruiting classes.

That has been the message from new Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian since arriving in Austin. It is clear that he wants to steer away from the "just show up and have it handed to you" mindset that has poisoned their minds for the tenure of the last two coaches.

Those are not his words, just mine, for the record.

Like Sarkisian said, all those resources don't give them the magic fairy dust to sprinkle over their campus and automatically make them champions. It still stakes a winning culture, a hungry roster and an entire group of players headed in the same direction.

They can't relax. They need to take exploit the resources at their disposal but also build toughness, grit and a team.

His best teams were not full of individuals. It was full of players with a like-minded approach and philosophy that were competitive and played for one another and consistently went about their business in the correct way on a daily basis.

Thus far, Sarkisian has been thrilled with the level of buy-in they have received.

Sarkisian was repeatedly asked if he had looked back at the failures since Mack Brown won a national title at Texas and tried to dissect went wrong since then as to have a solution to remedy the issue.

Surprisingly, he said no.

Maybe they can learn from the mistakes in the past, but he'd rather just jump forward and look ahead and make progress in that fashion. While their could be education in doing so, he'd much rather just instill their culture and systems and teach to it start to finish.

He's also aware that he is in a better position than most incoming coaches. Not only does he have a lot of weapons to use thanks to the University of Texas, they were just 7-3 a year ago with those three losses coming by a combined 13 points.

The Longhorns are one of a few schools that still have a quarterback battle ongoing. Despite Casey Thompson lighting it up for the burnt orange in the Alamo Bowl, he wasn't named a starter in the Spring by the new Texas head coach.

Sarkisian wanted everyone to have a clean slate when he began his tenure in Austin and that meant Thompson still having to beat out Hudson Card for the signal-caller job of his first team.

He wasn't able to separate himself enough in the Spring to receive the nod before fall camp started and some believe that Card still could be the guy for the Longhorns in 2021 and not Thompson.

The Texas boss called Thompson a great leader with a high football IQ and shared that Card had elite instincts for the position. But a starter won't be named until fall camp.

Sarkisian anticipates both playing, as college football is just a different animal anymore. In a typical season, most teams are playing at least 13 games and believing that one quarterback is enough for that long of a slate is no longer realistic.