Something I've been mulling over and am interested to hear what y'all think.
How we play this week is going to tell me a lot about the culture of the program today and in the near future. There are very few of the 2022 class left on the roster (Campbell, Hutson and Taaffe are the only starters that immediately come to mind), and most of our leaders are from 2023. The 2023 class has not seen the kind of adversity we experienced in 2021 or even 2022.
My lingering concern is this - we have always gotten up for the RRSO. Even bad Texas teams have played above their heads in that game, and good Texas teams tend to be at their best. We are supremely motivated for the RRSO. But where Herman, Strong, and some late-stage Mack teams struggled was getting motivated for the other games. The ones we didn't take seriously. When I hear people talk about a "country club" attitude at Texas, that is what I think of. Us playing down to our opponent because we don't care as much as they do. Since 2022, we really haven't played like that in any game. At least not against a real opponent (I don't count G5 non-cons when we're working on install or getting over injuries). In the real games, even when we lost, I could see that the guys were trying. They just couldn't execute when we needed to. The defense has been especially consistent from game to game.
So for the first time since 2021, I saw us act like we weren't properly motivated against Florida. Just lacking the requisite energy and propensity for violence. The only player who seemed to have the level of fight required was Manning. I'm not saying they didn't care about Florida, but that they looked incredibly flat. Like they were showing up for a job and not a fight. But then we came to Dallas looking for a fight, and showed what we can do when we are ready to inflict pain on our opponents. Especially for the defense, but also the offense in the second half.
I'm not being pessimistic, because I think we show up in Lexington ready for a fight, and I think we will whip Kentucky's ass. But I want to see it, because it will tell me a lot about the attitude of this team. I want to see if the leaders in the 2023 class have got the same level of fight as the guys who came before them, and who learned the hard lessons of 2021 and 2022. If we see this team come out properly motivated, then that bodes well. Not just for this season, but for the foreseeable future. Because that tells me that the culture under Sark wasn't just created by adversity, but can also be handed down from class to class. That the culture is portable and isn't specific to individuals, which was far too often the case over the previous decade.
I wouldn't have worried about this before the Florida game, but here we are. To me, this game will show a lot about what the culture will be for Texas going forward. Even if the game is a slog, as long as we look fired up then I think we're set up for the long term.
tl;dr - this is a culture game, and will tell us a lot more about this season and the trajectory of the program than the RRSO did.