Texas got bigger.

And eventually better.

With the SEC beckoning entering his fourth year, Steve Sarkisian’s vision was the right one. Still, the leader of Texas football understands that the Longhorns are far from a finished product.

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To mistake a 12-2 finish and a Big 12 championship for permanent residence in the College Football Playoff — even with the new 12-team format — would be a massive miscalculation because the expectations moving forward are higher than ever.

Shoot, the expectations were Everest high even when the Horns were no longer a national player after Mack Brown’s regime fell apart. There's no such thing as permanence in college football, especially with the way the traditional recruiting model has changed.

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“Complacency is the devil, man,” Sarkisian said Wednesday at his national signing day press conference. “I can’t have anybody thinking we have arrived.”

If anything, they’re about to arrive in the toughest conference in America. Sure, the Big Ten’s Michigan Wolverines captured the national championship last season, but the SEC has won 13 over the past 18 years.

Building Texas in the right way

To his credit, Sarkisian came in here with a plan constructed over his time with Nick Saban, who won with size on both lines, terrific running backs and quarterbacks who were good enough to throw it around when needed. Sark survived a disastrous debut season, and the construction of what we see now was one of patience and dogged determination to follow the script.

Bigger. Better.

The Horns bulked up on both lines and produced an Outland Trophy winner in defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat, a potential first-rounder in his interior mate Byron Murphy II and a future All-American candidate in left tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. And they got better in the win column because Sarkisian smartly used the transfer portal to plug into key spots that couldn't be fixed immediately by an unproven high school player. Quarterback Quinn Ewers has taken some large steps in his development, and Arch Manning represents a promising program future.

The Sarkisian we saw Wednesday was a month removed from a historic season for both him and his university. He led Texas to double-digit wins for the first time and captured his first conference title as a head coach. He also did a masterful job of bringing in players he'll need next season with the exit of upward of 10 NFL draft picks, the program's most bountiful draft harvest in 40 years.

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It’s the new way of doing business in the college game. Free agency has arrived, adding to the multitude of responsibilities that come with sitting in the highest-paid office in the state. And while all of that was happening, Sarkisian remained dedicated to the idea that the right locker room culture can bring about positive change.

No signings, no problem

The Longhorns didn’t add a single player on national signing day. Once, football coaches viewed the first Wednesday in February as a second Christmas. The powerhouses brought in four- and five-star studs to fortify their already formidable rosters, and some of them — like Mack Brown’s Texas teams — would even show us highlight tapes of their future stars during extended press conferences.

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It brought a bit of intrigue into an otherwise uneventful sports month outside of the Super Bowl.

So much has changed.

The early signing period and the transfer portal have made it imperative for those football factories to make necessary changes in December, both on the roster and on successful coaching staffs that take a hit or two every offseason.

Sarkisian spent 45 minutes with us, but it wasn’t to talk about players he had just signed. Their names have been on the spring roster for quite some time now because Texas signed its class, which is ranked No. 6 nationally, in December on what has become the real national signing day, not just the early one.

Coveted five-star Duncanville edge rusher Colin Simmons was among those December signees. Add veteran transfers in Houston wideout Matthew Golden, Oregon State wideout Silas Bolden, Alabama pass catchers Isaiah Bond and Amari Niblack, and Clemson safety Andrew Mukuba — an LBJ grad — and Sarkisian is pushing all the right buttons entering Year 4.

He has maintained that he will never become a modern day version of legendary NFL coach George Allen, whose Washington teams in the early 1970s were dubbed the Over the Hill Gang because of the coach’s philosophy of signing older players in free agency at the expense of developing younger ones through the draft.

“We are never going to major in recruiting the transfer portal in a way that that's going to make up our roster,” Sarkisian said. “We still want to recruit the bulk of our class from the high school ranks (with) highly competitive, high character kids coming from great programs, get them immersed in our culture, develop them in our program, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3. But what the portal does for a school like us is it can help you fill the voids.”

New year, new team, new roster, same goal

Sarkisian understands that each team is different. New leaders will have to emerge in the locker room. Ewers will have to develop chemistry with a new corps of receivers but will work behind a veteran offensive line. Defensive tackles Vernon Broughton and Alfred Collins have some humongous shoes to fill. And the Horns will enter 2024 on a 10-year drought since a player registered double-digits sacks (Jackson Jeffcoat).

“I know that we're going to work as hard as we can to try to be back,” Ewers said after the Sugar Bowl loss to Washington. “That’s all we can really do, is attack the offseason the right way and just continue to build this team to what it's capable of being."

They’re starting over, but they have the pieces around them to be back in the expanded playoff in 2024.

“We have players that have been with us for two or three years that know our culture,” Sarkisian said. “It’s ingrained in them.”

As we count down those arduous seven months to when we can start talking about the games again, Sarkisian has shown that greatness is possible in the 512, but one season does not a dynasty make.

Going 12-2 was magical.

To make that old habit around here, and in the SEC of all places?

That would be, in a word, epic.

But remember, the Horns are venturing into tougher territory, and the game doesn’t wait for anybody, so if you’re not working to get better, you’re flirting with disaster.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football successfully navigates new recruiting era