I find myself at a weird crossroads of expectations for the University of Texas football program.

Every year, it feels like a chore to ask the Longhorn head football coach about expectations for the upcoming season. From Mack Brown to Charlie Strong to Tom Herman (up until the 2020 season to his credit), almost every question related to a definable bar that would outline what represents both success and failure proved very hard to pin down. Of course, determining the success is usually the easy part. It's nailing down what represents failure that becomes really tricky.

For instance, few coaches want to come right out and say that an 8-4 season is a failure because that word sounds so harsh to the ears of people that can't separate emotionless bar-setting with the excuse-making/reasoned explanation that sometimes arrives inside of a season that falls short of goals.

Herman's team was a failure last season by fairly high standards. The Longhorns didn't qualify for the Big 12 Championship game, let alone win the championship, which is sort of a not quite Big Boy way of determining minimum levels of success in a 10-team league.

Yet, Herman bristled at the thought of his team in such harsh terms. He'd almost certainly point out that the 2020 Longhorns finished with the second-best winning percentage of any Texas team since 2009, only bested by Herman's 2018 team. He'd say that only two other teams since 2009 that wore burnt orange finished the season with higher final rankings.

He'd be right, but by the standards of the program the season was a failure. It just turns out that the standards around here have dipped to such places that last season was merely the least terrible failure in a decade that specialized in them. That the season got him fired seems like an even more significant data point when it comes to defining what represents failure around the 40 Acres.

A .700 winning percentage will cause eyes to roll. Finishing in the Top 20 sounds like the kind of thing Aggies put up banners for. Any references to the last decade when it comes to establishing expectations for the program might lead to a fight, depending on the anger levels of the people in the conversation.

I bring all of this up for two simple reasons.

a. Steve Sarkisian seems to be embracing a high bar for the program going into his first season.

b. The schedule is far trickier than most Longhorns fans probably realize as evidenced by the fact that ESPN's FPI lists the Longhorns with the nation's 4th most difficult schedule.

With Sarkisian, it's almost what he isn't saying as much as what he is saying. For instance, unlike the previous two coaches in Austin, there's been virtually no passive-aggressive shade pointed at the old staff. There's been little talk about how much heavy lifting has to take place before this team takes off. Instead, Sarkisian points towards what he believes is an elite coaching staff and seems content to expect them to pull more out of the players than the previous staff.

At 47 years young, Sarkisian has been involved at the highest levels of college football since his late 20s. He's been on teams that were going for national titles, coming off of winless seasons and pretty much everything in-between. The best sign from this spring is that he just hasn't come across as a complainer about anything. It doesn't quite feel like a spring where everything is new, even though it is. Considering this is a team that could have gone 10-3 (or 9-4 at worst) last season in a 12 game schedule, there's zero signs of tamping down expectations.

Normally, I'd be leading the charge in celebrating the lack of hemming and hawing leading into a season, but...This is a team that is replacing its quarterback, left tackle and best pass rusher.

This is a schedule that has at least six dangerous games on the schedule: Louisiana, at Arkansas, at TCU, Oklahoma, at Baylor, at Iowa State and at West Virginia. Two of those games are against pre-season top-10 teams, and neither are at home. Four others are on the road at places that can be described as dangerous. People are going to accuse me of issuing this warning as some sort of click-bait plan, but Louisiana is a hell of a season-opener when you consider it went 10-1, won its conference and finished higher in the national polls than the Longhorns did.

I'm not telling you that you shouldn't dream. I'm not telling Sarkisian that he shouldn't dream. What I am saying is that the Longhorns were just a pretty decent team a year ago, are replacing plus-players and the three most important positions on the field and are playing a schedule that will mess up any team that isn't really, really good.

Full transparency - I'm going to have a hard time picking the 2021 Longhorns to do better than 9-3 and if Sarkisian gets them over that kind of line, I'll personally view it as a sign of a very good (and improved) coaching job worthy of praise.

This 2021 was always going to be tough on paper in a quarterback changeover year with the two most difficult games on the schedule away from Austin.

Sarkisian doesn't seem to be overly concerned with his all gas, no brakes mantra.

Personally, I feel like a bit of a worrywart.

No. 2 - Buying more Hudson Card stock...

You guys know that I'm president of the Hudson Card Fan Club. You know that I think he ...

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