Reports: S&C coach Torre Becton remaining at Texas despite NFL interest

Success has made continuity a more difficult task for head coach Steve Sarkisian in Austin.

Offseason strength and conditioning is a pillar of any successful football program, so the physical development by Texas Longhorns S&C coach Torre Becton that has helped send 25 players to the NFL Combine over the last two seasons has earned Becton some interest from the NFL.

A contract extension will keep Becton on the Forty Acres, according to Monday reports from Orangebloods and Inside Texas.

Team success creates individual accolades at the coaching level with two assistants recently departing — safeties coach Blake Gideon left his alma mater to become the defensive coordinator at Georgia Tech, and despite Sarkisian initially fending off interest from the Dallas Cowboys and several other NFL teams, the Detroit Lions eventually convinced Texas running backs coach Tashard Choice to take over the same role with Lions, reuniting choice with Jahmyr Gibbs, the player he recruited to Georgia Tech.

But Becton has longtime ties to Sarkisian, as Becton was originally hired from South Carolina State to Washington by Sarkisian in 2010 as an assistant strength and conditioning coach. When Sarkisian took over in Austin, he brought Becton over from Cal, where he’d spent the previous four seasons.

The familiarity, in addition to the contract extension, helped convince Becton to stay in Austin as Sarkisian has maintained continuity in one of the most important aspects of the Texas program — even though coaches can spend more time in organized activities during the offseason, no one spends more time with the players than Becton and his staff. Aside from the 15 spring practices, the strength and conditioning coaches will have the greatest impact on the team heading into preseason camp for the 2025 season.

“I think what Coach Becton and our strength and conditioning staff do in summer conditioning is we push our guys and the second half of our workouts are always the hardest part of the workouts,” Sarkisian said after the win over Michigan last fall. “When we practice in spring ball, when we practice in training camp, the hardest part of our practice is at the end, because we try to instill in them that we need to be at our best, when our best is needed, even though it’s at it’s hardest moment.”

Becton was named the FootballScoop Strength and Conditioning Coach of the Year for his efforts with the 2024 team, which played for the SEC Championship and a berth in the national championship game, finishing the season 13-3.

“The first thing we want to look at is the genetic makeup of the player. We look at the anthro (anthropometry), as far as the shoulder width, the femur, the arm length, we want to look at the circumference of the knee, we want to look at their hand size and all these things tell us the growth potential,” Becton said in a recent interview, according to FootballScoop.

“Once we get an indicator of how big we think the players can be we start the process of developing a plan that helps them maintain their movement skills. Most kids are going to come to a place like Texas, not because necessarily how big they look, and how strong they look, but how they move when we watch them play.”

Now Becton will try to ensure that the Longhorns are physically ready to maintain the standard set over the last two seasons.