Inside Texas Football

Steve Sarkisian SPEAKS About Texas Football at SEC Spring Meetings

Texas Football head coach Steve Sarkisian speaks at Southeastern Conference Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla. about the latest on his program and much more Promo Code “IT1” To Get 2 Months of InsideTexas.com for Only $1: https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/join/ Listen to the Podcast: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3P0cwAUPNZrsNrTOKOfa6x Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-texas-football/id1721623113 Find Us On Social Media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/InsideTexas Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InsideTexas/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetexas/ https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/

Duration:: 14m
Broadcast on:: 28 May 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Texas Football head coach Steve Sarkisian speaks at Southeastern Conference Spring Meetings in Destin, Fla. about the latest on his program and much more

Promo Code “IT1” To Get 2 Months of InsideTexas.com for Only $1: https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/join/

Listen to the Podcast:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3P0cwAUPNZrsNrTOKOfa6x

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/inside-texas-football/id1721623113

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https://www.on3.com/teams/texas-longhorns/

Great to be a destined after a couple of years now of the talk of being in the SEC to be here now and to be around all of y'all and Commissioner Sankey and all that the SEC is now. It's great to be here and looking forward to this partnership, not only with the SEC, but with the other universities. So it's great to be here. Sorry, can you safely and effectively go to an 85 man roster? Well, I mean, I think that's the challenge of that is adjusting, right? And I've said this all along, like we're in this era of college football, where we have to continually adapt. From the moment I got this job at Texas, we were still almost operating under the old ways. And here comes the transfer portal. Here comes NIL. Here comes conference realignment. Now here comes a new settlement. Now there's talk of potential roster size being reduced. But through it all, you have to adapt, right? And if we don't adapt, we're going to be here, right? And so I think at the end, if that's the number, that's the number. We have to adapt, we have to adjust and we've got to figure out the best way to put our players in the best position to have success. Is that the impression you get that that's kind of the result? I don't know yet. We haven't met yet, so I'm not certain. Coach, how much does your NFL background kind of help you in this bottom hair of college football? Seems like it's just like free agency. It seems like there's like, you know, NIL. How much does that help you where you're at now? I think it's been helpful. You know, for us in the transfer portal, we do view that as kind of free agency for us and where we have gaps or holes in our roster, where we can fill those things in. I do think understanding the temperature in your locker room and, you know, who's making what and keeping that culture the right way. Now we're going to player to coach, you know, coach to player communication, which is very similar to how it was in the NFL as well. Now there's talk of reporting player injuries and things for the week. So there's definitely a shift, right? And which I don't think is a bad thing. The NFL has done extensive homework and research on a lot of these things. And so if that's the direction we go in, we just try to fall back on some of our experiences to do the best that we can. That's not a roster size. Is there another topic that you're really keen on talking with other coaches about here? You know, I'm always curious about our recruiting calendar because there's been so many adjustments and changes to our recruiting calendar of the last, I guess, 24 months. One we can call, one we can't call, one we can do school visits, one we can do in-home visits and to win our signing days and win our dead periods. So I'm hopeful, I think we're trying to make progress there, but I'm hopeful that we're continually trying to keep in mind of all parties involved. The student athletes, the assistant coaches of what it looks like to ensure that we're doing it not just the easy way, but what's probably the best way for our future. Do you, just as a follow-up, do you favor the idea of having the portal open after signing date in December for the high school players? I would prefer that, you know, it's a lot. I think one thing that I learned for myself a year ago, being a head coach in the college football playoff, I've been in the playoff before as an assistant, but being a head coach, it definitely got challenging as you're trying to do in-home visits with high school kids in December. But yet, you've got players populating the portal at the same time, and we're still trying to compete for a national championship. And so you're trying to game plan and we've got our own team that we're trying to work with. And so if we could compartmentalize that a little bit, I think that would be healthy, not only for us as coaches, but I think giving the high school players their opportunity. Because I do think a lot of those kids at the end maybe lost scholarships because they thought they were going to a school, but in the end, school A saw a kid get in the portal, they took him instead of the high school kid. So if we can compartmentalize that a little bit, I think it'd be helpful. Steve, is there a way to do any availability reports without coaches finding a way to gain the system or a chief system? Fine us. That's what they do in the NFL. I'm a big believer in this. The NFL has figured a lot of this stuff out already. They've already had to live through all of these things that have occurred. So we don't have to try to recreate the wheel so much. If I try to gain the system and I don't report a guy and so on and so forth, fine us. We all like the money that we make. And so that's a really simple way to get us to adhere to the rules. No, the administrators were here last year, but does this all make it seem much more real being here now? It's pretty exciting. We've been out and about all May and I had a chance to just stop in the office Sunday before I came out and the SEC logo is getting put down in DKR right now. So it's all happening. It's all becoming a reality. And it's exciting. It really is. This conference is amazing. Like I said, as an assistant, I had some great years here when I was with Alabama and Coach Saban. I love the competitive spirit of the SEC and I think about that in really three levels. I think about the coaches. I think about the athletes and I think about the fan bases. There's a real competitive spirit in the SEC. And week in and week out, you know, the challenge is that it poses for you. Whether it's when you're playing on the road, whether it's game planning against some of the best coaches in our sport, or whether it's competing against some of the best athletes in college football. Great challenges. But that's why we do what we do. Is it going to be weird in there to not see Coach Saban after so long? I've never sat in a meeting with him. So I don't know if it'll be so weird for me. It might be weird for y'all. I don't know. But we'll see. I'm just curious to see if he stayed here the night and then ordered he fly home and fly back. I want to know if he and Miss Terry had two bump beds in their room. I don't know if that happened. Coach Slark, how do you think Coach Saban's handling retirement? I mean, he's also going to be still involved with a program there. Yeah. Kayla DeBorsman, Open Door, talk to me. It's going to still be a little bit weird for him, but getting in conversations. I've spoken to him a little bit. I think he's doing great. You know, I thought his analysis for the NFL draft was incredible. I've even, you know, had a chance to visit with a couple different NFL teams and coaches. They even commented on, you know, just some of the thoughts he had on different players. I think he's going to be great on game day in being an ambassador for our sport. And that's something that he did at Alabama as the head coach and really when he was at LSU. And now he's even got a bigger stage to, I think, again, be an ambassador for college football and do it the right way. Because you never really complain about transfer portal, you don't never complain about it, NIL. Why does those topics not seem to bother you? Well, because I'm a believer in this. Like, change is inevitable. And I think we have to change with change. And my biggest thing is this. As long as we're all playing by the same rules, it just is what it is. And so I just don't, I try not to spend a lot of time complaining, you know. And I just, I'm more solution oriented than I am, point out the problem with it. And so, okay, these are the rules. This is what it is. All right. How do we, how do we best navigate through this to put ourselves in the best position to have some success? What you've said, as long as we're all played by the rules, the NCAA, I'm in very good at enforcing its own rules. There's talk now about a new mechanism, a new enforcement staff. What you realistic to expect for a level? The one thing I'll say, and I know the NCAA is one thing, but I think the SEC does a really good job of that. I think Commissioner Sanki does a heck of a job of that. I think it starts there first. We've got a, we've got a lot of great coaches in that room that I'm about to go into. And we've got great leadership, okay, with our athletic directors and Commissioner Sanki and his team. And in the end, whatever they, they define for us, the, of the umbrella that we're supposed to operate under, they'll start that policing mechanism to make sure that we're all playing by the same rules. And then where the NCAA goes with it and the new way that they're going to get to it, we'll find out what that is. But I think it has to start within our own conference before we can worry too much about from a national level. What's your historical perspective on the game with ANM and your relationship with Mike Elkin? Yeah, I'm excited. I'll be honest with you. You know, I've been part of some great rivalries in college football. And I know there was so much talk about realignment. And, and I know realignment looks different for, for every school. But for us, we gained, we gained two rivals back, right? We're playing Arkansas again, which is great for Texas Longhorn and Longhorn Nation. We get ANM back. And so you're talking about the game of the ANM. You're talking about houses divided. You're talking about, you know, decades of tremendous games and Thanksgiving weekend. And so to get that game back, I know we're looking forward to it. I know I'm sure ANM is too. I've got a ton of respect for Coach Elko. We competed against one another, you know, when he was a defensive coordinator at ANM, and I was an offensive coordinator in Alabama. And he got really good scheme, really good players, and I think he's going to do a really good job there. You mentioned player coach communication. How much about kind of experiment with that this spring? And how beneficial is that for someone like yourself that is the primary play caller? Yeah, we did it all spring long with the quarterbacks. We'll get more into it with our defensive players when we get back. You know, I think the first thought about communicating is everyone thinks that that's going to stop signal stealing. Well, what stops signal sealing is don't signal anymore. Getting the huddle, right? And so that's in the NFL. That's why they use that communication is because they huddle. They talk to their team. They go to line of scrimmage. They run the play. There is no signal. And so, you know, I just don't think everybody needs to understand, like, just because you can talk to the quarterback, but still signal, that's not going to stop. The guys on the other side from watching your signals and by the second quarter know if you're going to run it or throw it. If you're blitzing or playing cover two, whatever it is. And so I think that's where we have to wrap our brains around as coaches at the University of Texas is how much do we prefer to huddle? How much do we prefer to be no huddle? What's our mechanism to communicate effectively when we are talking to the player with the earpiece in? And so there's going to be a learning curve for a lot of people here because the college game is a little bit different than the NFL. People don't go and know huddle. They're not going as fast as they can go. And so how do you manage that from a defensive perspective and then who do we want to be offensively to minimize some of the signaling that we have to do? I mean, in your initial reaction, were you fired up or did you just kind of like, well, I think at the end, we all would like more players, right? And I think for me, my biggest concern about when I initially heard 85 scholarship, 85 scholarship players and that was going to be our roster limit. Well, that's, I've got 35 walk-ons on our team. We don't have this enormous roster at Texas. We have 120 players on our roster. But that's 35 walk-ons and then what happens to those walk-ons and what about the stories of all the great walk-ons over time that really shape a lot of what college football is about. My own son is a walk-on on our football team. So those types of things to me, I'm hopeful we can find a common ground on something that is a reasonable number. Again, I'm not opposed to change. Change is going to happen, okay? But hopefully we can find a reasonable number to where we still feel like we can operate at a high level as coaches and for our players and still continue that tradition of walk-on football players on our teams. Turn that for one last one. Another question about change. How concerned are you and your peers about potential lawsuits from players from NIL? I'm not very concerned. You know, I think there's a way that, you know, we go about our business that we try to do things, continually do things above board and if a lawsuit does come your way, that you feel very confident in the process of which that you did it. But like anything, okay, when things happen, sometimes with change, we don't see the unintended consequences that come with change. And that's why I'm always hesitant to rush to a decision or a judgment without doing all of our due diligence on what it could look like. And NIL's been really good and I'm happy for our student athletes. If they get that, I'm happy about the new settlement with the NCAA. I think it's great for the student athletes. But we got to make sure that we're doing our due diligence on the unintended consequences, one of which lawsuits from players to coaches and universities because that's hefty on a lot of people when those types of things come that way. Thanks, everybody.