Texas was the butt of the joke in Norman from 2010 through 2021. Oklahoma won 9 of the 12 Red River Rivalry games played, and 1 of those 3 losses was avenged in the Big 12 Championship Game later that season. Texas was winding down the Mack Brown era and then wandering through the wilderness before landing on Steve Sarkisian.

Sarkisian lost his Red River debut. In 2022, he gave Texas its largest win over Oklahoma in series history. Oklahoma took the Golden Hat back last season, but Texas sent it back to Austin on Saturday with a 34-3 victory.

Texas dominated in every facet of the game.

But this one registers a little differently. Texas, for the first time since 2008, is the No. 1 team in the country. The Longhorns might be the favorite to win the national championship. So, while beating Oklahoma is nice, Sarkisian and his team said after the game they aren’t going to get too high.

“We’re going to enjoy it, but the journey is far from over,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve got more work to do.”

When Texas won this game in 2022, the Longhorns followed it up with a home game against Iowa State.

This season, Texas follows up its trip to the Cotton Bowl with a home game against No. 5 Georgia.

With all due respect to Matt Campbell’s program, there’s a pretty significant delta between those 2.

Next Saturday’s game will be a top-5 showdown, the first inside DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium since 2006. For Texas to get to the SEC Championship Game, Sark will have his team believing it has to win.

(Texas might be able to lose the game and still make the title game, but it would make a regular-season finale at Texas A&M that much more important.)

That might not require much convincing, though. Sarkisian said after the game his group has a different mindset this season.

“We enjoyed the win. Don’t get me wrong. The locker room was fun and all that, but it is almost like our team knows there’s more work to do,” Sarkisian said. “Two years ago when we won the Golden Hat, you might have thought we won the Super Bowl.

“This year, it was like, ‘OK, we’ve got the Golden Hat back. All right, let’s put it in the trophy case and let’s keep grinding, let’s keep going.'”

Quarterback Quinn Ewers said something similar on the field immediately after the game. In the postgame TV interview, Ewers said “championship teams” continue to get better and so Texas is only going to give itself 12 hours to celebrate before turning the page.

Texas safety Jahdae Barron told reporters in the postgame media session he was already ready to talk about Georgia.

The Longhorns are a 3.5-point favorite over Georgia at ESPN Bet. If Texas closes as a favorite, it’ll be the first regular-season game for Georgia since Sept. 4, 2021, in which the Dawgs are a dog. With their 6-0 start, the Longhorns have become the bell of the ball.