Head coach Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns entered last season as the undisputed No. 1-ranked team in the country. Most folks had them winning it all, especially since they were coming into the 2025 season as the only team with back-to-back semifinal appearances. Fast forward to the 2025 season, the Longhorns were 3-2 in the first five games.

Soon, they finished the season with a 10-3 record. Looking back at how things went down, Sarkisian straight up admitted that he dropped the ball and regrets it deeply.

“I’m huge on [chemistry],” Sarkisian said on The Stempede podcast. “I’m huge on the culture aspect. I’m huge on connectivity. I think I failed these guys a year ago, and I’m okay saying that.”

Sarkisian went on to explain that his biggest regret was his miscalculation in building chemistry on his end. Last year, the Longhorns went all-out on the recruiting side. The root of the problem came down to a wave of new faces arriving on campus.

Texas had 22 freshmen show up in January, alongside a couple of transfer players. That meant the roster suddenly had about 36 brand-new guys who went all the way from January through May without doing any official team-building or culture-focused activities with the coaching staff.

Historically, Sarkisian’s playbook was to save all the team-building and culture work for June, July, and August training camp. But by waiting that long, he realized he made some major miscalculations. When you leave 36 new guys in the team for months, team culture is still going to form naturally and organically. The problem is that it just happens completely without any of the head coach’s influence.

Because of that five-month gap, the locker room naturally split into independent cliques and silos. By the time June and July finally rolled around, Sarkisian was actually dumbfounded by what happened.

He found himself spending his energy trying to break bad habits, fix the environment, and teach the players what real team leadership was supposed to look like, and all that sort of stuff.

That lack of early-season bonding carried over to game days. Sarkisian admitted that for the first half of the season, the Longhorns simply didn’t have the tight team chemistry they needed to pull dubs in very close hostile games.

Sarkisian took full ownership of the struggle, calling it a major indictment on himself and the coaching staff.

Determined to fix his mistake, Sarkisian completely changed his calendar for the current season. Now, this time around, Sarkisian started team chemistry all the way back in February, running it right through March and April. They took a quick breather in May, but they got right back to it in June and July with fun, competitive events like a team scavenger hunt.

The early start has paid off big time.

“I think the camaraderie amongst this team is light years ahead of where we were a year ago,” the coach confessed. “And that’s not to knock last year’s team. To me, that’s an indictment on us as coaches and myself about team continuity.”

Young guys and returning players are completely buying into a team-first mentality. Sarkisian is incredibly excited about this year’s roster. It was a tough lesson to learn, a valuable one, perhaps!