AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas head football coach Steve Sarkisian sat down with KXAN sports director Roger Wallace before the Longhorns’ 14-7 season-opening loss to Ohio State for a long-form interview that covered more than Xs and Os on the gridiron.
While they chatted about the Buckeyes, they talked a lot about Sarkisian’s ‘why.’ It evolved into a conversation about why he enjoys coaching football so much, especially at the University of Texas, and some of the behind-the-scenes aspects that not everyone sees or even knows about.
For instance, when Sarkisian takes his pregame walk around the stadium, he ends it with a video call to his parents. It’s something he cherishes because, as he put it, his parents are getting older and they can’t travel to games like they used to. His dad would typically be on the sidelines with him, but now the best way they stay connected is via phone.
“They know more about our team than I do,” he said, laughing. “They listen to everybody, read every article, so at the end of the day, when I get to call them, my mom always has a couple of questions, like if everyone is healthy. They’re proud parents, and I was fortunate enough to have two great parents growing up.”
Sarkisian has always loved football, and after his playing days, including starring for Brigham Young University and a brief career with the Canadian Football League’s Saskatchewan Roughriders, he knew he needed to stay in the game. Coaching was the obvious choice, and he said that it never feels like a job.
“Do what you love, and love what you do,” he said. “I love college football, and I get to do it for a living. I get the chance to celebrate college football, our team, the players, in a way where the masses can hear about it. All the way down to running out of the tunnel at DKR and the smoke’s flying, all the way down to it’s fourth-and-two, what are you going to call? I really enjoy that.”
He also said he enjoys one of the aspects that sometimes drives people away from the constant grind of the profession: recruiting.
“I love the fact that we get to bring young men into our program and watch them grow and develop over 3, 4, 5 years,” he said. “I love watching players get faced with adversity, maybe it’s an injury, you know, and then how they overcome that and through rehab and get on the other side of it. I love seeing assistant coaches, because of our success, get more opportunities in their lives and their families to become coordinators and head coaches.
“And so the impact that you get to have on a lot of people is something that is that I enjoy as well. It goes just above and beyond winning and losing games.”
Texas was the school to give Sarkisian’s head coaching career another chance. After he was fired in the middle of his second season at Southern California in 2015 amid alcohol abuse issues, he began to clean up his life. He sought alcoholism treatment and started picking up the pieces from what seemed to be a promising coaching career that was cut too short. Nick Saban, the legendary coach at Alabama, gave him another shot as an analyst in 2016, and then he jumped to the NFL with the Atlanta Falcons as an offensive coordinator.
He then went back to Tuscaloosa as an offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach to help the Crimson Tide win a national championship in 2020, and then he landed the head coaching job on the 40 Acres after Tom Herman was fired.
He called Texas “a special place.”
“I’m surrounded by really special people from the top down,” he said. “President (Jim) Davis, (athletic director) Chris Del Conte, (Board of Regents) Chairman (Kevin) Eltife, all of our donors, our regents. The support we have is really incredible.”
He brought the Washington Huskies back from a 0-12 season in 2008 to four consecutive winning seasons before he took over at USC in 2014. In six-plus years in his first stint as a head coach, he was 46-35. Now in his fifth year with the Longhorns, he’s currently 38-18 with two appearances in the CFP semifinals. He wants to remain in Austin for as long as possible, and with a contract extension through 2031 that’ll pay him $12.3 million in its final year, he’s well on his way.
“When you’ve lived a life full of peaks and valleys, and when you’ve been in the deepest valley you could possibly imagine yourself being in, I’m on a pretty good peak right now,” he said. “I don’t want to get off of it, I enjoy it. I want to do everything I can to remain at this peak. I’m doing everything I can to stay up here, surrounding myself with really good people to make sure I stay here as long as I can.”
You can watch the full 20-minute interview with Sarkisian and Wallace in the video player above. It first appeared on KXAN at 7 p.m., Aug. 29.