Football will be the SEC barometer for Texas. As if you didn’t already know.

Coach Steve Sarkisian’s mission to bring a national title back to Texas began three years ago, but Year 4 is pivotal because it will come in a much more dangerous league against some of the nation’s preeminent football factories.

Ready for the pressure cooker, Sark?

We're about to find out.

Was, is, always will be about Texas football

Long before last week, it was well understood that Austin was a party town, but Texas has taken it to another level.

The heavy hitters atop the university introduced new baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle on Wednesday in a lavish and possibly overcooked affair in the Hall of Fame room behind the north end zone with plenty of dignitaries present.

More: Hiring away Jim Schlossnagle was the first blow in this Texas-Texas A&M SEC war | Golden

And now football will take center stage.

UT will host the SEC Celebration on Sunday, the day before it officially joins the Southeastern Conference on Monday. The SEC Network will broadcast Sunday's celebration live from campus, and Pitbull, aka "Mr. 305," will perform in the evening.

The Horns are definitely feeling this moment after a 12-2 finish, a Big 12 title on their way out the door and a College Football Playoff  appearance that nearly ended with a miraculous comeback win over Washington in the Sugar Bowl. But while getting to the CFP was impressive, sustaining that success is another challenge altogether, especially after losing 11 players to the NFL draft, including stars Xavier Worthy, Byron Murphy II, T’Vondre Sweat, Adonai Mitchell and Jaylan Ford, to name a few. They have added nearly a dozen transfers from the portal who must jell with the veterans to make a second straight CFP appearance a reality.

More: WATCH: Jim Schlossnagle joined On Second Thought on May 29

Sure, Texas coaches from every sport will be on hand for Sunday's summer party, but this whole SEC thing was football-generated. How Texas performs in the college game’s scariest football league, that’s the gauge. If the Horns continue their upward arc — and that means winning in football, basketball and baseball — an athletic department that’s already shown itself to be the most consistent in the country will soar to the moon.

It’s that time of the offseason when every college football team in the country starts to believe “this could be our year,” but in these parts, there are actually realistic expectations. The Longhorns finished last season No. 3 behind Michigan and Washington. There's a definite buzz of expectation in the 512 given how the Horns took care of business in their Big 12 swan song.

To have come so close to a national title should have fans feeling enthusiastic with the knowledge that the landscape has changed and the week-to-week challenges will be much stiffer moving forward.

More: As Texas nears its Big 12 exit, Madisen Skinner honored as conference's top female athlete

Leaving for greener pastures and bigger competition

Texas and Oklahoma will become SEC members at the start of business Monday, ending their association with the Big 12 after co-founding the league in 1996. This move wasn't about playing the best of the best, as the leaders of the schools have said more than once. It was about the money. College football is a billion-dollar enterprise, and the SEC and Big Ten — operating with Disney/ABC/ESPN quietly in cahoots — are the resident power brokers. Leaving the Big 12 together was a brilliant business move, even if there was a back-alley feel to it.

The two resident football blue bloods that are exiting the Little Conference That Could aren't gutting the league, which has expanded nicely, but certainly are adding to the already formidable SEC, which claims 13 of the last 19 national champions. Texas and OU are the only teams to win football titles as Big 12 schools. In that same time, six different SEC schools have won it all.

That doesn’t include title-starved Texas A&M, still smarting from Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte’s pickpocketing of baseball coach Schlossnagle less than a day after the Aggies lost to SEC rival Tennessee in the College World Series title game. They are counting down the days until they can exercise some football revenge on Thanksgiving weekend.

More: Former Kansas State and Creighton basketball player Arthur Kaluma joins Texas Longhorns

Texas, which silenced College Station’s Kyle Field with Justin Tucker’s walk-off field goal in 2011 the last time the two teams played, will be waiting.

UT quarterbacks Quinn Ewers and Arch Manning were participating in the Manning Passing Academy in Thibodaux, La., last week, and one reporter asked Ewers if the Aggies were beyond upset about what went down with baseball over the past few days.

“They are,” Ewers said. “Took their whole staff.”

Ouch.

The Aggies can relate to boxers who say the pain of getting hit in the face goes away eventually but a properly placed gut punch can linger for decades. The Schloss Loss was a hammer to the solar plexus that will live forever in the annals of this blood feud.

By the time the rivalry resumes on the gridiron to end the regular season, Texas will have already played defending national champion Michigan on the road as well as Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas. The Longhorns will open SEC play at home against Mississippi State on Sept. 28.

Vegas oddsmakers have projected Texas’ over/under win total at 10½, a fat number given the talent the Horns lost and a schedule that will be one of its toughest in years. Since when does one get to play schools that have won the last three national titles in one season?

“We’re going to be everybody’s biggest game,” Ewers said.

That used to ring true in the Big 12. Maybe not so much in the SEC.

It’s Steve Sarkisian’s time to shine

Three weeks after the Horns executed a major national flex when they welcomed some big-name high school recruits to campus with a fleet of Lamborghinis parked outside Royal-Memorial Stadium, Sarkisian has been busy on the recruiting trail while undoubtedly burning up that huge office flat screen with SEC game film.

He also has made the media rounds as demand to hear from him — while always high over his Big 12 tenure — has picked up exponentially as Texas moves to a new league. Sarkisian has never backed down from a challenge, and while he gives the SEC its props, he’s not walking into the league with stars in his eyes.

The more immediate concern is facing different coaching styles. Sark knew what he would get from Matt Campbell at Iowa State, Sonny Dykes at TCU, Dave Aranda at Baylor and Mike Gundy at Oklahoma State because he saw them every season before the league ended its round-robin format upon expansion in 2023.

It’s different now. Though Sarkisian bore witness to the well-earned physical reputation of the SEC while at Alabama, there are other factors that will test his veteran coaching staff.

“I think the challenge for us this year is everybody is a new opponent, outside of Oklahoma,” Sarklisian said on our "On Second Thought" podcast in May. “So doing our due diligence in the offseason of studying these guys and then having a feel for them in preparing the week of the game and having to adjust in game … it will be critical for us to have the growth that we want in the conference.”

The Horns have shown they are plenty good enough in the other sports with national championships falling from the trees, but this fall will be a great first test to see where Texas football stacks up in a minefield of a league. The Longhorns haven't posted consecutive 10-win seasons since the 2008 and 2009 teams went 12-1 and 13-1, which were the unofficial end of Mack Brown's run of great seasons before he was jettisoned in 2013. To make that happen in their SEC debut not only would send a message to some incredible programs, but also would signify that Texas is really back.

And the Horns might actually mean it this time.

Welcome to the SEC.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: How Longhorns do in SEC football will tell us if they're really back