Cooper’s illness affected Arch’s choice of college. In the spring of 2022 he was in the process of making his decision about where to go. Though he had considered many schools, he’d narrowed the choice to three, each of which he had visited four times: Alabama, Georgia, and Texas. Two of the three were dominant SEC teams at the height of their powers. Alabama had won the national championship in the 2020 season; Georgia had won it in 2021. Either school would have been an easy choice for the nation’s top high school quarterback and a logical gateway to the NFL. Both desperately wanted him.
Texas, on the other hand, looked like a program that was in a long-term decline. The 2021 season had been a minor disaster. Under the team’s new coach, Steve Sarkisian—who was fired by the University of Southern California in 2015 for incidents related to his alcohol abuse and later rebuilt his career as an offensive coordinator at Alabama under Nick Saban—the Longhorns had gone 5–7. To weary fans, it seemed impossible that with its heritage, facilities, money, and location, the University of Texas couldn’t do better than that.
Arch saw things differently than most recruits, in large part because his father and grandfather saw things differently. “Cooper had him in a very good frame of mind,” said Archie, “which was let’s find a school that you want to go to if something happens and you don’t play football.”
A clear point of reference was Cooper’s own devastating experience. “Go to a place where you will be happy,” Cooper said he told his son, “to a place where if you didn’t play a down, you would still enjoy your college experience. Have a little bit of balance. Have friends who aren’t just on the team, friends who are in fraternities and clubs.” For Arch that place was clearly Austin.
His instincts were right in other ways, too, starting with the team’s prospects.
“People forget that he committed to a 5–7 team,” said Cooper. “I said at the time, ‘Arch, this is a ballsy move.’ But he wanted to be part of something that was changing, growing, gaining steam and momentum.” Somehow the kid felt the momentum shifting. Since his arrival the team’s record is 25–5.
His gut also led him to pick the right coaches. “You had a pretty good sense that whoever was recruiting you, especially from the offensive coordinators side, probably wasn’t going to be there by the time you arrived, and that certainly is the case,” said Cooper. “All the offensive coordinators that recruited Arch are gone.” But at UT, Sarkisian and quarterbacks coach A. J. Milwee, who played a large role in Arch’s recruitment, are still there.