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Even in a down year for fall sports, Texas athletics continues to dominate

by: Evan Vieth06/05/26

Exiting the fall, the University of Texas athletic department was surprisingly quiet in their successes for the 2025-26 season.

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The three primary fall sports for the Longhorns: Football, Volleyball and Soccer, had all had varying degrees of disappointing seasons.

For Volleyball, that simply meant not winning their third title in five years, bowing out in the Austin regional finals to Wisconsin, watching rival Texas A&M hoist the national championship trophy.

It was worse for football, and especially soccer, as Steve Sarkisian’s Longhorn football squad failed to qualify for the College Football Playoff, and longtime soccer head coach Ange Kelly was fired after just four wins in the 2025 season.

The Longhorns, who were searching for their third straight Director’s Cup trophy and fifth in six years, looked a step behind heading into 2026.

And yet, over five months later, the Texas Softball back-to-back national championship win reminded Longhorn fans just how dominant this athletic department was.

Five sports generate the most buzz and viewership among college fanbases. Football, men’s and women’s basketball, baseball and softball. The sixth most viewed or followed sport generally depends on the conference or region, but in Texas’ case, you can add the volleyball team to make a clear top six.

Here’s where Texas finished, or is currently standing, in all of those sports:

Football: 10 wins, 12th in Final AP Poll
Volleyball: Regional final/last 8, 6th in Final Poll
Men’s basketball: Sweet Sixteen, 22nd in Final AP Poll
Women’s basketball: Final Four, 4th in Final AP Poll
Softball: National Champions
Baseball: Currently in the Super Regional round, 2nd in title odds

Texas alone is one of just five schools who has a national championship in any of these sports, joining Indiana, Texas A&M, Michigan and UCLA.

But the deeper you go, the more impressive it gets.

Just 17 power conference teams won 10 football games last year, still a decently impressive mark for Texas despite missing the Playoff.

Of those 17 teams, Texas and Texas A&M are the only two that made the final eight teams of the volleyball tournament.

In the Aggies defense, they were the better of the two programs in the fall, but in the Spring? It’s not even close.

Men’s Basketball:

Texas reaches the Sweet Sixteen
Texas A&M loses in the Round of 32

Women’s Basketball:

Texas reaches the Final Four
A&M wasn’t even in the first four

Softball:

Texas wins the national championship
A&M can’t escape its own regional

Baseball:

Texas advances to the Super Regional
A&M, once again, loses in its own regional

Let’s return to those 17 football teams, as football is still the dominant sport in the eyes of most fans in the nation.

Of those 17 teams, once again just two teams made the MBB Sweet Sixteen: Texas and Alabama.

Alabama is probably the Longhorns fiercest competition when it comes to major sports excellence, as they made the College Football Playoff, the men’s Sweet Sixteen, the WCWS and are in the Super Regional Round.

These two programs are also two of only three teams to make the WCWS and the Super Regional round in baseball, joined by Mississippi State.

Oh, and we’ve barely mentioned that Texas made the Final Four in women’s basketball, joining UConn and Michigan as the only teams to make the Final Four in one, and the Sweet Sixteen or higher in the other.

They were one of the four best basketball programs as a whole in 2026, and currently have the best argument for the top batted-ball program in the nation, unless Alabama were to win the Men’s College World Series.

Even with a somewhat disappointing fall sports slate, Texas still finished 12th in football and sixth in volleyball.

At worst, Texas is competing as one of the final 16 teams in the sport.

At best, they are national champions

This all culminates in what will likely be Texas’ third straight Directors Cup victory.

This is not updated for Texas softball’s title, so the Longhorns are even closer to smashing past Stanford’s maximum point total. It’s confusing, but it’s as simple as Texas needing to take care of business in baseball and track.

It’s hard to explain how lucky Texas fans are to have an athletic department this stacked with talent and elite coaching.

And even when teams don’t have the right people in place to compete for national championships, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte is aggressive.

He wasn’t hesitant to replace Rodney Terry with Sean Miller, who gave Texas a Sweet Sixteen appearance in Year 1 and will now have a loaded roster in R2. He replaced Kelly after multiple disappointing seasons with rising star coach Margueritte Bates, a national champion.

And when Sarkisian didn’t have the right formula to win it all in 2025, Texas aggressively pursued new coaches like Will Muschamp and elite transfers like Cam Coleman to set themselves up for an elite 2026-27 athletic calendar.

This university is only getting stronger in its respective sports. Now it’s time for more teams to replicate the success of Volleyball in 2022-23, and Softball in 2025-26.

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