NEW ORLEANS — Spread across the Superdome’s artificial turf field on Saturday, Texas football players and coaches took their places at the Sugar Bowl’s main media day.

Every player and staff member was available, some of them even positioned on raised platforms and others with name placards before them.

But the most popular person here, surrounded at one point by as many as two dozen reporters, sat, fittingly, along an aluminum bench with other backups.

He needed no platform, stage or name placard.

“It’s Arch day,” someone among the crowd whispered.