Call him a party planner, host or chauffeur; Paul Boyette Jr. doesn’t much care. The redshirt junior did it all this offseason for one thing – team chemistry.

The Longhorn staff challenged a number of juniors and seniors following the 2014 season to step up at leaders, and they singled out Boyette particularly as a player who could assist in bringing the team together. Part of it is Boyette’s gregarious personality, but some of it is simply the fact that Boyette lives off campus.

So Boyette stepped up in the only way he knows how – he “dazzled.”

The 6-foot-2, 302-pound newly domesticated defensive tackle – he married women’s basketball player Iammi McGee-Stafford in July – hosted three or four cookouts for the team this summer at his off-campus condo. These weren’t small gatherings, either. The majority of the team showed up to hang around the facilities at his condo’s pool.

“I think we came together more as a team,” Boyette said. “It’s not about I, it’s we now. We take care of each other. I think this offseason we really did more extracurricular activities outside of this building. I think we bonded more as a family and brotherhood.”

To get everyone to his residence, Boyette the cab driver made an appearance. Many of the Longhorns who live on campus don’t have vehicles, so he’d make one or two trips to the Forty Acres at a time to pick up players.

“I could be a good Uber driver,” Boyette said.

But the most important part of the gatherings? Who would bring the food, and Boyette said the team had a very simple solution to determine who brought what.

Texas defensive tackle Paul Boyette Jr. has played a big part in bringing his teammates together this offseason.

“We have a group text,” Boyette said. “Offensive and defensive line said they’d bring brisket and ribs. All the little guys have to bring the sides.”

When they weren’t eating the team swam, shot some pool and played dominos while listening to Boyette’s eclectic music fusion of old-school and new-school sounds.

Team-wide gatherings such as these were a drastic shift from the player-to-player interactions between teammates in Charlie Strong’s first season. It’s not as if there was locker room strife, but players admit “cliques” formed.

Now graduated defensive back Quandre Diggs called out his team for just that last season, and the current players attribute a lot of that to comfort.

“Unfortunately there were some cliques last year, but that’s just how it is,” sophomore tight end Andrew Beck said. “I think a part of it is when you change coaches, you go to your comfort zone real quick.”

Change can be difficult, and the Longhorns retreated within their position groups last year during Strong’s purge of the program. But Boyette said it went further than that.

Players were shy.

“They didn’t want to be themselves around other people,” Boyette said. “I think a lot of guys last year were timid about communication, and I feel we can’t have that. If you feel something about somebody let them know that.”

The staff challenged the players to do so, and the cookouts Boyette hosted along with team bowling trips have helped dissolve the cliquish behavior in the locker room.

But perhaps it a simple recommendation form strength and conditioning coach Pat Moreer that’s made the biggest difference. It’s not a mandate, but Moreer strongly suggested to his team this offseason that each player take the time to call five of his teammates to chat.

These conversations can range from five-minute talks to say hi to full-blown conversations about life, and sometimes, according to Beck, the stories get fun.

“Oh goodness,” Beck groaned. “Some guys will go home and tell you stories, and it’s like: ‘Oh man, I’m never going home with you for a break”

With a little over three weeks to go before the team opens the season against Notre Dame on Sept. 5, players feel confident the individualized and withdrawn attitudes that plagued the team last year are a thing of the past.

Team gatherings and phone calls have done their work.

“We’re all a family,” Boyette said. “We’re all going to grind together. We’re all going to sweat together. And we’re all going to bleed together. So we might as well get to know each other like real we real blood brothers. That took it to another high standard."