Steve Sarkisian reveals the key dates for Texas spring practice

New Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian isn’t in any hurry to start his first spring practice on the Forty Acres — Sarkisian revealed on National Signing Day that the Longhorns won’t hit the Frank Denius practice fields until March 23 following spring break.

“We really pushed this thing back a pretty, pretty fair amount back,” Sarkisian said during a Zoom call with reporters.

Sarkisian wants to provide Director of Football Performance Torre Becton and his strength and conditioning staff some extra time to go through the offseason conditioning program with the Texas players. But Sarkisian also has another goal — to allow a coaching staff that has eight new assistants time to build relationships with the players.

“I tell these guys all the time — trust equals time plus consistency,” Sarkisian said after arriving at Texas. “We’re in the business right now of developing trust with our players. That’s going to take us some time, but it’s going to take time through consistency and action.”

The plan is for spring practice to stretch over five weeks with practices on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. With that schedule, the annual Orange-White game, the scrimmage that concludes spring practice, will be on April 24 or 25.

“At the end of the day, it’s about us building our team, our developmental process in the weight room, and a really good scheme implementation and developmental spring. And then hopefully, we can have a nice game there at the end where the fans can see the product and where we’re at on the progress we’ve made,” Sarkisian said.