Sarkisian: Texas poised for ‘epic’ run, Bama thoughts ephemeral

Texas’s Austin When Steve Sarkisian received the news on January 10, he was still celebrating Texas’ historic 2023 season but also looking forward with optimism.

His former Alabama coach, Nick Saban, was retiring following an illustrious career that included six national titles won in Tuscaloosa, the final one coming in 2020 with Sarkisian serving as his offensive coordinator.

Indeed, Sarkisian admitted on Wednesday that he had considered taking Saban’s place.

Sarkisian told ESPN, “Naturally, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it.” That was all of sixty seconds for me to say, ‘Yeah, I’m not doing that.’ I liked my experience under Coach Saban and had an amazing two years at Alabama, but in the end you

want to reap what you sow.

“We’ve poured a ton into this program for three years, and we’re on the cusp, I think, of going on a run that will be epic. I believe that. Our staff does, and our players do, too, just the support we have and the culture we’ve created here. Why leave something like that?”

After joking that Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte was calling near the end of the allotted 60 seconds, Sarkisian said, “That’s a story for another day.” In reality, though, it made little difference because Sarkisian was exactly where he wanted to be.

That also applies to his Texas program, which is starting its fourth season on Forty Acres, exactly where Sarkisian had anticipated it would be, and where the Longhorns will be making the crucial transition to the SEC in 2024.

“We need to keep developing the team, and by team, I mean culture,” said Sarkisian, whose Longhorns won their first Big 12 title since 2009 and qualified for their first College Football Playoffs the previous year.

“You think we’ll have a lot of talent? I’m not

worried about our talent. Ensuring peak performance during crucial moments in a game is crucial. Peak performance occurs when one can rely on the guy beside them, accept accountability from them, and avoid feeling the need to act independently or deviate from their character. That is how we must live each and every day.

“I don’t mean to come across as conceited when I say that, but I believe we’ve done an excellent job on it over the past four years. That’s precisely what I think. We have the best culture in college football, in my opinion, but we have to start over each season. Culture is more than just

One of the best returning quarterbacks in the country, Quinn Ewers, claimed that Sarkisian had a clear strategy in place for how he planned to restructure the roster when he moved from Ohio State to Texas in 2022. More than anything else, the Longhorns needed to bolster their roster with guys who were willing to support one another. Ewers claimed that the camaraderie on the squad from the previous season was the best he had experienced in any football league.

This will be Ewers’ third season as the starting quarterback for the Longhorns. “We had a lot of veteran guys, guys who had been on this team for three years, had been through the coaching change, had been through all the ups and downs,” he said. “Coach

I could tell Sark was creating something extraordinary, even though he entered and said goodbye to some of the people he wanted to stay.”

The fact that Sarkisian has had enough depth to run team periods on both ends of the practice field—or, as he puts it, “two-spotting,” with the 1s and 2s on one end and the 3s and 4s on the other—has caught his attention this spring. Of Texas’ 85 scholarship players, 57 were either freshmen or sophomores going into the 2022 campaign.

“We’ve never had the depth to do that the entire spring before, where you don’t feel one side of the field is getting shortchanged,” Sarkisian stated. “It’s different to just have the bodies to accomplish it, especially when

You don’t sense a significant decline.

“Now, I feel like, ‘Man, our young players might not know everything to do right now, but they’re sure pretty talented,’ and it shows not only on offense and defense, but really shows on special teams.”

Another indication that Sarkisian is drawing and nurturing elite talent is the fact that the Longhorns had a program-best eleven players invited to the NFL combine this year. Sarkisian has been able to replenish the roster despite losing as many as five players who were predicted to be selected in the first two rounds of the NFL draft. The receivers Isaiah Bond (Alabama), Silas Bolden (Oregon State), and Matthew Golden (Houston) were among the prominent transfers that Texas brought in. The last two recruiting classes for the Longhorns have been placed in the top five around the country according to ESPN.