Joel Klatt gives hot take on Steve Sarkisian, Texas using odd analogy

Texas hasn’t put together the best season in its first year under head coach Steve Sarkisian as the Longhorns currently sit at 4-6 overall and 2-5 in Big 12 play following five straight losses.

While some may already be calling for Sarkisian’s job, FOX Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt provided unique support for the Longhorns’ head man while on The Herd with Colin Cowherd on Wednesday.

“I think Steve’s a remarkable coach,” Klatt said. “He’s a very good coach. Everywhere he’s been, he’s succeeded – outside of a small point in time which he was having massive personal issues, which he has admitted and faced head-on. Everywhere else he’s been, he has succeeded and done so on a pretty good scale. In particular at Washington, when he took over a team that was 0-12 and built them into the team that [Gary] Patterson then took to the Playoff.”

While Sarkisian has compiled a 50-41 record in eight years as a head coach and also had a brief but successful run as the offensive coordinator at Alabama under coach Nick Saban, the critics can’t seem to look past what is unfolding in his first season at Texas.

Of course, the Longhorns put together a 7-3 season in 2020 and won the Valero Alamo Bowl against Colorado last season, there was plenty of turmoil inside the Texas program – mostly centered around former coach Tom Herman. Which prompted a changing of the guard, with Sarkisian hired away from Alabama to clean everything up.

Klatt: ‘Problems go way deeper’ at Texas

During his radio appearance on The Herd, Klatt made an interesting analogy regarding Sarkisian and Texas, using the arduous process of buying a house to compare to building a stable college football program.

“If you’re searching for a home, everyone talks about move-in ready,” Klatt said. “You want to buy a home that’s move-in ready, right? And so you go and you’ll see one house and maybe it’s a spec home and this builder poured his heart and soul into it and maybe overbuilt it a little bit, but man I tell you, the quality is really good.

“And then there’s this other home you’re trying to buy and that one’s more of a flip – it wasn’t to tear-down or a spec home, it was a flip – and it looks nice and is probably a little bit cheaper and maybe fits in your budget. But then you start looking closely and it’s not built correctly and you go in and realize that you’re going to have to take it down to the studs because they didn’t do the wiring right, the plumbing is not right.

“It might look good from the outside, but you get in there and the problems go way deeper than what it looks like on the walls. The cover of the book does not give you a good indication of what the book is.”

While he might be mixing analogies here a little, the point is clear: Texas was always a work-in-progress and hardly a move-in-ready situation.

“That’s what Texas was,” Klatt said. “So, Texas from the outside looking in, was like, boy [the 2020 team was] a couple of snaps away from being an undefeated team and boy they’ve recruited really well. And then you go in there and you actually look at what was under the hood and you look at what was going on with the boosters and you look at what was leaving their program and the guys they were having to run off in order to build back this culture of what [Sarkisian] wants – and you have to understand he had to go way deeper before he’s going to build back up.”

It was certainly an odd handful of analogies Klatt used, but the Fox analyst might be onto something.

What’s next for Longhorns?

After starting the season 4-1, which included a season-opening win over a ranked Louisiana team, Texas has since dropped off in a big way. The Longhorns have lost five straight games – with the last two coming against Big 12 foes Iowa State and Kansas – and haven’t been in the win column since Oct. 2 when they beat TCU.

While Sarkisian’s club currently sits at 4-6 overall with a 2-5 mark in Big 12 play, they will have to win their final two games of the regular season in order to be eligible to play in a postseason bowl game.

The Longhorns travel to West Virginia on Saturday and host Kansas State next Friday.