By KACE KIESCHNICK, Tiger Rag Staff Reporter
Texas has been one of the best road teams in college football since Steve Sarkisian took over as head coach in 2022. The Longhorns’ 15-5 record away from home is impressive but not overwhelmingly dominant. What is significant is their 7-3 against top 25 teams.
Sarkisian and the Longhorns will have another opportunity to put that record to the test as Associated Press No. 24 LSU (6-3, 3-3 Southeastern Conference) welcomes No. 8 Texas (7-2, 4-2 SEC) to Tiger Stadium on Saturday (6:30 p.m., ABC).
“I think our guys love it honestly,” Sarkisian said at his Monday press conference. “There’s something different when you’re on the road.”
Those differences, he said, start with the obvious ones.
Texas will be leaving the luxury amenities of the home locker room at Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium for the “intimate” atmosphere of the Tiger Stadium visiting facilities – newly painted pink at the request of LSU coach Lane Kiffin. In the cramped confines of the LSU away locker room, Texas can only bring 74 of its 105-player roster on the road due to SEC travel rules.
Although obviously not at full strength, Sarkisian said that limited roster size can help the team stay united through adversity on the road.
“You really want to lean into one another, and so sometimes being smaller, being tighter allows us to feel one another,” he said.
The Longhorns were undefeated in road games in 2023 and 2024. They suffered two losses to Texas Tech (37-34 OT) and No. 11 Oklahoma State (41-34) in Sarkisian’s first season, and they were 2-3 on the road last year. Texas lost to No. 3 Ohio State (14-7) and No. 5 Georgia (35-10), while the third defeat was a 29-21 blunder at unranked Florida in the team’s SEC opener. The Longhorns are 2-0 in enemy territory this season with wins at Tennessee (20-17) and Missouri last week (34-20) who were ranked No. 14 and No. 18 at the time Texas beat them, respectively.
Sarkisian said that proof of concept helps the players trust the coaching staff and the process they have to win big away games.
“It’s not foreign to us,” he said. “Going into these games we don’t make them bigger than they are. Clearly they’re all big games at this juncture of the season, but we don’t do stuff new. We don’t do it different. We don’t change our travel plans. We don’t change our meeting schedule. We don’t order special cleats because it’s a big game. We do what we do.”
LSU suffered its first loss in Tiger Stadium this season in the 31-13 disappointment against Alabama last week. The Tigers dropped to 29-4 in “Death Valley” since 2022, with two of the losses coming at the hands of Alabama, one from Texas A&M last season and one to Tennessee in 2022.
“That’s bad, and I feel bad for our fans, for the state,” Kiffin said of the home loss on Monday. “We’re supposed to win when we come here. We’re certainly not supposed to score 13 points in the game ever.”
Kiffin and his staff also have a fantastic home record in recent years. Prior to the loss, he was 26-1 over the last four seasons at home going back to his time at Ole Miss and had won his last 16 home games.
“That’s not the expectations we have, what we’re used to, and not what it’s going to be like here,” Kiffin said.
One of the coaches’ expectations will be disappointed on Saturday in Tiger Stadium. The home crowd was heavily involved through the first three quarters against Alabama, causing multiple false starts and pre-snap snafus for the Tide, but it was quickie quieted and emptied in the fourth quarter.
Sarkisian is looking for a similar experience and said his team can feed off of that hostile environment in their own way.
“There is something to when you can quiet a crowd,” Sarkisian said. “There’s something empowering about that, and I think our guys can use that as some fuel as well.”
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