In a college football showdown, Texas will try to beat Georgia at its own game

For more than a decade, as Texas flirted with returning to its former status as one of college football's elite programs, it was one of the sport's most popular questions.

Are the Longhorns finally back? For now, the answer was the same: no.

That changed in 2023, when Texas went 12-2 in coach Steve Sarkisian's third season and appeared in the College Football Playoff for the first time. Few, this season, still question the top-ranked Longhorns (6-0).

Even with starting quarterback Quinn Ewers missing two games with an injury, Texas was able to insert backup quarterback Arch Manning, the nation's former top recruit in 2023 whose uncles, Peyton and Eli Manning, won four Super Bowl titles.

Still, the Longhorns will face their toughest challenge Saturday when they host No. 5 Georgia (5-1). And it's fitting that Texas' “welcome to the SEC” moment should come against the Bulldogs, the program's path to the top the Longhorns are trying to emulate.

Like Texas, Georgia has spent much of the past 30 years boasting past national championships and a campus in a recruiting-rich part of the country, with little modern success to show for it. Under coach Kirby Smart, a former defensive coordinator who learned under Nick Saban at Alabama, the Bulldogs supercharged their recruiting; In the nine years since Smart's hiring, they have finished with the top-ranked class three times and finished lower than fourth just once.

In 2022, the season Georgia won its second consecutive national championship, the university spent $4.5 million on football recruiting, according to USA Today. The quarterback of the Bulldogs' back-to-back championship teams wasn't a former high-star recruit but grew up in Georgia.

When Texas sought a head-coaching change in 2020, it also turned to Sarkisian, a former Saban coordinator, and showered the program with money to find the best players possible, spending $2.4 million on its 2022 recruiting budget. In the decade prior to Sarkeesian's hiring, Texas' recruiting classes finished with an average rank of 10.8 in the nation; In the three recruiting classes under Sarkisian, Texas averaged a 4.6 ranking. And the offense, full of misdirection and speed, is now led by a native Texan — Ewers.

In the eyes of Texas fans, the Longhorns won't be able to fully return to winning the program's first football national championship since 2006. Although Texas officially played its first Southeastern Conference game on Sept. 28, defeating Mississippi State, its first measure-up as a member of the SEC came Saturday in the form of Georgia, a program it aspires to model in its transition from a historic great to a current power. .

By one metric, the Longhorns may be a step ahead. For the first time since 2021, Betts see Georgia as an underdog.