Longhorns focused inward as college football's "boogeyman" heads to Austin

AUSTIN – Every culture and society fears a boogeyman. Sack Man in Spain. Baba Yaga in Russia. Butzemann in Germany. In American college football, we call him Nick Saban. And our boogeyman arrives in Austin on Saturday to provide the Texas Longhorns, and his former assistant coach Steve Sarkisian, a taste of future life in the SEC. 

The boogeyman, like Saban’s Alabama, operates in fear. They beat most opponents before the game even starts. Sarkisian acknowledged this truth during his weekly press conference on Monday. The second-year head coach of the Longhorns did everything in his power to praise Saban, the Alabama program, and to remind everyone in the room, and in his own locker room, that the Week 2 matchup against Alabama is just that – a Week 2 contest with an out of conference team.