ARLINGTON, Texas — According to Texas A&M, the Aggies are the best football team in Texas and they don't need the Longhorns.
No one can turn a second-place finish, not in a conference but in a division, and flip it into national title better than Texas A&M.
In this case, however, the evidence is irrefutable. Texas A&M is ahead of the University of Texas in football — and 57,000 miles behind Alabama.
Don't worry, Texas A&M. Just because Texas hired Nick Saban's top assistant that does not mean that Steve Sarkisian is Nick Saban.
He's not.
Just as Texas doesn't want to believe that A&M is ahead in football, A&M doesn't want to hear that the Longhorns are closer to a national title than the Aggies.
Both are facts.
But asking Sarkisian to be the difference, or the closer, still feels like a reach.
Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte's legacy in Austin depends on Sarkisian being something he has not been before in his prior stops.
The decision to fire Tom Herman is not the point of concern for Texas fans. The point of concern is whether hiring Sarkisian was the move. As a result, no coach in America has more to prove.
If Texas becomes a basketball school, Del Conte has a problem.
Texas' problem is that it did not hire Saban 2.0, but rather the coach who did OK at Washington and USC. Sarkisian may not be Saban on the field, but he is Vince Lombardi in the interview process.
Sarkisian has landed the head coaching position at three schools that have won national titles since 1991.
The biggest mistake teams/schools make when they hire the assistant who served under the famous coach is expecting he will duplicate that success.
Look carefully at the Nick Saban and Bill Belichick coaching trees and you'll see there are no duplicates.
In Sark's first season as the head coach at Texas, his tasks are to stop the embarrassing trend of TCU's ownership of Bevo, and to slow the momentum that Jimbo Fisher has established in College Station.
Not sure Sarkisian is going to be a dramatic — or any — improvement over the dearly fired Tom Herman but the man deserves some leeway before we absolutely bury him.
Like, maybe Texas fans should give Sark' at least four games before determining this is an awful hire. Maybe even five.
The domain name www.FireSteveSarkisian.com may be off the market by Oct. 3, the day after Texas plays at TCU in Fort Worth.
"When you accept the job you accept all of the job," Sarkisian said at Day 2 of the Big 12 Media Days on Thursday in Arlington. "You don't accept part of the job. At Texas, the expectations are very high. You have to embrace it and understand what they are.
"For us, ultimately success is our style of play, who we are as a program, the consistency we do it with," he said.
Sorry, Sark'. The Ted Lasso routine is great on Apple TV when it's Jason Sudekis delivering the lines, but if this sales pitch is attached with another loss to Oklahoma no one wants to hear about how well you practiced on Sunday.
At a minimum, the expectations for Texas is to stop losing to TCU, and finish ahead of bleeping Iowa State.
Iowa State football is ahead of the University of Texas.
You can hear the laughter from Norman to Ames, but it's loudest at the Dixie Chicken in College Station.
The expectations at Texas aren't the style of play, but to win a national title, and to beat Oklahoma.
Because those feats have been done before.
That Oklahoma remains the deserved favorite by such a wide margin to win this conference again is an embarrassment to entire state of Texas, the University of Texas, and the rest of the league.
Coach, those are your expectations.
Because Sark' graduated from the Nick Saban School of Reformed Coaches he landed a prime job that his resume says he did not deserve.
Regardless, he's in Austin, and it's his job to do what Charlie Strong and Herman could not and meet the expectations as outlined by Darrel K. Royal and met by Mack Brown.
It can be done.
Until it is, Texas A&M is ahead of Texas ... just like Iowa State.
