While Texas has flirted with returning to its former status as one of college football's elite programs for more than a decade, this has been one of the most popular questions in the sport.

Are the Longhorns finally back? For just as long, the answer remained the same: no.

That changed in 2023, when Texas went 12-2 in coach Steve Sarkisian's third season and made its first appearance in the College Football Playoff. Few question the top-ranked Longhorns (6-0) this season.

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

Still, the Longhorns face their toughest challenge yet on Saturday when they host No. 5 Georgia (5-1). And it's fitting that Texas' “Welcome to the SEC” moment comes against the Bulldogs, the program whose path to the top the Longhorns are trying to emulate.

Like Texas, Georgia spent much of the last 30 years boasting a previous national championship and a campus in a recruiting-rich part of the country without any modern success to show for it. Under coach Kirby Smart, a former defensive coordinator who studied under Nick Saban at Alabama, the Bulldogs accelerated their recruiting; In the nine years since Smart was hired, they have finished in the top flight three times and only once finished lower than fourth.

In 2022, the same season Georgia won its second straight national championship, the university spent $4.5 million on football recruiting, the majority of it nationally, according to USA Today. The quarterback of the Bulldogs' back-to-back championship teams wasn't a former star recruit, but he grew up in Georgia.

As Texas sought a head coach 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 national ranking of 10.8; In three recruiting classes under Sarkisian, Texas averaged a 4.6 rating. And the offensive of misdirection and motion is now being led by a native Texan – Ewers.

In the eyes of Texas fans, the Longhorns will not qualify as fully back until they win the program's first national football championship since 2006. Although Texas officially played its first game in the Southeastern Conference on Sept. 28, defeating weak Mississippi State, its first measuring stock game as a member of the SEC arrives Saturday in the form of Georgia, the program undergoing transformation from a historical greatness to a current power it wants to model.

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