Texas is all business as it rolls into Valero Alamo Bowl versus Utah

By Steve Habel
Senior Contributing Writer

SAN ANTONIO, Texas — It has been almost a month since the Texas football team played a game, but the weeks between that regular season-ending win over Texas Tech and when the Longhorns stepped off the bus here Friday to finish their preparations for the Valero Alamo Bowl have been busy and productive.

Texas head coach Tom Herman fired some coaches, moved some others around and hired former Ohio State running mate Chris Ash to be his new defensive coordinator. Herman and his staff also inked 17 players to the fold during the early signing period after three weeks of traveling the state and securing those commitments.

Oh, and the Longhorns also have [s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]worked through a handful of practices in Austin to prepare to face 11th-ranked Utah in the Alamodome on New Year’s Eve.

And now that the game is upon them, Herman said the Utes have the Longhorns’ entire focus.

“Part of the dynamics of going to a bowl game is to have fun,” Herman said. “As an assistant, having been in different ways of doing things, some head coaches (choose) to treat it like it’s training camp. We just want to have a lot of fun and we want to get our work in.

“But then, especially when you get to the site, you’ve got one objective — and that’s to win the game … and we talked a lot about that yesterday as a team. Everything else becomes secondary: having fun, enjoying San Antonio, enjoying the camaraderie with your teammates — all of that.”

If the Longhorns (7-5 overall, including a 5-4 mark against Big 12 teams) can beat Utah (11-2 overall, 8-1 against teams from the Pac-12), it will be the first time since 2006-08 that a Texas team has won three straight bowl games. The Longhorns beat Missouri in the 2017 Texas Bowl and Georgia last year in the Sugar Bowl.

The Utes capped won the Pac-12’s South Division to earn a berth in the conference championship game, where they were defeated by now-No. 6 Oregon, 37-15.

UT is making its 56th all-time bowl appearance this season, the second-highest number of bowl appearances in the country, behind only Alabama, which has played in 71. The Longhorns have an all-time bowl record of 29-24-2 (.546) in bowl games.

“Our senior class has done something pretty special, and we really want to see them do that,” Herman said about the potential for three straight wins, “and to do it against an opponent like Utah that had an amazing season with 11 wins and in front of hopefully what will be heavily weighted burnt-orange-and-white-wearing crowd would be a really neat way to send our seniors out.”

The Longhorns won the programs’ only other meeting, a 21-12 victory in Austin in 1982. Herman and Utah coach Kyle Whittingham have never faced off during their careers as head coaches.

Herman talked more Friday about the Texas senior class, a group of players that he did not recruit to come to the 40 Acres.

“I can’t thank them enough,” he said. “They all stuck around, even though they all probably knew how difficult it was going to be and the challenges that that were ahead of this program to get us back to where we believe that we need to be.

“They very could have easily said ‘hey, I’m not up for that,’ and they all stuck around. They all contributed quite a bit to our success.”

Texas will be playing a current member of the Pac-12 Conference in a bowl game for the 11th time. The Longhorns are 6-4 against the Pac-12 teams in the postseason and 1-1 in the Alamo Bowl. Texas is 2-1 all-time in the Alamo Bowl.
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