Florida’s win over Texas last season still hangs over this rematch, and Steve Sarkisian made it clear at SEC Media Days on Thursday that he sees the road as one of the biggest issues his team has to solve.
That loss in The Swamp was one of the few bright spots for Florida in a rough season, but it ended up carrying real weight. The Gators shut down Arch Manning and crew, and the upset helped keep Texas out of the playoffs in 2025. Now the teams are set to meet for the third straight year, just before Florida’s bye week, and Sarkisian’s comments suggested he believes the next meeting will say plenty about which program took more from last year.
Sarkisian pointed directly to Texas’ road struggles, noting that all three of the Longhorns’ losses last season came away from Austin, including the October defeat in Gainesville.
“We've got to relish in our ability to play on the road because we are playing at Kyle Field. We are playing at Death Valley.
We are going to Tennessee. We are going to Missouri.
Those are tough places to play.
In our conference there are no easy places on the road, so we've got to be better in those hostile environments of execution, of minimizing the self-inflicted wounds, and then having the ability to finish in the fourth quarter.”
He also kept pushing the idea that Texas belonged in the playoff field last year, arguing that the Longhorns would have been in a better spot if they had beaten Ohio State, or if they had simply avoided that non-conference matchup altogether.
“Last year we didn't win the game at Ohio State. So I'm torn because I have two thoughts on this. One is if we beat Ohio State last year, surely we're in a much better position when it comes to the playoffs, but on the other side of it is, if I don't play Ohio State and I play Jones Junior High, and we're 10-2 and our two losses are to Georgia and Florida, we're a playoff team.”
Florida’s side of the story is simpler: Texas lost to a team that fired its coach two weeks later. USF figured out how to beat Florida in The Swamp, but Texas couldn’t.
That’s why the lesson from last year still matters. If getting on a plane and playing away from Austin is enough to shake Texas, then the problem goes deeper than travel. And from Florida’s perspective, last season showed that if the Gators can get under Texas’ skin with physicality or a little edge, the Longhorns can be pushed into folding.
Texas may still bring a better roster on paper when these teams meet in Austin, but Florida already proved it can land the kind of upset that changes a season.
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