For more than a decade, the start of every college football season has carried a certain inevitability. Check the preseason AP Poll, and somewhere at the very top, you’d find Alabama or Georgia staring down everyone else. Year after year, the SEC’s two giants have owned August headlines before a single down was played. But finally, the balance in the sport’s power structure has shifted, the grip of the usual kings has loosened, and Steve Sarkisian has forced his way into that once impenetrable space.

For the first time in the history of its program, Texas is No. 1 in the preseason AP Poll, breaking a 15-year stranglehold on the top spot by the Alabama–Georgia machine. Can’t believe it? We can’t either. But Steve Sarkisian has done it. Texas Longhorns will go into the 2025 season as the

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