Texas exits Big 12 with title, makes case for CFP
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Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff Writer
ARLINGTON, Texas — Texas ended its Big 12 tenure the way it began in 1996: with a conference championship.
The No. 7 Longhorns ended a 13-year conference title drought — the longest in the program’s history — with a 49-21 win over Oklahoma State behind the right arm of Quinn Ewers on Saturday. The sophomore quarterback completed his first 12 passes en route to setting the Big 12 championship game record for most yards (452, also third-most in a game all-time at Texas) and tying the mark for touchdown passes (4). In the first half, he threw for the most yards (346) by any player in a half in any conference championship game in the past 20 years, putting on a show for the College Football Playoff committee watching 20 miles away in Grapevine. Ewers exited the game in the fourth quarter, giving way to Maalik Murphy — and later, Arch Manning — after completing 35 of 46 passes.
“I thought Quinn was lights out today, man,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said, later saying it was part of their game plan to be aggressive on offense. Texas had six plays for 20 or more yards, including two for a touchdown.
“We wanted to come out and start fast,” he said. “We really wanted to come out and throw our best punches. This was not a game that we wanted to throw jabs and feel it out. We wanted to go for it.”
The Longhorns’ title-clincher was the culmination of a breakthrough season for Sarkisian, who won five and eight games in his first two seasons in Austin before going 12-1 this year, eclipsing 10 wins for the first time in his decade as a head coach and putting Texas in contention for a CFP berth.
“Hopefully when people kind of look at the totality of the body of work, it’s not just about the record, it’s about the quality of the team,” Sarkisian said. “I think that’s the intent of the College Football Playoff is putting the four best teams in that playoff. Do we think we’re one of those? For sure we do. But this isn’t this isn’t a vote. We don’t want to get to the election booth and vote, so it’s in their hands.”
From the beginning of the season, Sarkisian told the Longhorns to “embrace the hate” on the way out the door before heading to the SEC next season. His team responded, beating every team they’re leaving behind but suffering the one loss at the hands of SEC-bound Oklahoma, which drove 75 yards in 1:17 to beat Texas 34-30 on Oct. 7.
In three of the next four weeks, the Longhorns survived tight games at Houston (31-24), home against Kansas State (33-30) and at TCU (29-26) before a 10-point win on the road over Iowa State. But last week, Texas demolished Texas Tech 57-7, and followed it up with a dominant win over the Cowboys.
“We’ve been talking about being champions since this summer,” Sarkisian said. “We haven’t backed off of it and I challenged them. I made it very known publicly that’s what the season was about. … We probably played our best football in the last two weeks and we played two really good complete games.”
The Longhorns led from wire to wire, rolling up 662 yards of offense and holding Oklahoma State to 281 yards, including holding Ollie Gordon II, the nation’s leading rusher who came into the game with 1,580 yards and 20 TDs, to just 34 yards on 13 carries, an average of 2.6 yards per carry.
Two different receivers — Ja’Tavion Sanders (8 catches, 105 yards and a TD) and Adonai Mitchell (6-109-1) — went over the 100-yard mark. Texas star Xavier Worthy added six catches for 86 yards, but he went out with an injury in the second half and came back on the field on crutches and in a walking boot.
Sarkisian said after the game that Worthy’s X-rays were negative and he feels good about the time he has to recover before Texas plays another game.
The Longhorns even through a touchdown to 6-4, 362-pound defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat who celebrated with a Heisman pose.
“We did it Thursday, and coach told me that it was gonna be our first play we call when we get in goal line,” Sweat said. “And he wasn’t lying, he did it. It was amazing.”
Sweat had been openly lobbying his coaches this season for a chance at a touchdown, and Sarkisian said it was always part of the plan. But there was one small concern.
“He bobbled it yesterday in practice. I said, ‘Man, do not mess with me,” Sarkisian said. “Then I said don’t get a penalty. Get your behind to the sideline and celebrate to the sideline. Very cool moment.”
At the end of the game, Sarkisian put Jonathon Brooks, who suffered a season-ending injury in Texas’ Nov. 11 win over TCU after running for 1,139 yards and 10 touchdowns this year, in at running back with a large brace on his knee. After Manning kneeled down for the final play, he turned around and handed the ball to Brooks.
While the final seconds ticked away, Texas fans at AT&T Stadium chanted “SEC!” But for today, the Longhorns claimed their fourth Big 12 title, second to Oklahoma’s 14, to end an era for the league.
As Sarkisian and his players awaited the trophy presentation, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark was drowned out by boos and chants from the Texas fans as Sarkisian tried to quiet the crowd. Amid the booing, Yormark told the crowd that he thought Texas had proven it was worthy of being in the CFP field.
Sarkisian said regardless of if they get in or not, this season has been a success.
“I didn’t want this win and I didn’t want this championship to be about the College Football Playoff,” Sarkisian said. “This is this is an accomplishment in and of itself, us winning a championship.”
But he still said, however, that his team will “play anybody in the country… If we get into this tournament, we’ll play anybody and we’ll find out if we’re good enough or not.”
But first, he has to wait on the committee.
“Hopefully we put in their minds, man, what would it look like if Texas was in a four-team playoff?” Sarkisian said. “I think it would look pretty good. We’ll see what they think.”
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Ryan S. Clark
Many of Mikko Rantanen’s greatest moments have come in a Colorado Avalanche sweater. It’s just that the most defining moment of his career came at their expense.
It wasn’t enough that the Dallas Stars were trailing by two goals. It was also the fact that Rantanen scored a hat trick in a string of four unanswered goals that saw his current team, the host Stars, eliminate his old team, the Avalanche, in a 4-2 win Saturday in Game 7 of the Western Conference quarterfinals at the American Airlines Center.
“Obviously, the feeling was incredible to win a series,” Rantanen said in his postgame media availability. “This series was not exactly what I expected. I expected a seven-game series, even before Game 1. The ups and downs in the series. … Belief was there with the group the whole time. Obviously, I was able to make a pay to get the first one and the crowd started to roll.”
The Stars, attempting to reach the conference finals a third straight time, will advance to the semifinal round in which they will await the winner of series featuring the St. Louis Blues and Winnipeg Jets. That encounter will be decided Sunday in Game 7 in Winnipeg.
Soon, the Stars’ collective focus will shift to another Central Division foe. But for now? The attention before, during, and after the game, was on Rantanen.
Part of what made the Avalanche-Stars series arguably the most intriguing first-round series in either conference was the fact it placed two 100-point teams that are in championship window against each other. But, it also came with several subplots with the notable being the team that traded quite a bit to land Rantanen — with the hope he could win them a Stanley Cup now — needed him to defeat the team that he won a championship with back in 2022.
With one assist through the first four games, there was a discussion about if the Stars could manage to win with a sputtering Rantanen on top of the fact they were already without two of their best players in defenseman Miro Heiskanen and forward Jason Robertson.
Rantanen responded with a three-point performance in Game 5, and a four-point performance in Game 6 only to then have a hand in each goal on Saturday. His first goal came on the power-play with 12:12 remaining in the third period when he found enough space to fire a wrist shot that beat MacKenzie Blackwood.
Then came the game-tying goal and the significance it carried. The Stars went on the power play went Avalanche forward Jack Drury was called for holding. Drury part of the trade package the Carolina Hurricanes used to get Rantanen in late January before they would trade him to the Stars.
Drury’s penalty opened the door for Rantanen to score a game-tying goal that might be one of, if not, his signature salvo. Rantanen skated into the Avalanche zone in a 1-on-3 before he split two players before going around the net for a wrap-around goal that went off the skate of Samuel Girard with 6:14 left.
Three minutes later, the Stars received another power-play opportunity that saw Rantanen along with another former Avalanche forward in Matt Duchene work together to find Wyatt Johnston for the game-winning goal.
In the final minute, the Avalanche pulled Blackwood in the attempt to grab a late goal and force over time. Instead? Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger withstood a barrage that officially ended when Stars forward Tyler Seguin got the puck out of the zone only for Rantanen to skate in on an open net for the hat trick with three seconds left.
“I couldn’t care less who scored for them, I really couldn’t,” Avalanche captain and left winger Gabriel Landeskog said when asked about what it was like to watch Rantanen score a hat trick. “Mikko is one of my best friends and I love him, but I couldn’t care if he scored or if somebody else scored.”
For eight full seasons, Rantanen was part of a homegrown movement that saw the Avalanche go from finishing with what was then the worst record in the salary cap era back in 2016-17 to become a perennial favorite to win the Stanley Cup, which did they did in 2023, while also becoming a model for the need to build through the draft.
Building through stars such as Cale Makar, Nathan MacKinnon, Landeskog and Rantanen allowed the Avalanche to become a success. As did the moves they made to get other key figures like Valeri Nichushkin and Devon Toews.
Like all teams in a championship window, the Avs were facing the prospect of possibly making a difficult decision. They had yet to agree to a new contract with Rantanen, who was a pending unrestricted free agent. Then, came the blockbuster trade that few throughout the league saw coming.
The Avalanche traded Rantanen in a three-team trade that saw them get Martin Necas and Drury along with two draft picks. Rantanen’s time with the Carolina Hurricanes was limited to just two goals and six points in 13 games.
Despite the fact the Hurricanes are also among that cadre of championship contenders, Rantanen struggled to find cohesion in Raleigh. Rather than run the risk of watching leave for nothing in free agency, the Hurricanes put out feelers to a few teams with the Stars being one of them.
A long-time admirer of Rantanen, the Stars packaged two first-round picks, three second-round picks and former prized prospect Logan Stankoven to get Rantanen. They then signed him to an eight-year contract worth $12 million annually.
“It’s two things: It’s where our team’s at, and it’s Mikko Rantanen,” Stars general manager Jim Nill told ESPN back in March.
Rantanen finished the regular season with five goals and 18 points in 20 games prior to the showdown with his former team.
Not only did Rantanen’s hat trick condemn his former team to their second first-round exit since winning the Stanley Cup, but it continued a theme of former Avalanche eliminating their previous employers.
The Avalanche and Stars faced each other in last season’s Western Conference semifinal that saw Duchene, a former Colorado first-round pick, score the game-winning goal.
A year later, it was another former Avalanche first-round pick who delivered the devastating blow.
“It seems pretty fitting,” Johnston said about Rantanen. “Obviously, we want to win for each other and I think that goes a little extra when it’s a guy like that who is such a big part of our team and was there for a long time and everyone knows the trade that went on. It’s so awesome. We’re so happy as a group for him.”
As if Rantanen scoring a hat trick in a four-goal comeback wasn’t enough, there’s also the fact that this is now the ninth consecutive Game 7 that Stars coach Peter DeBoer has won his career.
DeBoer’s nine wins in Game 7s broke a tie with Darryl Sutter for the most in NHL history. It was also DeBoer’s third game 7 wins with the Stars.
“I felt something was going to happen,” DeBoer said. “But I could not have predicted that.”
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