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Author: Thomas L. Seltzer

The Top 5 Challenges Facing Coach Steve Sarkisian

Written by Thomas L. Seltzer on . Posted in UT FOOTBALL.

The Top 5 Challenges Facing Coach Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns as they embark on the 2025 season:

1. Rebuilding the Offensive Line
Challenge: Replace four NFL-bound starters.

Last year’s line saw Kelvin Banks Jr., Cam Williams, Hayden Conner, and Jake Majors drafted or signed by NFL teams. While Sarkisian and coach Kyle Flood used the portal and recruited well, the group lacks live-game chemistry. Sark warned of growing pains despite development.
This season’s performance in Week 1 at Ohio State will be telling.

2. Navigating NIL & Revenue Politics

Challenge: Balancing transparency, budget, and compliance.

Texas projects a $35 million football payroll under new NCAA-House NIL settlement rules—yet Coach Sark has publicly challenged inflated rumors of a $40 million NIL budget

He advocates an NFL-style cap-and-control while pushing for antitrust-protections for school-sponsored NIL

Managing athletes’ market expectations while staying compliant is a tightrope walk.

3. X-Factors: Depth & Leadership Transition

Challenge: Replacing departed leadership and filling new roles.
The team lost key leaders from the 2023–24 runs. Emerging figures like Arch Manning, Wisner, Hill Jr., and Taaffe must fill that leadership void.

Meanwhile, depth concerns linger—especially on the defensive line, offensive line, and tight end spots.

4. Cultural Consistency

Challenge: Sustaining ‘Culture Wednesdays’ synergy amid roster shifts.
Sark overhauled UT’s culture early in his tenure with initiatives like “Culture Wednesdays” to foster unity.

But mid-season departures like Johntay Cook II raised concerns.

The coach must keep team cohesion and identity strong through potential growing pains and injuries.

5. Expectations & National Title Pressure

Challenge: Delivering on elite expectations.

After back-to-back CFP semifinal runs, the dominant question is: “Can Sark finally capture Texas’ first national championship under his watch?”

With a brutal opening at Ohio State and SEC rematch against Georgia, this season is pivotal.

In Summary

Coach Sark is steering a championship-caliber team—but navigating high-risk waters:

Reforming the offensive trenches.
Staying ahead in the NIL game.
Fostering leadership in a new locker room, and maintaining cultural momentum

And ultimately, meeting national expectations is the biggest challenge Coach Sark will face in 2025!

Success hinges on minimizing growing pains, integrating fresh leaders, and delivering clutch wins in major spots. Sark’s blueprint is bold, but this
season’s outcomes will ultimately
define its legacy.

The first test will be Ohio State Aug 30th!

What have you done for me lately Jerry?

Written by Thomas L. Seltzer on . Posted in NFL FOOTBALL.

The Dallas Cowboys’ 59th NFL season is under way, their 30th under the ownership of Jerry Jones. No franchise has a richer history than the Cowboys, who have won five Super Bowls and are the most valuable sports team in the world. Forbes sets the value at $4.8 billion.
A few short months before Jones bought the Cowboys and fired Head Coach Tom Landry, I had the privilege of meeting Landry. The date was November 20, 1988, and the Cowboys had just lost 38-24 to Boomer Esiason’s Cincinnati Bengals. It was their eighth straight loss.
As a kid growing up, I watched Landry prowl the sidelines of Sundays. He was the man in the hat, the stoic leader of America’s team, impeccably dressed and sporting a fedora. In those days, I didn’t like the Cowboys since I lived in St. Louis, home of the Cardinals (before they moved west).
On that day in 1988, that same stoic man was standing in front of me, bigger than life. Always the gentleman, Landry was calmly answering questions in a press conference in the Cowboys locker room at Texas Stadium. I was the sports editor of the now defunct Shreveport Journal at the time.
At the press conference, Landry was trying to explain how America’s team had slipped to 2-10. The team had been in decline since the mid-1980s, but things had gone from bad to worse. The last time the Cowboys had lost eight games in a row was in their first season under Landry – 1960.
 The Cowboys had been an NFL powerhouse for more than two decades but were now the NFL whipping boy. Still, Landry had nothing but accolades for the 9-3 Bengals, and he had no disparaging words for his beleaguered team. Landry was a man who epitomized the word “classy.”
“We’re having a tough year,” I recall Landry stating in his normal deadpan voice. That was an understatement from the man who had become a lightning rod for all of the criticism directed at his team. Cowboy fans weren’t accustom to losing, and they weren’t handling it well.
I recall that I wrote a column the next day entitled “What have you done for us lately, Tom Landry?” Had all of these myopic boneheads forgotten Landry’s legacy? In spite of finishing with a 3-13 record in 1988, Landry’s record during his 29 seasons with the Cowboys was 418-250.
Landry and my favorite cartoonist, Charles Schulz, creator of Charlie Brown, died on the same day: February 12, 2000. Mike Thompson, the Detroit Free Press cartoonist, honored them with a cartoon showing the pair entering the pearly gates together. Landry had his arm around Schulz.
I was saddened by Landry’s passing, but I’ve always considered that his first death occurred three months after I met him that day at Texas Stadium. It was February 25, 1989, and Jones’ first act as the new owner of the team was to announce the firing of Landry.
Jones went on to announce that University of Miami coach Jimmy Johnson, who played with Jones at Arkansas, would replace Landry. Like Landry, Jones had a tough first year. The Cowboys were 1-15 in 1989, but they went on to win Super Bowls in 1992 and 1993.
On the 25th anniversary of Jones’ purchase of the Cowboys and firing of Landry, Jones admitted that he acted too quickly in firing Landry after 29 years as the team’s head coach. “If I had a chance to do it over again I would’ve waited a year and just got my feet on the ground,” Jones said.
No one can dispute Jones’ success as a businessman. He bought the Cowboys from H.R. “Bum” Bright for $140 million, and it’s worth 35 times that much today. Taking a “hands-on” approach, Jones is also the Cowboys’ general manager. It’s not uncommon to see him down on the field with his team.
The 71-year-old billionaire makes it work. In three decades with Jones at the helm, the team have won three Super Bowls. But the last of those titles was 22 years ago, and Cowboys fans have grown restless. “What have you done for us, lately, Jerry Jones?”

 

If Reality isn’t Enough, try Fantasy Football

Written by Thomas L. Seltzer on . Posted in NFL FOOTBALL, TEXAS SPORTS.

If you love football, you will love fantasy football. This is your opportunity to be an NFL team general manager/coach, adding an extra layer of fandom to regular professional football watching. The best way to get started is to join a league. You can play in a league with your buddies, or join by yourself. The most popular leagues are sponsored by Yahoo and ESPN. I prefer the latter. Both use a head-to-head scoring format, in a 13-week regular season and 3- or 4-week playoff bracket system. League drafts are starting now.
Drafting your team is the first step, and participating in a live draft is exhilarating. However, you don’t need to participate in the draft. Last year, I had a schedule conflict and couldn’t attend my draft, so my team was selected by ESPN, via auto pick. If you don’t know anything about the game, auto pick is a good way to start. After you assemble a team, you’ll rely on what your players do in actual games every week to generate fantasy points. The team with the most fantasy points each week wins his/her head-to-head match.
At its core, fantasy football is a math-based game based on the real-life production of players. Each week, you fill out a roster by “starting” players at the various positions allowed based on your league settings. These usually include one quarterback (QB), two running backs (RB), two wide receivers (WR), one tight end (TE), one kicker (K), one defense (D/ST) and one FLEX (usually RB or WR). There are a total of nine in your starting lineup, but you also have seven players on your bench. Bench player stats don’t count.
The statistics your starting players accumulate on the field (yards, touchdowns, etc.) contribute to their point total for the week. The point totals of all of the players in your starting lineup are tallied, and if you have a higher total than your opponent (another member of your league) you win that week. You set your lineup based on your perception of who will play best on a given week. There are standard leagues and PPR (point-per-reception) leagues, where tight ends and running backs receive a point for each reception.
Each week will proceed like this until the end of the fantasy regular season (Week 13). At this point, the teams with the best win-loss records will enter the fantasy playoffs, for win-or-go-home head-to-head matchups. Depending on the number of teams in your league, the playoffs can last three, or four weeks. Whoever wins all of his/her games in the playoffs is the league champion. Last year, I was playing in a 10-team ESPN league, and six made the playoffs. Two teams got a bye in the first week of the playoffs.
Winning is simple (not easy). You choose the best players, through the draft and waiver wire, work around injuries and decide the right players to start each week. Remember, you have 16 players on your team but only nine in your starting lineup. The points scored by the others on the bench don’t count. That’s why it’s so important to choose the right starters. Look at matchups, which are critical. You can spend a little, or a lot of time looking at the stats to determine who to start each week. It can become a second job if you let it.
One mistake you must avoid in the draft is wasting a draft pick on a quarterback in the early rounds. There is large supply of good quarterbacks. If you’re in a 10-team league, there will be ten starting quarterbacks selected, but there are a total of 32 NFL quarterbacks, and most of them are good enough to draft. Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady might get drafted as early as the fourth round. But you will probably be able to get Alex Smith in the 12th round. Smith averaged 18.3 fantasy points last year – the same as Brady.
The most important players to draft in the early rounds are running backs and wide receivers. In my opinion, you will want to select a workhorse running back in the first round. This is a guy who will get a lot of carries each week. If you’re in a PPR league, you want a running back who also catches a lot of passes. Some leagues award a point for each reception, and some just a half-point. This makes a big difference. There is a short supply of really good running backs, so don’t hesitate to load up on running backs early on.
Wide receivers are harder to predict. Antonio Brown is in a league by himself, and you can draft him in the first round with a high level of confidence. He won’t be available in the second round. DeAndre Hopkins, Julio Jones and Odell Beckham are in the second tier. Then you have Michael Thomas, Devante Adams, Keenan Allen and A.J. Green in the third tier. I would predict that all seven of the second-  and third-tier wide receivers will be gone in the second round. But I’d still rather have two top running backs on my team.
The middle rounds are also important, and this is where no one seems to agree on the talent. By the time you get to the third round, you’ll see pundits with a variety of opinions on the talent of these players. My advice is to read about the different players and make your own decision based on what sounds right. I will enter this year’s draft with an idea of who I will draft, and who I won’t draft. Then, I’ll let the players come to me, based on my draft order and what other players decide to do. This is not entirely predictable.
The late rounds (12-16) are the rounds where you will want to pick up your quarterback, defense and kicker. You may even select your tight end in one of the late rounds, but you would also be justified to spend a third-round pick to select Rob Gronkowski, the Patriots’ tight end. Gronk is in a class by himself, and he is Brady’s favorite receiver. If I can draft Gronk in the third round, I will do so. However, if someone else gets him first, I will wait. The No. 2 tight end if Travis Kelce, and he is projected to go late in the third round.
After the draft, you take off your general manager hat and put on your head coach hat. Who will you start in week 1? You’ll probably be going with the guys you drafted in the earlier rounds until they prove to be inferior to other players acquired later. But you also need to look at opponent strength and matchups, as I stated earlier. Dig into the statistics because this is the key to your success. You’re going to have injuries throughout the season, and you will also have bye weeks. You need to bench all players during their bye weeks.
I don’t want to minimize the importance of the draft, but you will not win or lose a fantasy championship with a draft. Last season, my No. 1 pick overall in the draft was David Johnson, and he was injured in the first quarter and lost for the season. Andrew Luck, my drafted quarterback, never played a game in 2017. I still managed to win the championship because I worked the waiver wire. I found Saints running back Alvin Kamara on the waiver wire in week three but dropped him. Later, I had to trade to get him, but it was worth it.
You won’t know how good, or bad, your fantasy team is after the draft. They may look good on paper, but the guys you think are studs could be duds. You could also have a rash of injuries. The good news is that there are always undiscovered stars waiting to be acquired on the waiver wire. You must be looking for that talent. Fantasy football is like life – you get out of it what you put into it. The harder you work at it, the luckier you will get in winning games and ultimately the coveted league championship. Have fun, and Godspeed.
Read Thomas L. Seltzer’s blog daily at www.doubtingthomassports.com.