College football has changed so much in the last five years that if you gave a coach the current conditions back then they’d likely have laughed you out of the room. Just ask Texas coach Steve Sarkisian.
Sarkisian was hired by the Longhorns in 2021, right when the massive changes were hitting full steam ahead.
There’s the transfer portal, NIL and conference realignment. All of it has made a stew that coaches must constantly tend to, a revolving door of responsibility that many have bemoaned. Not Sarkisian.
“Sometimes I hear other coaches complaining about different things in their program,” Steve Sarkisian said on The Joel Klatt Show. “We don’t really deal with that as much, because I think it’s who we are on a daily basis.”
The Texas coach has built his program around sustainable methods of keeping up with each of those challenging new circumstances in the sport.
The Longhorns proved the model works last season, reaching the College Football Playoff for the first time in the program’s history. Texas hopes it’s just the first of many appearances, particularly with the playoff set to expand to 12 teams.
Steve Sarkisian explained how it happened.
“It all comes back to our culture,” he said. “Of all the stuff that’s happening, how good can our culture be in this building, right, whether it’s the players, whether it’s the support staff, whether it’s the coaching staff, whether it’s the administration.
“Is everybody on the same accord, is everybody talking the same language, is everybody working together, do we have a healthy environment that people want to come in here every day or do they have to come here every day? And are they looking to see what’s on the other side of the fence? Is the grass greener? And that’s not just players. Coaches are moving around the country now too more than ever, so how do we create an environment where people want to be here every day and are striving for a common goal and are committed to this thing collectively, and in turn through team success now come the individual accolades, awards, honors and draft picks and things of that nature.”
Texas will put its culture to the test again this fall, looking to repeat as a College Football Playoff contender.
Steve Sarkisian doesn’t want anything to change. He’s built the consistency into the program, even with the aforementioned challenges the sport has sprung up over the last few years.
“So naturally over time that we’ve been here it’s like what is the one thing that we can control?” Sarkisian said. “All this other stuff is happening, and we have to adapt. You have to continually adapt in college football. That was something that coach (Nick) Saban had taught me in my time there: adapt or die. There’s a reason dinosaurs aren’t on the earth anymore. So we’ve had to adapt as this has gone on.”
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