AUSTIN - When it came to Texas football, Justin Cryer was, well, let's just say he wasn't the biggest fan.
He admits it.
"Actually, no," Cryer said this week. "I wasn't. Around the time I started watching college football, they weren't great."
He's right. But now he's trying, to borrow someone's catchphrase, to make Texas great again.
During his formative years, the senior Longhorn linebacker didn't really follow Texas closely because the program was struggling, to put it nicely.
Whether it was the tail end of Mack Brown's glorious run or the inconsistency under Charlie Strong and Tom Herman, the burnt orange suffered through as many as five losing seasons in a dozen years starting in 2010. The Longhorns lost four games or more in a season 10 consecutive years and 12 of the next 13. Texas, needless to say, wasn't Texas.
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So Cryer will be excused from not seriously considering Texas out of Royal High School near Katy although Texas' stock is soaring these days as a preseason top-five team in both polls. As for him, he wound up at Florida State after high school, and truthfully that wasn't even his first choice.
He wanted to play baseball for Northwestern.
It's true. The first love for the 6-foot-1, 241-pound linebacker was always baseball. His dad said he used to constantly watch baseball games on his phone. And the power-hitting first baseman/third baseman hoped to continue playing that sport in college.
He did enroll in two summer school classes at Northwestern - one of the few schools that would allow him to play both sports - until the hazing scandal led to football head coach Pat Fitzgerald's firing. So Cryer left and enrolled in Tallahassee, Fla., because only Prairie View A&M and some smaller FCS schools recruited him to play baseball.
"He's a baseball fanatic," said his father, Lionel Cryer Sr.. "He loves it. He could really smack it. One year he was 12 or 13, he damn near hit 20 home runs in the season. Baseball was his thing."
So would he have been the next Freddie Freeman?
"Maybe from the right side," Justin joked about the Los Angeles Dodgers' left-handed slugger.
L.J. Cryer, who won a national title at Baylor and helped UH get to the brink of a championship in 2025, has been an inspiration for his younger brother Justin, now a linebacker at Texas. (Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle)But why didn't Justin pursue basketball like his older brother, L.J.? The latter was also an excellent football player and was once a talented quarterback in high school but chose roundball for his future.
"L.J. was a great football player," said Lionel, who played linebacker at Grambling State and a few stops in the Canadian Football League and now is the defensive coordinator at Waltrip High School. "He could have played whatever he wanted. He was super athletic. But even during football season, L.J. would go to school dribbling a basketball. We knew what his path was."
Justin is very close to his older brother, who now plays for the Golden State Warriors. L.J. averaged eight points in his 18 NBA games and shot almost 40% from long range in a promising start to his pro career. The shooting guard had been on Baylor's national championship team as a freshman and came close to another for new school Houston in the 2025 Final Four title game. He scored 26 points in a huge comeback win over Duke in the semis, but the Cougars couldn't close out Florida in the final.
Asked about his brother, Justin offered some perspective and said, "Y'all don't know this. I'm actually better at basketball than him."
Does L.J. know that?
"Oh, absolutely," Justin crowed.
He eventually came clean and said he was joking although dad said Justin can dunk a basketball, too, and play the game well.
Big brother's got a leg up on his kid brother in the trophy department, however. In truth, Justin raved about his sibling as he tries to live up to L.J.'s athletic legacy, if in a different sport.
"He's been a role model ever since I was a little kid," Justin said. "His work ethic. His drive. His determination. I got to have a front-row view to that. He's somebody I go to all the time for advice because he's been through it."
Justin's good at taking advice.
When a reporter asked Cryer when he decided to stop playing baseball, he snickered and said, "When they (FSU) told me to."
He follows instructions very well. That was a decision that led him to Tallahassee for three seasons and ultimately Texas. But he did not follow in his famous older brother's footsteps on the basketball court.
L.J. also schooled Justin on the whole recruiting process and advised him about how to handle that.
And Justin acknowledged, "He's up on me in the national championship category. So I got to get one."
He will have that opportunity this fall.
Justin Cryer's path from Royal High School included a brief stop at Northwestern before landing at Florida State. (Juan DeLeon/Contributor)Cryer joins a legion of top-shelf talent in Austin after leaving Florida State where he played in 34 games and made 10 starts. He was a backup his first two seasons before making eight starts for the Seminoles last season and posting 43 tackles, including five for losses.
He didn't make it into the College Football Playoff there, so was looking elsewhere for his next attractive option. Leaving FSU, though, was a difficult decision for him because he loved his time there and was big into community service.
Cryer landed at Texas after a whirlwind week of recruiting last offseason. He visited Kentucky on a Tuesday. He came to Austin on a Thursday and committed to defensive coordinator Will Muschamp after canceling a visit to Houston. He drove to Tallahassee the next morning, packed up his golden doodle dog Luna and a few things over the weekend, returned to Austin and was in his new apartment Monday.
Yeah, pretty whirlwind.
"Juice is super loyal," his dad said. "But it was time for him to make a move."
Cryer found the perfect home. With three key linebackers, including All-American Anthony Hill Jr., gone and returner Ty'Anthony Smith kicked off the team this month, Cryer is penciled as a starting linebacker next to another Longhorn transfer. He can't wait for next week's season opener against Texas State to get under way and loves his new opportunity.
"It means everything," he said. "This is the place to be at right now. I know we got one shot at this (as a senior), and I feel like we're putting all our chips at the center of the table and we're going to go after it."
Lionel said his son is counting on this being his final collegiate season and is driven to helping bring Texas its first national championship in 21 years.
"He's living out his dream," dad said. "He's competing with a team for a national championship. It don't get no better than that. Juice is the type of kid who writes his goals with a marker on the mirror in his bathroom so he sees them every day and knows what he wants to accomplish."
Juice also sees the reflection of a 21-year-old man who is an accomplished student of the game with a very high football IQ. He's been that way from birth as the son of a former college football player and an athletic mom, Tanica, who played volleyball at Grambling.
Always a big kid, he played at 240 pounds in high school and still carries that weight at Texas.
"He's always been a big kid," Lionel said. "He's very animated and super emotional. I can remember him watching football and Ray Lewis beating on his chest. Juice is always beating on his chest."
Steve Sarkisian has more than grasped Cryer's sense of urgency as well.
He believes his program is getting exactly who they wanted in him, an experienced, smart linebacker alongside Pitt transfer Rasheem Biles at Texas' thinnest position.
That room got less crowded a week ago when Smith was kicked off the team for conduct that Sarkisian said was "detrimental" to the team. But Texas frequently plays just two linebackers and five in the secondary against pass-happy SEC teams, so the team could be fine so long as Biles and Cryer remain healthy.
There is athletic talent behind those two with other transfers like second-year player Brad Spence from Arkansas as well as Darius Snow of Michigan State and Markus Boswell of Austin Lake Travis by way of Akron. Two more on the three-deep are talented freshmen in Tyler Atkinson and Rocky Cummings.
"There's no such thing as I'm just a freshman," Justin said. "It's no secret, we're pretty thin at that position. We're gonna go into each game knowing that they got to come ready to play whenever the number is called."
His new teammates call him "Juice" Cryer, a nickname that has stuck with the Longhorn newcomer since his youth even though he conceded there's "no cool story" behind the moniker. Dad shares that his cousin, former Nebraska defensive tackle Barry Cryer, who lived with the family for a while, first coined the tag.
That said, Sarkisian seemed to stay with the theme when he commended Cryer and said, "This guy is squeezing every ounce of energy out of this opportunity to be at Texas."
His teammates have noticed as well that Cryer is looking to make the most of his final collegiate season.
"I think my strengths are my intelligence and my physicality," Cryer said. "I feel like I have a good feel for the game. I've always been somebody who's been a student of the game, and I like to think that my IQ and my preparation for the game helps me make plays."
But if he needs any reminders, he can always just call his big brother in the Bay Area. Or just look at his bathroom mirror. Or, for that matter, even switch to baseball.
SubscribeThere’s more to Houston with the Chronicle. Subscribe today for just 25¢.This article originally published at Justin Cryer didn't grow up a Texas fan. Now he's chasing a national title with the Longhorns.
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