For more than a decade, as Texas flirted with returning to its former status as one of college football’s elite programs, it was one of the most popular questions in the sport.

Are the Longhorns finally back? For just as long, the answer stayed the same: No.

That changed in 2023, when Texas went 12-2 in coach Steve Sarkisian’s third season and appeared in the College Football Playoff for the first time. Few, this season, are still questioning the top-ranked Longhorns (6-0). 

Even when starting quarterback Quinn Ewers was injured and missed two games, Texas was able to insert backup quarterback Arch Manning, the former top recruit in the country in 2023 whose uncles, Peyton and Eli Manning, combined to win four Super Bowl titles. 

Yet the Longhorns will face their toughest challenge thus far Saturday when they host No. 5 Georgia (5-1). And it’s appropriate that Texas’s “Welcome to the SEC” moment should come against the Bulldogs, the program whose path to the top the Longhorns are trying to mimic. 

Like Texas, Georgia spent much of the last 30 years boasting a past national championship and a campus in a recruiting-rich part of the country, with little modern success to show for it. Under coach Kirby Smart, a former defensive coordinator who learned under Nick Saban at Alabama, the Bulldogs super-charged their recruiting; in the nine years since Smart’s hire, they have finished with the top-ranked class three times and been ranked lower than fourth just once. 

In 2022, the same season in which Georgia won a second consecutive national championship, the university spent $4.5 million on football recruiting, most in the country, according to USA Today. The quarterback of the Bulldogs’ back-to-back championship teams was not a former high-star recruit, but he did grow up in Georgia.

When Texas sought a head-coaching change in 2020, it also turned to a former Saban coordinator, Sarkisian, and showered the program with money to find the best players possible, spending $2.4 million on its 2022 recruiting budget. In the decade before Sarkisian’s hiring, Texas recruiting classes finished with an average rank of 10.8 in the country; in three recruiting classes under Sarkisian, Texas has averaged a ranking of 4.6. And the offense full of misdirection and motions is now run by a homegrown Texan — Ewers. 

In the eyes of Texas fans, the Longhorns won’t qualify as fully back until they win the program’s first football national championship since 2006. Though Texas officially played its first Southeastern Conference game Sept. 28, beating lowly Mississippi State, its first measuring-stick game as a member of the SEC arrives Saturday in the form of Georgia, the program whose turnaround from a historic great to a present power it aspires to model. 

By one metric, the Longhorns may be a step ahead. For the first time since 2021, bettors view Georgia as an underdog. 

MAVERICK COUNTY, Texas – The journey of crossing the Texas-Mexico border can be a deadly one.

Over the last decade, hundreds of people have been found dead in Maverick County. Many of them would remain unidentified without the help of a Texas State University nonprofit.

Operation Identification identifies and repatriates human remains found at the southern border. The nonprofit hopes to provide closure to families, at no cost to them, who aren’t sure if their loved one is missing or deceased.

The nonprofit has identified nearly 200 people with Texas State University’s Postdoctoral Scholar, Victoria Swenson, partially leading the efforts when the group travels to border towns. The program’s director is Dr. Kate Spradley.

“Normally, we deal with skeletal remains to develop a biological profile,” Swenson said.

KSAT met Swenson and her team in Maverick County, a county where dozens of migrants attempt to cross the border. Many of the border deaths Operation Identification works on are from heat-related illnesses and drownings across several border towns.

When in Maverick County, the nonprofit works with Amerika Garcia’s volunteer organization: Border Vigil – Eagle Pass.

“Climate change, crime, drug violence are pushing people for survival, and their options become more and more limited,” Garcia said.

Border Vigil’s mission is to highlight the number of deaths across the Rio Grande and provide information to the public about what is happening in border towns.

“They will do anything for hope,” Garcia said. “Unfortunately, that means crossing in the hottest times of day, in the hottest part of the year and in dangerous places, like along the Rio Grande. We actually put up a cross memorial here in Eagle Pass in Shelby Park.”

Texas State anthropologists said newly found remains of unknown individuals could be linked back several years. To speed up the identification process, Operation Identification added a new approach in 2024.

“We’ve kind of switched gears to include fingerprinting and DNA sampling of more recently deceased,” Swenson said. “Fingerprints are the quickest, easiest way to identify people. When we get a fingerprint ID, it comes back with a report of who they are, where they’re from, birth date.”

While fingerprinting is convenient, results do not always come back with a match to a person.

There are also times when natural body decomposition prevents the ability to take fingerprints. In those cases, Operation Identification can bring remains back to Texas State University in San Marcos for a more in-depth identification process.

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Saturday night’s primetime matchup between the No. 1 Texas Longhorns and No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs in Austin is set to be the best-selling ticket of the college football season so far, according to data obtained by Sports Illustrated from StubHub.

With a few days left before the matchup, tickets are currently outselling last season’s best-selling regular season game between Texas and Oklahoma by 22%. Texas games have been in high demand all season, as the Longhorns have been involved in four of the 10 best-selling games this year. That’s the most of any team in college football.

While the stadium will be predominantly orange on Saturday in support of the Longhorns, 23% of all tickets sold on StubHub for the contest have come from fans of the Bulldogs, so expect a healthy contingent of Georgia fans in the stadium on Saturday night.

As of Thursday afternoon, tickets are still available on StubHub starting at around $200.

Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday night in Austin. The game will be televised nationally on ABC, with Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit on the call.