Texas Longhorns running back draws comeback inspiration from a national champion – aiming for big 2025 season
Texas Longhorns running back CJ Baxter is fresh off of his season-ending knee injury recovery and is already turning heads in fall camp. The former No. 1 overall running back recruit in the country in the 2023 class was asked if he was “100 percent” Thursday and he couldn’t help but smile.“Yeah, I feel great,” […]
Texas Longhorns running back CJ Baxter is fresh off of his season-ending knee injury recovery and is already turning heads in fall camp. The former No. 1 overall running back recruit in the country in the 2023 class was asked if he was “100 percent” Thursday and he couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah, I feel great,” Baxter said. “One day at a time is the big saying I like to say every day.”
Outside of positive reinforcement and staying positive, Baxter said he draws massive inspiration from another source. His girlfriend, Texas Longhorns softball infielder Mia Scott, is another big reason for his quick recovery and emergence in camp.
“She’s tough, she played on a torn ACL,” Baxter said. “I don’t know how she did it.”
CJ Baxter’s girlfriend, Mia Scott, was a big reason why the Texas softball team won a national title in 2025.
She’s also a big reason for Baxter being right in the thick of it in Texas’ stacked running back room.
“She always messes with me asking how she can play on it and I can’t, which of course she didn’t have surgery so she could. When there were days I didn’t want to get up and I was feeling lazy, she made me get up,” Baxter said. “Since she won the national championship, her trophy is on my nightstand. Every morning, it’s the first thing I see, because I got to go get one.”
The Orlando, Fla., native ran the football 138 times for 659 yards and five touchdowns as a freshman. The season total is the 12th-most for a Longhorn freshman in program history. He was named a second-team Freshman All-American.
CJ Baxter is ready to go now, but admits it was hard to sit on the sidelines last season.
“I’m not even going to sit here and sugar coat it, the first two months were brutal sitting at home and watching the games from my couch because I couldn’t move around as much, it was hard for me to watch football,” Baxter said. “But man, when I look back on it now, of course I’m not glad I got injured, but I’m grateful for what it did for me, mentally, physically and spiritually.
“I feel like I put in the work in my rehab not to have any doubts, I haven’t doubted myself at all,” Baxter said. “But I did joke with my dad, I was more excited for that first time getting tackled again than I was to score a touchdown.”
