Patterson’s Posts | Via TexasSports.com (3/22/14)

Every week, our friends at TexasSports.com send out a weekly communication from Men’s Athletics Director Steve Patterson. See below for this week’s Patterson’s Posts. 

This week was a momentous week for The University. With a $50 million gift from the LIVESTRONG Foundation to the Dell Medical School, The University exceeded its goal of raising $3 billion during the eight-year Campaign for Texas. Congratulations to President Bill Powers on this tremendous accomplishment. You can read more about the gift and campaign here.

I would also like to recognize and thank Marian Dozier for her recent significant gift to Texas Athletics. Marian is a longtime generous supporter of Texas Athletics and through her contribution she hopes to inspire other to give in any way they can. Read more about Marian and her gift here. If you are interested in supporting our more than 500 student-athletes like Marian and the Dozier family, you can give now to Texas Athletics and join the Longhorn Foundation here.

As we are just a little over a week away from our Texas Football season opener, I wanted to take some time to explain the new College Football Playoff structure that will be implemented this year. There are many benefits including a four-team playoff with two semifinal bowl games followed by a national championship game. This game will be hosted by a different city each year. This year the host will be Dallas at AT&T Stadium. While this new format does mean more revenue for the five most visible conferences, it also means increased revenue (in some cases five times more) for other participating institutions. The College Football Playoff will also result in some of the most exciting collegiate football with the best teams in the nation competing for a championship.

With football, volleyball and soccer all gearing up for regular season play, fans have even more options to watch our teams compete on Longhorn Network. Recently, the Walt Disney Company announced three broad multi-year distribution agreements including Longhorn Network with Suddenlink, the National Cable Television Cooperative, and the National Telco Television Consortium. These new deals will bring LHN into more than 1.4 million additional homes. Additionally, LHN subscribers can watch the network live with WatchESPN on computers, tablets, smartphones and Apple TV. Discussions continue with other carriers as well.

Volleyball is ranked No. 2 in the nation heading into the 2014 season. This is the third consecutive year that the Longhorns have earned a top wo national ranking in the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Division I Coaches Top 25 preseason poll. You can get a glimpse of the action this Saturday at the Orange-White Scrimmage at 11 a.m. in Gregory Gym. Admission is free! If you can't make it, Longhorn Network will air all volleyball home matches, starting with the Orange-White Scrimmage.

We had a great turnout last week for the 2014 Texas Football Kickoff Luncheon. Coach Strong gave an inspirational speech, recognizing both where we have come from and where Texas Football is headed. If you weren't able to make it, you can watch his speech on TexasSports.com. Season tickets are still available. More information at TexasSports.com/footballtickets. You can also now purchase single game tickets to the first two home games -- Aug. 30 vs. North Texas and Sept. 6 vs. BYU -- online at TexasSports.com/tickets or by calling 512-471-3333.

Soccer opens its season with a trip to Hawaii to compete in the Outrigger Resorts Shootout. UT takes on Arizona State late Friday night and then Hawaii on Monday night. The team will play its home opener on Friday, Aug. 29 at 7:30 p.m. against Arkansas. Single game tickets and mini plans are still available. Purchase tickets online at TexasSports.com/tickets or call 512-471-3333.

Spend the last weekend in August cheering on Texas teams with the soccer season opener on Friday and the football season opener vs. North Texas on Saturday at 7 p.m.!

ATHLETICS UPDATE
The Big 12 has released the 2014-15 Men's and Women's Basketball schedules. View the men's basketball schedule here, and the women's basketball schedule here. Season tickets are still available if you haven't purchased yet. Visit TexasSports.com/basketballtickets for more information. Additionally,Men's Basketball will make multiple appearances on ESPN's "Big Monday" schedule and all of UT's 18 conference games will be televised nationally on either CBS or the ESPN family of networks. I'm already looking forward to watching these teams compete in the 2014-15 season.

Over the weekend, several of our divers had great success at the 2014 AT&T National Diving Championships. Congratulations to Cory Bowersox, Murphy Bromberg, Emma Ivory-Ganja, Mark Anderson and Texas-Ex Troy Dumais for taking home national titles! Hook 'em!

Cory also recently achieved Scholar All-American status for the Spring 2014 semester. This honor is awarded by the College Swimming Coaches Association of America to student-athletes who have academic success with a GPA higher than a 3.5 and who have qualified for the national championship. Great work, Cory!

Six of our men's golfers -- Beau Hossler, Taylor Funk, Doug Ghim, Scottie Scheffler, Gavin Hall and Brax McCarthy -- competed in the 114th U.S. Amateur Championships in Atlanta earlier this month. Four of our guys (Hossler, Funk, Ghim and Scheffler) qualified for the 64-player match play portion of the prestigious tourney. Great job to these young men for representing Texas Athletics.

WELCOME TO TEXAS
As we prepare to welcome our new student-athletes tomorrow and our returning student-athletes on Monday at orientation, I would like to recognize a couple of coaching transitions as well as welcome several new coaches to Texas.

 Ryan Murphy, who has spent the last six years working as assistant coach with the men's golf program, was named the women's golf head coach this summer. With that transition, volunteer assistant coach and former UT All-American Jean-Paul Hebert joined the men's golf staff full-time as assistant coach.

 Dave O'Neill joins us as the new head coach for women's rowing. O'Neill was most recently at the University of California where he led the women's rowing program to two NCAA team titles, 12 NCAA top-four finishes and four NCAA individual event crowns. He brings to his staff Mary Lenington and Mara Allen as assistant coaches.

Most recently, Kristine Lilly joined the soccer staff as the volunteer assistant coach. Lilly is a five-time World Cup participant and three-time Olympian.You can read more about Lilly and her many soccer accomplishments here.

UPCOMING EVENTS
Looking forward: On Thursday, Nov. 20, Men's Basketball will travel to New York to compete at Madison Square Garden in the 2014 2K Classic. Texas will take on Iowa in the semifinals of that tourney and then face either Syracuse or California the following night. If you are on the East Coast, ticket information is available here. You can also watch the semifinal game on ESPN2 at 6 p.m. Central.

I'll be back with regular weekly posts starting Sept. 4.

Until next time -- Hook 'em, Horns!